unit6 B课文DO ANIMALS FALL IN LOVE

DO ANIMALS FALL IN LOVE?

Jeffery Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy

Humans believe they know what love is, and value it highly. Yet many who study animal behavior are cautious

about saying animals experience love, preferring to say they are not displaying

dictates of their genes.

Is it really as simple as all that? What about the animals who stay together until one dies? Evolutionary

biologists often say that pairing is a way to ensure adequate parental care, but it's not always clear this is the case.

Some animals continue to accompany each other when not raising young. And they appear to exhibit sorrow or show

a sense of loss when one of the pair dies.

Konrad Lorenz, studying the behavior of geese, describes a typical example. Ado 's mate, Susanne-Elisabeth,

was killed by a fox. He stood silently by her partly eaten body, which lay across their nest. In the following days, he

hung his head and his eyes became vacant. Because he did not have the heart to defend himself from the attacks of

the other geese, his status in the flock fell sharply. A year went by. Finally Ado pulled himself together and found

another mate.

Animals may fall in love dramatically. According to Lorenz two geese are most likely to

have known each other as youngsters, been separated and then meet again. He compared this to a man who meets

a woman and

—

astonished that she is the same girl he used to see running around in a school uniform

—

falls in love and

marries her. According to parrot specialist Sue Athan, it is common for some parrots to fall in love at first sight.

Instinct may urge animals to love, but it does not say whom they will love. Seeking a mate for a male parrot,

Athan purchased a fine-

feathered young female and introduced the two birds. To Athan 's disappointment, “the male

never

theless acted like the female wasn't even in the room.”

A few mon

ths later Athan was given an older female in extremely poor condition. “She didn't have a feather

from the neck down,” she says. “Her feet were all twisted. She had lines around her eyes. And yet the male thought

she was the love of his life.” The two bird

s immediately paired off and eventually produced young.

Zookeepers know, to their despair, that many species of animals will not breed with just any other animal of

their species. Timmy, a gorilla in the Cleveland Zoo, declined to mate with two female gorillas introduced to him. But

when he met a gorilla named Kate, they took to each other at once. When it was thought that Kate was unable to

reproduce, because of her advanced age, zookeepers decided to send Timmy to another zoo, where he might have a

chance to breed successfully.

Defending the zoo 's decision to separate the animals, the zoo director said, “It sickens me when people s

tart

to put human emotions in animals. We can't think of them as some kind of magnificent human being: they are animals.

When people start saying animals have emotions, they cross the bridge of reality.” Jane Goodall, whose work has shed

light on the emoti

onal life of chimpanzees, also writes, “I cannot think of chimpanzees developing emotions, one for

the other, comparable in any way to the tenderness, protectiveness, tolerance and spiritual joy that are the mark of

human love in its truest and deepest sen

se.”

Yet there is evidence of love in the devotion that members of pairs heap on each other. Geese, swans and

mandarin ducks are all symbols of marital faithfulness; field biologists tell us this is true to life. Coyotes, often thought

of as representing trickery, would make equally good symbols of devotion, since they also form lasting pairs.

Observations indicate that they begin to form pair attachments before they are sexually active.