1、【听力文摘】烹饪与人类的智慧2015-02-02 来源:普特编辑部 【大 中 小】 普特网校：在线口语培训点击下载音频音频不能下载？免费无押金留学申请智能平台—查看译文—tips:怎样阅读才是有质量的阅读了？中英对照请点击【中英对照】查看译文请点击【查看译文】进行核对。Cooking Up Human IntelligenceSo what makes the human brain so special? Actually, it mightnot be that special after all.
2、Sliding ScalesIn 2009, Dr. Suzana Herculano Houzel and her colleagues showed that the human brain has thesame density of nerve cells as other primates. Comparing humans to smaller primates, she claimsthat our brain is no bigger than it should be for our body size.
3、 Still, given the distinctive way thatprimate brains scale with size, we may have the most brain cells of any mammal.That being said, gorillas can grow to be three times our size, but still have much smaller brains thanours.Brain cells need more energy than most b
4、ody cells. Although the brain is less than 2 percent of themass of the human body, it consumes 20 percent of our resting metabolic energy. Gorillas haveto spend more than eight hours every day eating to get enough calories to support their bigbody, and they simply
5、 can’t afford a bigger brain.Brain FoodSo, then, how did human ancestors overcome this limitation? Beginning with homo erectus, abouttwo million years ago, our ancestors couldn’t have afforded the metabolic cost of their increasinglylarge brains if they ate raw fo
6、od like gorillas do.Primatologist Richard Wrangham thinks that the invention of cooking with fire is what made thisgrowth in brain size possible. Cooked food is easier to digest and yields more calories. Cooking mayhave made the human brain possible, and freed us
7、from having to spend all day eating.density n.密度distinctive adj.有特色的，与众不同的mammal n.[脊椎]哺乳动物metabolic adj.变化的；新陈代谢的n.灵长类动物学家(primatology的变形)
