Questões de Inglês - Grammar
TEXTO II
Wild and Captive Chimpanzees Share Personality Traits With Humans
A chimpanzee in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. Researchers have found that wild and captive chimps share personality traits much like those observed in humans. Credit: Alexander Weiss
"In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jane Goodall started attributing personalities to the chimpanzees she followed in Gombe National Park in what is now Tanzania. In her descriptions, some were more playful or aggressive, affectionate or nurturing.
Many scientists at the time were horrified, she recalled. Considered an amateur — she didn’t yet have her Ph.D. — they contended she was inventing personality traits for animals. Dr. Goodall, now 83 years old, said in a phone interview on Monday from her home in England that scientists thought “I was guilty of the worst kind of anthropomorphism.”
But time has borne out her insights. Chimpanzees in the wild have personalities similar to those in captivity, and both strongly overlap with traits that are familiar in humans, a new study published in Scientific Data confirms. The new examination of chimpanzees at Gombe updates personality research conducted on 24 animals in 1973 to include more than 100 additional chimps that were evaluated a few years ago. The animals were individually assessed by graduate students in the earlier study, and in the latest by Tanzanian field assistants, on personality traits like agreeableness, extroversion, depression, aggression and self-control.
Researchers used different questionnaires to assess the chimps’ traits in the two studies, but most of the personality types were consistent across the two studies. These traits seen among wild chimps matched ones seen among captive animals, the study found, and are similar to those described in people. Dr. Goodall, who is promoting a new documentary, “Jane,” about those early days of her research, said she’s not surprised. She knew from childhood experiences with guinea pigs, tortoises and her favorite dog, Rusty, that animals have personalities that are quite familiar. “I honestly don’t think you can be close to any animals and not realize their very vivid personalities,” she said.
Clive Wynne, a professor and director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University in Tempe, who was not involved in the research, said the new study offered a “really rich picture” of the overlap among species. “It’s backing up and reinforcing a number of things that we assume about animal personality that are seldom established with this degree of security in substantial wild-living populations,” said Dr. Wynne, who concurs that dogs, his area of specialty, also have similar personality traits.
Robert Latzman, an associate professor at Georgia State University, who was not involved in the study, said his research with chimpanzees in zoos has always left open the question of whether animals in the wild are somehow different. “What’s exciting about these data is there’s some suggestion that wild apes look very similar to what we would expect in terms of basic dispositional traits and continuity of those traits — and I don’t mean just to captive chimpanzees, but to humans,” he said. “The work in the wild underscores how similar these animals truly are to humans.”
Alexander Weiss, who led the new study, said he was particularly interested in examining the personality traits of animals in the wild. His findings were in line with previous research he’s done on chimpanzees in captivity. “The fact that we’re showing this consistency in the wild is nice, because it allows us to draw more general conclusions,” said Dr. Weiss, a senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. “It’s not just being in a zoo that’s causing these individual traits to be stable.” The study’s underlying data will be made publicly available so other scientists can use them in their own research, he said.
Although most of the animals tested in 1973 had died by the time the recent analysis was conducted, the study also concluded that an animal’s personality traits were generally consistent over time. Dr. Goodall said that fits what she’s seen, too. She only visits Gombe twice a year now, and only two animals are still alive from the days when she knew them as individuals. One, a mother of twins named Gremlin, has changed a bit, Dr. Goodall said. “I think the main difference in her personality is she’s become more confident as she gets older, just like people do,” she said.
Dr. Goodall added that she’s pleased that researchers are still finding so much of interest at Gombe, and tapping into the expertise of Tanzanian field workers. And, of course, she’s happy that the academic perspective has shifted from the time when she was told only humans had personalities, minds and emotions. “Today you can get your Ph.D. studying animal personality. I think we’ve come around full-cycle,” she said. “It absolutely vindicates all that I’ve ever believed.”
(Adapted from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/science/chimpanzees-goodall.html)
“[…] I think the main difference in her personality is she’s become more confident as she gets older, just like people do, […]”
Assign the correct grammatical classes (underlined words) based on the order that they appear in the sentence above.
Read the text and answer question.
Good day! My name is Sheila. I’m from Melbourne, Australia. My ___________ is from Montreal, Canada. We live in Sydney. A lot of ___________ living in Australia come from other ___________.
Choose the best alternative to complete the blanks in the text:
“Why do bees fuss about so much when they fly?”. The singular of this sentence is:
Leia o texto para responder à questão.
What Does It Mean to Tear Down a Statue?
Protesters throwing the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston into a harbour.
Statues of historical figures, including slave traders and Christopher Columbus, are being toppled throughout the U.S. and around the world. This follows years of debate about public display of Confederate symbols. We interviewed the art historian Erin L. Thompson about the topic. Read the excerpt from the interview.
Q. What are some of the issues that arise when we talk about statues being torn down?
A. We have as humans been making monuments to glorify people and ideas since we started making art, and since we started making statues, other people have torn them down. So it’s not surprising that we are seeing people rebelling against ideas that are represented by these statues today.
Q. What do the recent attacks on statues tell us about the protests themselves?
A. The current attacks on statues are a sign that what’s in question is not just our future but our past, as a nation, as a society. These attacks show that we need to question the way we understand the world, even the past, in order to get to a better future.
Q. What’s a statue?
A. I think a statue is a bid for immortality. It’s a way of solidifying an idea and making it present to other people. It’s not the statues themselves but the point of view that they represent. And these [the ones being destroyed] are statues in public places, right? So these are statues claiming that this version of history is the public version of history.
Also, many Confederate statues are made out of bronze, a metal that you can melt down. The ancient Greeks made their major monuments out of bronze. Hardly any of these survived because as soon as regimes changed, as soon as there was war, it got melted down and made into money or a statue of somebody else.
We have been in a period of peace and prosperity — not peace for everybody, but the U.S. hasn’t been invaded, we’ve had enough money to maintain statues. So our generation thinks of public art as something that will always be around. But this is a very ahistorical point of view. I wish that what is happening now with statues being torn down didn’t have to happen this way. But there have been peaceful protests against many of these statues which have come to nothing. So if people lose hope in the possibility of a peaceful resolution, they’re going to find other means.
(www.nytimes.com, 11.06.2020. Adaptado.)
No trecho do último parágrafo “they’re going to find other means”, o termo sublinhado pode ser substituído, sem alteração de sentido, por
Todas as palavras abaixo formam o plural em inglês como a palavra “photo”, exceto:
Directions: Read the text below and answer question according to the text.
TEXT
The search for life beyond Earth
We have always been fascinated by the thought of
alien life elsewhere in the universe. The idea has
provided the basis for a huge wealth of science fiction
stories that have been limited only by our imaginations.
[5] But can other creatures exist in the vast reaches of
space or on other planets or moons? And are there
other intelligent forms of life out there—or are we more
likely to find something much simpler?
Where are all the aliens?
[10] Our Sun is just one star among billions in our
galaxy. In the last few years, scientists have detected
thousands of planets around other stars and it seems
that most stars have planetary systems. It’s therefore
likely that there will be large numbers of habitable
[15] planets in the Milky Way galaxy and beyond that are
capable of supporting intelligent life. Some of these
intelligent civilisations, if they’re out there, may have
even developed interstellar travel.
Are there other intelligent forms of life out there—or
[20] are we more likely to find something much simpler?
But Earth hasn’t been visited by any intelligent
aliens (yet?). This apparent high probability of life,
combined with a lack of evidence for its existence, is
called the Fermi Paradox, named for the physicist
[25] Enrico Fermi who first outlined1 the argument back in
1950. This begs the question: where is everybody?
Back in 1961, astronomer Francis Drake tried to
rationalise this question by developing an equation that
takes into account2 all the factors relevant to finding
[30] alien civilisations and gives an estimate of the number
of civilisations out there in the galaxy that should be
able to communicate with us. It considers factors such
as the rate3 of new star formation, how many planets
around those new and existing stars might be able to
[35] support life, the number of planets supporting intelligent
life, how many of those civilisations might have
technology we can detect, whether they’re likely to
communicate with us here on Earth, and so on.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence
[40] Scientists and radio astronomers have started the
search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) in a
systematic manner. Several international organisations,
including the SETI Institute and the SETI League, are
using radio telescopes to detect signals that might have
[45] been produced by intelligent life.
In 1995, the SETI Institute started Project Phoenix,
which used three of the most powerful radio telescopes
in the world: the Green Bank radio telescope in West
Virginia, USA; the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico;
[50] and the Parkes radio telescope in NSW, Australia.
During its initial phase, Project Phoenix used the
Parkes telescope to search for signals coming from 202
Sun-like stars as distant as 155 light years away. By the
end of its operations, Project Phoenix had scanned a
[55] total of 800 ‘nearby’4 (up to 240 light years away) stars
for signs of life. The project detected some cosmic
noises, but none of that could be attributed to aliens.
These days, anyone can become involved in the
search for extraterrestrial intelligence through their
[60] personal computer.
While there’s currently excitement about sending
human crews to Mars, missions beyond the Red Planet
are at this stage pretty much not feasible5 the distances
and travel times involved are simply too great.
[65] Basically, all exploration for life beyond Earth will need
to be done using robotic space probes6 and landing
rovers. These instruments can provide a huge wealth of
information and are capable of exploring as far away as
Pluto, perhaps even beyond our solar system. But as
[70] for life beyond the solar system, the nearest stars are
several light years away, and even communications by
electromagnetic waves (which all travel at the speed of
light) are essentially going to be a one-way message.
While we probably won’t find intelligent life too close
[75] to home, there’s a chance we may still find much
simpler life forms. Do we have neighbours beyond
Earth? Time will tell—and the search continues.
(Adapted from https://www.science.org.au/curious/space-time/search-lifebeyond-earth – Access on 16/02/19)
Glossary:
1. to outline – describe or give the main fact about something
2. to take into account – consider something
3. rate – expansion
4. nearby – short distance away
5. feasible – appropriate; suitable
6. space probe – spy satellite
Considering the plural form of the nouns, mark the correct alternative.
