Communication in Asia
Objectives
Infinitive and gerund phrases Reported speechReading
The smallest of the world’s
eight bear species, sun bears, usually live alone and are happy to spend most
their time by themselves when not looking for a mate. They spend their days
looking for fruit, nuts, birds and insects in Southeast Asia’s tropical
forests. Although sun bears mostly
live alone, scientists surprisingly discovered that they have developed a new
form of communication by mimicking or copying other bears’ facial
expressions. Researchers studied 22 sun
bears at the Malaysia’s Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Center where the bears
live in outdoor forest cages big enough to let them decide whether to play
together or stay away from each other most of the day. In their study, scientists
found that sun bears mimicked not only the kind of expression, but also the exact
muscular movements the other bear made—such as raising or wrinkling their
noses. The ability to mimic facial
expressions is found in humans, gorillas, orangutans, some monkeys, and even
domesticated dogs. But until now, only humans and gorillas have shown the
ability to exactly copy complex faces. The study found that sun
bears, however, are just as good at facial mimicry as humans and gorillas.
This surprised researchers; not only because sun bears are usually solitary, but
also because they are not closely related to humans. Derry Taylor is a doctoral
student in psychology at the University of Portsmouth in England. He is one
of the authors of the study, which was published in Scientific Reports. Taylor said, “It seems that
some forms of communication are much more widely shared amongst mammalian
species than we previously thought.” Sun bears have a black coat
and a white or golden color on their mid-section. They live in trees and eat
both plants and animals. They can grow to be up to 1.4 meters in height and
65 kilograms in weight. Although they live alone in
the wild, the bears in the study often played gently with each other.
Sometimes they even played with faster actions and behaviors, such as hitting
and biting. It remains uncertain what
messages the bears were sending to one another. But the facial copying might
be a signal that they are ready to move from gentle to rougher play, Taylor
suggested. Adapted from: https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/making-faces-is-fun-for-sun-bears/4846923.html |