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  3. Man is the only animal that laughs. Why is this true? What makes us respond

Man is the only animal that laughs. Why is this true? What makes us respond

游客2025-04-03  1
问题     Man is the only animal that laughs. Why is this true? What makes us respond as we do to pleasurable experiences? What is the history of this "happy【C1】______" , as someone once termed it, and just what is its function?
    We are not short of theories to explain the mystery; for centuries, biologists, philosophers, psychologists, and medical men have sought a definitive explanation of laughter. One writer【C2】______that its function is to【C3】______others or to prove to be better than them by insulting them. Another took the opposite view: that we laugh in order not to cry. A psychologist offered the explanation that laughter functions as【C4】______for painful experiences, and that it serves to defend a person against what the psychologist termed "the many minor pains to which man is【C5】______". In the 17th century a writer set forth the theory that we laugh when we compare ourselves with others and find ourselves superior;【C6】______, we laugh at the weakness of others.
    Virtually every theory has been concerned with either the structure or the function of laughter, whereas relatively few have been devoted to the question of its【C7】______. I propose to offer a theory which, so far as I am aware, has not previously been set forth; that only those animals capable of【C8】______are capable of laughter; and that therefore man, being the only animal that speaks, is the only animal that laughs.
    Those of us who have observed chimpanzees closely feel quite confident that the chimpanzee occasionally exhibits behavior that looks very much like a primitive human laughter. This behavior, however, has been observed only in a human context;【C9】______it occurs under natural conditions is dubious; but【C10】______that under any conditions an ape is capable of such behavior is of more than passing interest—for does it not indicate that early man had the basics of laughter? [br] 【C3】
选项 A、evaluate
B、stimulate
C、imitate
D、intimidate
答案 D
解析 考查对上下文的理解和形近词辨析。本题空格所在的that从句意思是：“笑的作用是______他人或通过羞辱他人证明自己比他人优秀”。从句中“or”表并列前后表达的意思应该大致相近，因而，一旦“自己比他人优秀”，最有可能的表现就是威胁他人，故D．intimidate(恐吓，威胁)为正确答案。A．evaluate(评价)和B．stimulate(刺激)不合题意，C．imitate(模仿)为干扰项，亦不属于“笑”的作用。故选D。
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