Chimps Would "Cook" Food If They Could

猩猩也许会“烹饪”

A new study suggests that chimps have the cognitive skills necessary for cooking—such as patience—even if they don't control fire. Christopher Intagliata reports

一项新研究指出黑猩猩有足够应付烹饪的认知能力，它们虽然无法控制火，但仍有烹饪所需的耐心。

撰文 克里斯托弗·因塔及利亚塔（Christopher Intagliata）

翻译 M

审校 李轩

If you cozy up to a campfire this summer, ponder what Charles Darwin called, quote, "probably the greatest [discovery] ever made by man"—the control of fire. The anthropologist and primatologist Richard Wrangham has argued that the control of fire—and thus, cooking—has actually shaped our bodies and our brains.

当你在今夏休闲时生起一团篝火，别忘了想想查尔斯·达尔文(Charles Darwin)的那句名言：“控制火可能是人类有史以来最伟大的发现”。人类学家和灵长类动物学家理查德·兰厄姆(Richard Wrangham)认为，正是控制火——进而进行烹饪——的能力塑造了我们的体态和大脑。

But cooking isn't just about controlling fire. 

但是烹饪不仅仅包括控制火。

"When you think about cooking, it actually has a lot of complex components." Yale psychologist Alexandra Rosati. 

“烹饪这个行为实际上是由很多部分组成。” 耶鲁大学的心理学家亚历山德拉·罗西提（Alexandra Rosati）说道。

"So you have to plan for the future, you have to have some self-control by refraining to eat raw food you already have right now, you might want to have some causal reasoning to understand how cooking transforms the food." 

“你必须能够规划，你必须能够控制自己不去吃生的食材，你或许还需要一些因果推理来确认怎么通过烹饪来转化食物。”

She and her colleague Felix Warneken, (VAR-neken) at Harvard, wanted to know if chimps also possess these basic cognitive qualities—even though they do not cook or control fire. So they performed a series of experiments in a chimp sanctuary in the Republic of [the] Congo. They confirmed—as past studies have—that chimps prefer cooked over raw food. But they also found that chimps will patiently refrain from eating raw food right in front of them if they think there's a chance it might get cooked. The chimps will even load raw food into what they thought was a "cooking device"—in reality a container with a false bottom, by which researchers would replace the raw food with cooked.  

罗西提和她在哈佛的同事菲利克斯?沃纳肯（Felix Warneken，VAR-neken）想知道黑猩猩是否也具备这些基本认知能力——尽管它们不懂得烹饪或控制火势。因此她们在黑猩猩的圣堂刚果进行了一系列的实验。与以往的研究相同，她们确认了黑猩猩更喜爱熟食。但她们同时也发现，如果有机会进行烹饪，黑猩猩会耐心地保持克制，不吃生的食物。黑猩猩甚至懂得将食物装入它们认为可以烹饪食物的容器——实际上是一个活底的容器，研究人员会手动将生的食物换成熟食。

And chimps will even transport food across a room to one of those cooking devices, rather than eat it raw. At least sometimes.

黑猩猩甚至会把整个房间的生食物都送进“烹饪装置”，而不是直接吃掉它们。至少是有时会这样。

"They'd often try to carry it with their mouth, because chimpanzees are knuckle walkers, and you'd almost see them accidentally eat the food on their way over, almost like "oops" they couldn't even resist, because they were carrying the food in their mouth." The results are in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: B. [Felix Warneken and Alexandra G. Rosati, Cognitive capacities for cooking in chimpanzees]

“因为黑猩猩行走需要用到前肢，它们通常会尝试使用它们的嘴去搬运食物。你几乎可以想象到它们在路上不小心吃掉食物而露出‘哎呀’表情的样子。它们无法完全避免这一点，因为他们是用嘴搬运。”这项研究结果发表在《皇家学会学报：B册》。 

The researchers say these findings suggest that the common ancestor of chimps and humans may have also had this predisposition to cooking—so when fire was discovered, cooking caught on fast. 

研究人员认为,这些发现表明黑猩猩和人类的共同祖先可能也有这种烹饪的倾向——当发现火焰的时候，立刻就尝试了烹饪。

But for chimps who might have serious culinary aspirations, there’s a catch.  

但对于对烹饪可能有强烈欲望的黑猩猩来说，还有个困难要克服。

"Cooking is sort of this very strange behavior because people do it together. Knowing something about the social behavior of chimps suggests that might actually be a really serious problem for them. So in contrast to humans, who will gather food and bring it back to a central location and cook it together, and share the food, chimps sort of eat on the go and they don't really share food in that kind of way. So this sort of social explanation suggests that could be a really serious constraint on the evolution of cooking." 

“烹饪是一种非常奇怪的行为，因为人们需要一起去做。 通过分析黑猩猩的社会行为可以了解到，烹饪对于它们来说是一个极大的挑战。所以，与采集食物，带到统一地点进行烹饪，并相互分享的人类相比，黑猩猩只会一边走一边吃，并不会像人类那样去分享食物。这种社会学分析可能说明了，黑猩猩的这种行为严重制约了其烹饪技术的进步。”

Something else to chew on as you and your human friends gather round the grill this summer, sharing in the bounty.

这个夏天，你和朋友聚集在烧烤架旁边所享受的，不单单是美食，还有分享的快乐。