TEXTO:
Dogged determination
Sometimes scientists seem to be telling us what
we already know. Thus a recent study at Britain’s
University of Portsmouth determined that if you told a
dog not to take a piece of meat, then turned out the light
[5] so he thought you couldn’t see him, he’d likely steal the
food anyway.(I once lost half a Thanksgiving turkey like
that, but it was no experiment.) What the rigorous testing
done with scores of dogs of different breeds at
Portsmouth has proved scientifically is that our canine
[10] friends really do pay attention to what they’re doing — a
level of cognition that puts them in a category of
intelligence that can begin to be compared with primates.
“Dogs show some specialized skills in how they read
human communications, says Juliane Kaminski, one of
[15] the authors of the Portsmouth study. “This seems to be
a direct result of selection pressures during
domestication.” To put it unscientifically, they’ve been
man’s best friend so long, it’s in their blood. Kaminski
says she doesn’t know of any similar studies done on
[20] felines. But, then, we already know cats don’t really give
a damn what humans think.
DICKEY, Christopher. Dogged determination. In “Big Think: Around the world in six ideas.” Newsweek, Feb. 25, 2013. p. 9.
The word “Thus” (l. 2) expresses
