Humans have always assumed that there is a huge gulf between animal behavior and human development. However, recent research into animals shows that animals are continuously designing innovative methods to finish their tasks. Examining the nature and results of their creativity can help us understand evolution.

Research shows that animals too can be creative. By inventing new behavioral patterns and adapting their behavior to new contexts, as well as to changes in social and ecological environments, researchers show that animal innovation too can be diverse. For instance, chimpanzees (猩猩) use tools such as sharp spines and stalks to remove the hearts of palm vegetables from trees. Herring gulls (鲜鱼海码) found out quite a cruel way of killing rabbits - drowning them in the sea.

Innovative species tend to survive when they enter new places, but behavior cannot be recognized unless “normal” behavior is studied. Researchers can now count and document the innovations that have been created by species, which would help them to quantify their creativity. Studies also show us that all animals are not equally inventive, with primates (灵长目动物) tending to be more innovative due to their bigger brains.

The greatest scientific significance has been the innovation shown by animals such as apes, capuchins and macaques among primates. These species of primates possess the biggest brains in proportion to their body sizes. They are also heavy tool users. Their broad diets and complex forms of learning are also insightful. They indicate an evolutionary strategy that gave them new solutions to life’s challenges.

However, even if these animals show innovativeness, they do not have the ability to improve upon solutions of others. Unless they share information accurately and copy each other’s inventions, their creative inventions are likely to disappear before they can be innovated further. This ability can be managed only by humans, for we are able to build on shared knowledge.

Imagine you are opening your own company and want to hire a manager. You have two applicants and they are both skilled and experienced, so who would you rather hire: Julia Watson or Shobha Bhattacharya? Chances are that you would prefer Watson, right? But why?

“Easy names are regarded as more familiar, less risky and less dangerous,” Eryn Newman, a scientist at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, told Scientific American. As a result, people with easier names are often considered to be more trustworth.

This is what Newman and her teammates have found in their recent study. In the experiment, they picked 218 different foreign names, including difficult-to-pronounce ones like Yevgeni Dherzhinsky and easy names like Bodo Wallmeyer. They then attached each name with a statement such as “turtles are deaf” and “giraffes are the only mammals that cannot jump” and asked volunteers whether they thought the statements were true. The results showed that statements connected to easier names were more often ranked as believable than those belonging to difficult names, regardless of what the truth really was.

In fact, previous studies have already found that our judgments about products can be affected by their names. For example, we tend to think of a food additive with an easier name as safer and a stock (股票) with an easier name as more profitable (赢利的), according to Medical Daily. But researchers pointed out that this effect can change depending on where someone comes from. For example, a native British man may find “Yevgeni Dherzhinsky” hard to pronounce while Russian people can say it without effort.

Newman hopes that this finding can make us better see our bias. It’s not just unfair to people that we make judgments based on feelings rather than facts — it can sometimes have serious results. For example, we may choose to believe certain eyewitnesses in court simply because their names sound more trustworthy even if they are actually lying. Or we may let go of qualified job applicants due to their “difficult” names.

Now, if you could make that decision again, would you still prefer Julia Watson to Shobha Bhattacharya?

A curtain call is a series of bows and applause usually held at the end of a live performance.【小题1】Curtain calls can sometimes become encores (再唱，再演的呼声), where extra material is performed at the request of the audience.

【小题2】Ensemble (合唱团) members, dancers and ensemble actors will bow first, featured roles will follow and the stars of the show will bow last. Usually the curtain call is concluded by a company-wide bow, often including recognition to the band. In traditional staging, after the company-wide bow, the stage curtain will be lowered and raised again if applause continues.

The general rule of taking a bow suggests that shorter is better. 【小题3】 These longer curtain calls may include speeches and individual thank-yous. The director or the producer of the event is often invited onstage to share in the final curtain call, and sometimes presented with gifts from the cast.

Normally, when an actor is performing, he/she will avoid talking directly to the audience and acknowledging their presence. Even when they look off-stage, they do not look directly at the audience. Yet, during the curtain call, actors are free to be themselves. 【小题4】.

Nothing ruins a good show like an excessively long curtain call. If the show consists of six or fewer actors, it’s fine for everyone to take an individual bow. But in performance with medium to large casts, the curtain call includes groups of actors based on the size of their role. The group of actors don’t need to run, but they do need to be quick. 【小题5】 Then they’ll make way for the next group of performers.