When William Erasmus Darvin was born in December 1839, his father Charles Darwin began to carefully record observations of his firstborn in a notebook. Now housed at Cambridge University Library, it reads more like a research paper.
Today we know a good deal about Darwin’s theories. We know far less about how his private life—particularly his family—contributed to his work. But his notebook shows another side of the founding father of evolution: Darwin as a family man.
Darwin’s son William was born a year after the scientist first met London Zoo’s first orangutan(猩猩), Jenny. “The orangutan for Darwin was like a window into the origins of mankind,” says John van Wyhe, director of Darwin Online.
At this time, Darwin was already forming ideas about where humans came from, but he had never met one of our close ape(猿) relatives to test these theories. His meeting with Jenny helped build up his idea that we shared a common ancestor(祖先) with apes. He was already looking for a “real relationship between humans and apes”, says van Wyhe. When he saw Jenny’s facial expressions and noticed her social behavior, he knew his ideas were right.
What stood out to him was how human-like some of her behavior was, which he wrote about in a letter to his sister Susan: “The keeper showed her an apple, but would not give it to her, whereupon she threw herself on her back, kicked and cried, just like a naughty child.”
When his son was born soon after, it meant that he could see first-hand how a human child developed, and consider the relationship between humans and animals. “The notebook shows Darwin as a good-humoured though curious father who is playing with his young baby like he is another ape,” says van Wyhe.
His observations about both his family and Jenny the ape went on to influence his 1871 book. The Descen of Man and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872.
根据短文内容,请用完整句子回答下列问题。【小题1】What did Darwin do after his first child was born?
【小题2】What idea did Darwin hold before meeting Jenny?
【小题3】What did Darwin think of ape, Jenny?
【小题4】What does the text mainly want to tell us?
【小题5】What can you learn from Darwin?