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  3. When George Price died in January 1975, his funeral in London was attended by five homeless men: untidy, smelly and cold. Alongs

When George Price died in January 1975, his funeral in London was attended by five homeless men: untidy, smelly and cold. Alongs

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问题     When George Price died in January 1975, his funeral in London was attended by five homeless men: untidy, smelly and cold. Alongside them were Bill Hamilton and John Maynard Smith, both distinguished British evolutionary biologists. All seven men had come to mourn an American scientist who helped to unpick the riddle of why people should ever be kind to one another, who had chosen to give away his clothes, his possessions and his home, and who, when his generosity was exhausted, slashed his own throat with a pair of scissors, aged 52.
    Ever since Charles Darwin had published his theory of evolution in 1859, scientists have pondered whether it can explain the existence of altruism: behavior that decreases an individual’s fitness but which increases the average fitness of the group to which he belongs. Such kindness is not unique to humans but exists also in complex insect societies. Bees, for example, live in colonies headed by a queen and populated by sterile workers. One reading of Darwin’s theory says that, because the workers do not breed, evolution should result in their elimination. Yet this is not what happens in nature.
    In the 1960s, Hamilton proposed that evolution acts on characteristics that favor the survival of close relatives of a certain individual. The bee colonies that survive are those in which sterile workers provide the "fittest" service to their mother. Each worker thus strives to favor the reproductive success of the queen, even at the price of her own reproductive failure.
    Price wanted to describe mathematically how a genetic predisposition to altruism could evolve. He devised a formula, now called the Price equation, that describes how characteristics that can, in some cases, prove disadvantageous, nevertheless persist in the population. By slightly changing the variables, he was able to describe populations in which kindness was widespread, everyone benefited and altruism was passed down the generations, and other, more brutal worlds, where charity was abused and kindness died out.
    Ultimately, Price ended up in such a place. In 1967 he moved to London, where he hooked up with Hamilton and derived the equation for which he is famed. At the same time, his interest in altruism blossomed into something less kin-based and more practical: he began to seek out needy strangers. At one stage, he had four homeless men staying in his flat, while he slept in his office. As he became increasingly unwell, both physically and mentally, he redoubled his efforts to help the poor, moving into a dirty cabin where, one freezing night, he committed suicide. Price ultimately became one of the homeless he had set out to save.
According to Hamilton’s proposal, sterile bees survive because ________.
选项 A、their biological characteristics are similar to the queen’s
B、they do not breed, but provide food for the queen
C、they favor the reproductive process of the queen
D、they are close relatives of a certain individual
答案C
解析 根据题干中的关键词Hamilton和sterile可定位到第三段。题干中问的Hamilton’s proposal对应该段第一句里，proposed后接的宾语从句的内容，第二三句将Hamilton这一看法应用到了蜜蜂的例子中，第三句中的strives to favor the reproductive success of the queen“尽最大努力确保蜂后能顺利地繁殖后代”，指出了工蜂的作用，也对应第一句中Hamilton的理论favor the survival of close relatives of a certain individual “有利于某个特定个体近亲的生存”，C项内容复现第三句的内容，为本题答案。工蜂和蜂后生理特点的相似性在文中没有提到，A项可排除。工蜂向蜂后提供的是the “fittest” service，而不仅限于B项所说的food。D项只是复现了第三段第一句的个别词语，缺少了关键词favor the survival…，影响物种进化的特征是“为近亲的生存提供帮助”，而不仅仅是“工蜂是蜂后的近亲”。
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