Whydowecry?Themainreason,sayscientists,isbecausewearehu...

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Why do we cry? The main reason, say scientists, is because we are human.

As far as they can tell, no other creature cries emotional tears the way we humans do, despite a number of reports of an elephant or gorilla not just making sad sounds But actually flowing tears.

Interested by one such report of an Indian elephant crying after being caught, Charles Darwin sent a co-worker to check it out, but he couldn’t confirm it.

If emotional tears are indeed a uniquely human act, there must be an evolutionary advantage to crying, possibly a big one, but what?

Psychologist Robert R. Provine at the US’s university of Maryland carried out some research. In a paper published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, he reported that tears may have evolved to give more charms to facial expressions of emotions, including sadness.

In an experiment, Provine ‘s team asked 80 college students to rate the intensity(强度) of facial expressions of sadness. Half of the pictures showed a person with tears flowing down his or her face, while the other half were the same pictures but with the tears digitally removed. These pictures were shown to the students with “distractor” pictures of people with other facial expressions.

The students overwhelmingly ranked the pictures showing tears as revealing more sadness than the same faces without tears.

The fact that animals probably don’t cry emotional tears and the fact that it takes newborns several months to add tears to their crying support the researchers' belief that emotional crying is a recent evolutionary development.

And in a paper published in Evolutionary Psychology in response to Provine’s work, Israeli evolutionary biologist Oren Hasson at Tel Aviv University said that emotional tears may also act as a call for help and for bonding.

But there’s another reason why emotional tears may have evolved, said William H. Frey, a US biochemist. Humans evolved the ability to shed tears as a means to reduce stress, and evolution favors this because it has survival value. ’，says Frey.

Viewing tears not just as communication signals but also as stress relievers may help explain why people don’t just cry when there’s an audience, but also cry alone when there’s nobody around to receive the communication.

32. Robert R. Provine’s study shows that people cry to •

A. reduce emotional stress

B. get help more easily

C. draw more attention to facial expressions of emotions

D. distinguish human beings from other creatures

33. The underlined word“ it ’，in the last paragraph but one refers to .

A. ability B. stress C. favor D. means

34. According to the article, which of the following is NOT true?

A. Crying can help people feel less stressful.

B. Newborns do not have tears when crying in their first few months.

C. Faces with tears make people think they are sadder than those without tears.

D. People only want to be left alone while they are crying.