What happened when we kiss?

导读

轻吻、舌吻、法式湿吻,接吻有多少种别称,就有多少种方式,不论是出于礼貌的问候还是浓情蜜意的表达,接吻似乎一直是种人类固有的难以解释的行为。这篇文章从科学的角度论述了人们为什么会接吻。你可能怎么也想不到,人类的接吻居然源于雌性灵长类动物在哺育幼崽时把咀嚼过的食物喂给它们没长牙的宝宝们的这一本能行为。也许,我们人类对吻的痴迷就是因为婴儿时期对母亲的眷恋。不管怎样,与爱人接吻是一件非常美妙的事情,我们的双唇是全身皮肤最薄的地方,当双唇相触时,我们的身体也产生了奇妙的变化,它不但让我们觉得开心,还会放松我们紧张的情绪,减少压力。请相信,一吻定情,不是一时冲动而生我们寻找理想伴侣最直接,最科学的方法。今天你吻了吗?

更多剧透

第一步:解决高频单词

Peck [pek]

vi. 啄食;轻吻

stem from 

起源于

pucker up 

使…缩拢;

primate ['praɪmeɪt; -mət]

n. 大主教;灵长类的动物;首领

immune [i'mju:n]

adj. 免疫的;免于……的

peer [pɪə]

同龄人

perceive [pə'si:v]

vt. 察觉,感觉;

unleash [,ʌn'li:ʃ]

vt. 发动;解开…的皮带;

robust [rəu'bʌst, 'rəubʌst]

adj. 强健的;健康的;粗野的;粗鲁的

attachment [ə'tætʃmənt]

n. 附件;依恋;连接物;

60p

第二步:精读重点段落

(Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦)

第2段
Philematologists, the scientists who study kissing, aren’t exactly sure why humans started locking lips in the first place. The most likely theory is that it stems from primate mothers passing along chewed food to their toothless babies. The lip-to-lip contact may have been passed on through evolution, not only as a necessary means of survival, but also as a general way to promote social bonding and as an expression of love.

  • Philematologist 吻学家
  • primate  n. 大主教;灵长类的动物;首领
  • Evolution  n. 演变;进化论;进展

第5段
The first study to indicate that chemical signals play a role in attraction was conducted by Claud Wedekind over a decade ago. Women sniffed the worn t-shirts of men and indicated which shirts smelled best to them. By comparing the DNA of the women and the men, researchers found that women didn’t just chose their favorite scent randomly. They preferred the scent of man whose major histocompatibility complex (MHC)—a series of genes involved in our immune system—was different from their own. Having a different MHC means less immune overlap and a better chance of healthy, robust offspring. Kissing may be a subtle way for women to assess the immune compatibility of a mate, before she invests too much time and energy in him. Perhaps a bad first kiss means more than first date jitters—it could also mean a real lack of chemistry.

  • immune  n. 免疫者;免除者 adj. 免疫的;免于……的,免除的
  • robust  adj. 强健的;健康的;粗野的;粗鲁的
  • compatibility  n. [计] 兼容性
  • offspring  n. 后代,子孙;产物
  • jitters  n. 神经过敏;激动
  • major histocompatibility complex[免疫] 主要组织相容性复合体

第10段
Kissing, therefore, plays a role not only in mate selection, but also in bonding. At an Association for the Advancement of Science meeting on the science of kissing, Helen Fischer, an evolutionary biologist, posits multiple reasons for lip locking. She believes that kissing is involved in the three main types of attraction humans have: sex drive, which is ruled by testosterone; romantic love, which is ruled by dopamine and other feel-good hormones; and attachment, which involves bonding chemicals like oxytocin. Kissing, she postulates, evolved to help on all three fronts. Saliva, swapped during romantic kisses, has testosterone in it; feel-good chemicals are distributed when we kiss that help fuel romance; and kissing also helps unleash chemicals that promote bonding, which provides for long term attachment, necessary for raising offspring.

  • posit  vt. 安置;假定
  • dopamine  n. [生化] 多巴胺
  • postulate  vt. 假定;要求;视…为理所当然
85p

第三步:攻克必学语法

并列连词短语:not only….but also 不但……而且……”的使用

  1. Kissing, therefore, plays a role not only in mate selection, but also in bonding.
  2. The lip-to-lip contact may have been passed on through evolution, not only as a necessary means of survival, but also as a general way to promote social bonding and as an expression of love.

学了这么久的英语大家简单句已经用的很好啦吧。想给自己的语言升级,把句子写长的第一步就是并列句啦。嫌弃and;but;or 太LOW那就试试并列连词短语吧。

not only….but also用法:

1. 主要用于连接两个对等的成分;若连接两个成分作主语,其后谓语动词与靠近的主语保持一致(就近一致原则)。

Not only the students but also their teacher is enjoying the film.

2. not only…but also…中的also通常可以省略,或换成too, as well(要置于句末)。

He not only washed the car, but polished it too [as well].

3. 为了强调,可将not only置于句首,此时其后的句子通常要用部分倒装的形式。

Not only do they need clothing, but they are also short of water.

100p

加分任务:精读全文

在之前的三步后,你已经完全具备了精读全文的能力。再多花半个小时,让你的学习效果达到120%!

查看/展开全文


下载音频

(Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦)

What happened when we kiss

第一段
Pecking, smooching, Frenching, and playing tonsil-hockey—there are as many names for kissing as there are ways to do it. Whether we use it as an informal greeting or an intensely romantic gesture, kissing is one of those ingrained human behaviors that seems to defy explanation. Its many purposes—a blow and peck for good luck on dice, lips to ground after a rocky boat ride, kisses in the air to an acquaintance, and the long slow smooches of Hollywood—have different meanings yet are similar in nature. So why is it that we love to pucker up?

  • ingrained 根深蒂固的

A Kiss Isn’t Just a Kiss

第二段
Philematologists , the scientists who study kissing, aren’t exactly sure why humans started locking lips in the first place. The most likely theory is that it stems from primate mothers passing along chewed food to their toothless babies. The lip-to-lip contact may have been passed on through evolution, not only as a necessary means of survival, but also as a general way to promote social bonding and as an expression of love.

  • Philematologists 吻学家

第三段
But something’s obviously happened to kissing since the time of the chewed-food pass. Now, it’s believed that kissing helps transfer critical information, rather than just meat bits. The kissing we associate with romantic courtship may help us to choose a good mate, send chemical signals, and foster long-term relationships. All of this is important in evolution’s ultimate goal—successful procreation.

第四段
Kissing allows us to get close enough to a mate to assess essential characteristics about them, none of which we’re consciously processing. Part of this information exchange is most likely facilitated by pheromones, chemical signals that are passed between animals to help send messages. We know that animals use pheromones to alert their peers of things like mating, food sources, and danger, and researchers hypothesize that pheromones can play a role in human behavior as well. Although the vomeronasal organs, which are responsible for pheromone detection and brain function in animals, are thought to be vestigial and inactive in humans, research indicates we do communicate with chemicals.

  • characteristics 特征
  • hypothesize 假设
  • vomeronasal 犁鼻器
  • vestigial 退化的

第五段
The first study to indicate that chemical signals play a role in attraction was conducted by Claud Wedekind over a decade ago. Women sniffed the worn t-shirts of men and indicated which shirts smelled best to them. By comparing the DNA of the women and the men, researchers found that women didn’t just chose their favorite scent randomly. They preferred the scent of man whose major histocompatibility complex (MHC)—a series of genes involved in our immune system—was different from their own. Having a different MHC means less immune overlap and a better chance of healthy, robust offspring. Kissing may be a subtle way for women to assess the immune compatibility of a mate, before she invests too much time and energy in him. Perhaps a bad first kiss means more than first date jitters—it could also mean a real lack of chemistry.

  • major histocompatibility complex (MHC) 主要组织相容性复合体

Men Sloppy, Women Choosy

第六段
Behavioral research supports this biological reasoning. In 2007, researchers at University of Albany studied 1,041 college student and found significant differences in how males and females perceived kissing. Although common in courtship, females put more importance on kissing, and most would never have sex without kissing first. Men, on the other hand, would have sex without kissing beforehand; they would also have sex with someone who wasn’t a good kisser. Since females across species are often the choosier ones when it comes to mate selection, these differences in kissing behavior make sense.

第七段
Men are also more likely to initiate French kissing and researchers hypothesize that this is because saliva contains testosterone, which can increase libido. Researchers also think that men might be able to pick up on a woman’s level of estrogen, which is a predictor of fertility.

  • saliva 唾液
  • testosterone 睾丸素
  • libido 性欲
  • estrogen 雌性激素

Crazy for Canoodling

第八段
But kissing isn’t all mating practicality; it also feels good. That’s because kissing unleashes a host of feel-good chemicals, helping to reduce stress and increase social bonding. Researcher Wendy Hill and colleagues at Lafayette College looked at how oxytocin, which is involved in pair bonding and attachment, and cortisol, a stress hormone, changed after people kissed. Using a small sample of college couples that were in long-term relationships, they found cortisol levels decreased after kissing. The longer the couples had been in a relationship, the farther their levels dropped. Cortisol levels also decreased for the control group—couples that just held hands—indicating that social attachment in general can decrease stress levels, not just kissing.

  • oxytocin 催产素
  • cortisol 皮质醇

第九段
Looking at oxytocin levels, the researchers found that they increased only in the males, whereas the researchers thought it would increase in both sexes. They hypothesized that it could be that women need more than a kiss to stimulate attachment and bonding, or that the sterile environment of the research lab wasn’t conducive to creating a feeling of attachment.

  • the sterile environment 无菌环境

第十段
Kissing, therefore, plays a role not only in mate selection, but also in bonding. At an Association for the Advancement of Science meeting on the science of kissing, Helen Fischer, an evolutionary biologist, posits multiple reasons for lip locking. She believes that kissing is involved in the three main types of attraction humans have: sex drive, which is ruled by testosterone; romantic love, which is ruled by dopamine and other feel-good hormones; and attachment, which involves bonding chemicals like oxytocin. Kissing, she postulates, evolved to help on all three fronts. Saliva, swapped during romantic kisses, has testosterone in it; feel-good chemicals are distributed when we kiss that help fuel romance; and kissing also helps unleash chemicals that promote bonding, which provides for long term attachment, necessary for raising offspring.

  • postulates 假定

Sniff, Snuggle, and Turn Right

第十一段
Yet, not all cultures or mammals kiss. Some mammals have close contact with each others’ faces via licking, grooming, and sniffing, which may transmit the necessary information. And although chimps may pass food from mother to child, the notoriously promiscuous bonobos are apparently the only primates that truly kiss. And while it’s thought that 90 percent of the human population kisses, there’s still the 10 percent that doesn’t. So it seems that as much as we use kissing to gather genetic and compatibility information, our penchant for kissing also has to do with our cultural beliefs surrounding it.

  • chimps 黑猩猩
  • notoriously 恶名昭彰地
  • bonobos 倭黑猩猩
  • penchant 倾向

第十二段
Whether we live in a place where kissing is reserved for close acquaintances, or somewhere where a casual greeting means a one, two, or three cheeker, one thing does remain highly consistent: the side to which people turn while kissing. It‘s almost always to the right. A 2003 study published in Nature found that twice as many adults turn their heads to the right rather than the left when kissing. This behavioral asymmetry is thought to stem from the same preference for head turning during the final weeks of gestation and during infancy.

第十三段
One of the best things about kissing, however, is that we don‘t have to think about any of this. Just close eyes, pucker up, and let nature takes its course.

200p

Peck [pek]

vi. 啄食;轻吻

stem from 

起源于

pucker up 

使…缩拢;

primate ['praɪmeɪt; -mət]

n. 大主教;灵长类的动物;首领

immune [i'mju:n]

adj. 免疫的;免于……的

peer [pɪə]

同龄人

perceive [pə'si:v]

vt. 察觉,感觉;

unleash [,ʌn'li:ʃ]

vt. 发动;解开…的皮带;

robust [rəu'bʌst, 'rəubʌst]

adj. 强健的;健康的;粗野的;粗鲁的

attachment [ə'tætʃmənt]

n. 附件;依恋;连接物;

不要一时兴起,就要天天在一起

明天见!


下载音频

What happened when we kiss

[1] Pecking, smooching, Frenching, and playing tonsil-hockey—there are as many names for kissing as there are ways to do it. Whether we use it as an informal greeting or an intensely romantic gesture, kissing is one of those ingrained human behaviors that seems to defy explanation. Its many purposes—a blow and peck for good luck on dice, lips to ground after a rocky boat ride, kisses in the air to an acquaintance, and the long slow smooches of Hollywood—have different meanings yet are similar in nature. So why is it that we love to pucker up?

A Kiss Isn’t Just a Kiss

[2] Philematologists, the scientists who study kissing, aren’t exactly sure why humans started locking lips in the first place. The most likely theory is that it stems from primate mothers passing along chewed food to their toothless babies. The lip-to-lip contact may have been passed on through evolution, not only as a necessary means of survival, but also as a general way to promote social bonding and as an expression of love.

[3] But something’s obviously happened to kissing since the time of the chewed-food pass. Now, it’s believed that kissing helps transfer critical information, rather than just meat bits. The kissing we associate with romantic courtship may help us to choose a good mate, send chemical signals, and foster long-term relationships. All of this is important in evolution’s ultimate goal—successful procreation.

[4] Kissing allows us to get close enough to a mate to assess essential characteristics about them, none of which we’re consciously processing. Part of this information exchange is most likely facilitated by pheromones, chemical signals that are passed between animals to help send messages. We know that animals use pheromones to alert their peers of things like mating, food sources, and danger, and researchers hypothesize that pheromones can play a role in human behavior as well. Although the vomeronasal organs, which are responsible for pheromone detection and brain function in animals, are thought to be vestigial and inactive in humans, research indicates we do communicate with chemicals.

[5] The first study to indicate that chemical signals play a role in attraction was conducted by Claud Wedekind over a decade ago. Women sniffed the worn t-shirts of men and indicated which shirts smelled best to them. By comparing the DNA of the women and the men, researchers found that women didn’t just chose their favorite scent randomly. They preferred the scent of man whose major histocompatibility complex (MHC)—a series of genes involved in our immune system—was different from their own. Having a different MHC means less immune overlap and a better chance of healthy, robust offspring. Kissing may be a subtle way for women to assess the immune compatibility of a mate, before she invests too much time and energy in him. Perhaps a bad first kiss means more than first date jitters—it could also mean a real lack of chemistry.

Men Sloppy, Women Choosy

[6] Behavioral research supports this biological reasoning. In 2007, researchers at University of Albany studied 1,041 college student and found significant differences in how males and females perceived kissing. Although common in courtship, females put more importance on kissing, and most would never have sex without kissing first. Men, on the other hand, would have sex without kissing beforehand; they would also have sex with someone who wasn’t a good kisser. Since females across species are often the choosier ones when it comes to mate selection, these differences in kissing behavior make sense.

[7] Men are also more likely to initiate French kissing and researchers hypothesize that this is because saliva contains testosterone, which can increase libido. Researchers also think that men might be able to pick up on a woman’s level of estrogen, which is a predictor of fertility.

Crazy for Canoodling

[8] But kissing isn’t all mating practicality; it also feels good. That’s because kissing unleashes a host of feel-good chemicals, helping to reduce stress and increase social bonding. Researcher Wendy Hill and colleagues at Lafayette College looked at how oxytocin, which is involved in pair bonding and attachment, and cortisol, a stress hormone, changed after people kissed. Using a small sample of college couples that were in long-term relationships, they found cortisol levels decreased after kissing. The longer the couples had been in a relationship, the farther their levels dropped. Cortisol levels also decreased for the control group—couples that just held hands—indicating that social attachment in general can decrease stress levels, not just kissing.

[9] Looking at oxytocin levels, the researchers found that they increased only in the males, whereas the researchers thought it would increase in both sexes. They hypothesized that it could be that women need more than a kiss to stimulate attachment and bonding, or that the sterile environment of the research lab wasn’t conducive to creating a feeling of attachment.

[10] Kissing, therefore, plays a role not only in mate selection, but also in bonding. At an Association for the Advancement of Science meeting on the science of kissing, Helen Fischer, an evolutionary biologist, posits multiple reasons for lip locking. She believes that kissing is involved in the three main types of attraction humans have: sex drive, which is ruled by testosterone; romantic love, which is ruled by dopamine and other feel-good hormones; and attachment, which involves bonding chemicals like oxytocin. Kissing, she postulates, evolved to help on all three fronts. Saliva, swapped during romantic kisses, has testosterone in it; feel-good chemicals are distributed when we kiss that help fuel romance; and kissing also helps unleash chemicals that promote bonding, which provides for long term attachment, necessary for raising offspring.

Sniff, Snuggle, and Turn Right

[11] Yet, not all cultures or mammals kiss. Some mammals have close contact with each others’ faces via licking, grooming, and sniffing, which may transmit the necessary information. And although chimps may pass food from mother to child, the notoriously promiscuous bonobos are apparently the only primates that truly kiss. And while it’s thought that 90 percent of the human population kisses, there’s still the 10 percent that doesn’t. So it seems that as much as we use kissing to gather genetic and compatibility information, our penchant for kissing also has to do with our cultural beliefs surrounding it.

[12] Whether we live in a place where kissing is reserved for close acquaintances, or somewhere where a casual greeting means a one, two, or three cheeker, one thing does remain highly consistent: the side to which people turn while kissing. It’s almost always to the right. A 2003 study published in Nature found that twice as many adults turn their heads to the right rather than the left when kissing. This behavioral asymmetry is thought to stem from the same preference for head turning during the final weeks of gestation and during infancy.

[13] One of the best things about kissing, however, is that we don’t have to think about any of this. Just close eyes, pucker up, and let nature takes its course.

下载PDF版