III. Read the text. Match paragraphs 1-4 with headings A-E. There is one extra heading.
A. Knowing their numbers
B. A snack for a correct answer
C. Learning with letters
D. Passing the time
E. Say it with pictures
Animals and touch-screens
11. __________
Esme, Molly, Quinn and Emily have each got a touch-screen tablet. Esme and Quinn push the blue circle on the right of the screen, but nothing happens. So, they move to the left of the screen, put their noses to the other circle, and they get a snack. Molly and Emily don’t get a snack because they don’t push the correct button. The tablets are part of an experiment at the University of Vienna. But Esme, Molly, Quinn and Emily aren’t humans: they’re tortoises.
12. __________
Of course, the tortoises in Austria aren’t the first animals to use this technology. More than thirty years ago, a male bonobo monkey called Kanzi learned how to use a large touch-screen to communicate with a human. Kanzi lives with other bonobos at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. He ‘talks’ to his trainer, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, using a screen with 400 lexigrams – simple images that represent words.
13. __________
Scientist Jennifer Vonk also uses touch-screens with the animals she studies. A few years ago, she did an experiment with three young black bears: Brutus, Dusty and Bella. At the time, people thought that only animals who lived in groups could count. Vonk experimented with bears because they usually live alone. Using extra strong touch-screen tablets, she found that the bears could count just like animals in groups – the group isn’t important in learning how to count.
14. __________
But animals don’t only use touch-screens in experiments. The penguins at a zoo near Los Angeles have a tablet that they use for entertainment. Two young male penguins, Jeremy and Newsome, particularly like an app called Game for Cats. In the game they have to ‘catch’ a mouse on the screen. The game exercises their minds and helps to make their lives in the zoo more interesting.