When, in the age of automation, man searches for a worker to do the tedious, unpleasant jobs that are impossible to mechanize, he may very profitably consider the ape.
If we tackled the problem of breeding for brains with as much as enthusiasm as we devote to breeding dogs of surrealistic shapes, we could eventually produce assorted models of useful primates, ranging in size from the gorilla down to the baboon, each adapted to a special kind of work. It is not putting too much strain on the imagination to assume that geneticists could produce a super-ape, able to understand some scores of words, and capable of being trained for such jobs as picking fruit, cleaning up the litter in parks, shining shoes, collecting garbage, doing household chores, and even baby-sitting (though I have known some babies I would not care to trust with a valuable ape).
Apes could do many jobs, such as cleaning streets and the more repetitive types of agricultural work, without supervision, though they might need protection from those exceptional specimens of Homo sapiens who think it amusing to tease or bully anything they consider lower on the evolutionary ladder. For other tasks, such as delivering papers and laboring on the docks, our man-ape would have to work under human overseers; and, incidentally, I would love to see the finale of the twenty-first century version of On the Waterfront in which the honest but hairy hero will dram on his chest after——literally—— taking the wicked labor leader apart.
Once a supply of nonhuman workers becomes available, a whole range of low IQ jobs could be thankfully relinquished by mankind, to its great mental and physical advantage. What is more, one of the problems which has plagued so many fictional Utopias would be avoided: There would be none of the degradingly subhuman Epsilons of Huxley's Brave New World to act as a permanent reproach to society, for there is a profound moral difference between breeding sub-men and super-apes, though the end products are much the same. The first would introduce a form. of slavery, the second would be a biological triumph which could benefit both men and animals.
In the author's opinion, the idea that geneticists could produce a super-ape is ______.
A. irrational
B. plausible
C. biologically impossible
D. demonstrably true
Whether a colored object would, on two viewings separated in time, appear to the viewer as
A. the color mechanism of the eye in use at the time of each viewing
B. whether the object was seen in artificial or natural light
C. what kind of viewing had immediately preceded each of the viewings
D. the individual's power of lateral adaptation
According to this passage, a man's jealousy is mainly focused on ______.
A. a concern over their wives' resources
B. the fatherhood of the offspring to whom he is investing
C. their mates' emotional commitment
D. the legitimacy of their marriage
The idea presented in the 2nd paragraph can be best described as ______.
A. realistic
B. materialistic
C. ironical
D. offspring-oriented