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Marmosets are small primates.
绒猴是很小的灵长类。
Think of a monkey with huge fuzzy ears.
试想一下，猴子长者一对大大的毛绒绒的耳朵。
Primatologists have oftenwondered whether nonhuman males evaluated their potential mates, or whether their sex drivewas more like an on/off switch.
动物学家时常有这样的疑惑：雄性动物选择“另一半”或者控制性欲是否更像是一个开关键。
We may think of animals as just responding to sexual invitations without thinking, but a studyconducted in both the U.S. and Germany shows this isn't necessarily so.
我们也许会认为动物对于性邀请基本是不假思索的，但最近美国和德国有研究称事实并非如此。
Male marmosets havingtheir brains scanned were given sniffs of genital-gland secretions from ovulating females.
雄性绒猴用它们的大脑扫描，闻正在排卵的磁性动物生殖腺的分泌物。
That's a scent that should trigger a mating response in the brain, and it did!
有一种气味会引起大脑里的交配反应，这样它们才会进行交配。
But guess what elsehappened?
但你猜还会发生什么情况？
Many other brain areas lit up as well, such as memory formation, informationintegration–in other words, areas associated with decision-making.
很多其它的大脑叶都会被“激活”，像信息形成，信息整合，也就是说，所有和决策相关的区域。
Researchers are still studying the effect, but apparently a lot more happens in a marmoset brainthan a simple “have sex now” program.
研究人员还在观察其影响，但很显然，绒猴的脑部有很多活动而不是一个简单的“性行为”指定。
The specific areas of brain activity suggest that the malesare evaluating potential mates before agreeing to a sexual union.
特定区域的大脑活动暗示雄性绒猴在性结合之前会评估潜在的交配对象。
This makes special sense for marmosets, because they are monogamous and both partners raise the offspring.
这对于绒猴有特殊的意义，因为它们是单配制，并且共同抚养后代。
Under those circumstances you wouldn't want to enter into a relationship without any thought.
在这种情况下，就不会不假思索地介入这段关系了。
