Among social animals that care for their young, such as chickens, macaque monkeys, and humans, newborns appear to show an innate attraction to faces and face-like stimuli. Elisabetta Versace and her colleagues used an image of three black dots arranged in the shape of eyes and a nose or mouth to test whether this trait also occurs in Testudo tortoises, which live alone and do not engage in parental care. They found that tortoise hatchlings showed a significant preference for the image, suggesting that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Explanation
Context: Face-attraction in newborns was known in social species (chickens, macaques, humans). Versace tested solitary Testudo tortoises — which don't engage in parental care — and found hatchlings still preferred face-like images. The blank states what this suggests.
Answer: B) researchers should not assume that an innate attraction to face-like stimuli is necessarily an adaptation related to social interaction or parental care.
Why? If even non-social, non-parental-care tortoises show face preference, the trait can't be exclusively linked to sociality or parental bonding. B directly draws this methodological implication.
Traps:
- A) face-like stimuli are perceived as harmless by newborns → about safety perception, not the origin of the attraction
- C) researchers can assume the attraction observed in tortoises is the same as in social species → the opposite; the finding challenges assumptions, not confirms them
- D) tortoise hatchlings show a stronger preference than social species → a comparative strength claim not established