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Mice Prefer Treats They Worked Harder to Get

Maybe your dad said, “The harder you work for something, the more you’ll appreciate it.” Well, father really did know best. Because a new study finds that the harder mice have to work for a treat, the better it tastes. The research appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

你老爸可能说过：“你越努力为某样东西工作，你就越欣赏它。”很好，你父亲确实知道得很多。因为一项新的研究发现，老鼠越努力去得到某种食物，这种食物味道就越好。这项研究刊登在《皇家学会学报》上。

Mice were trained to push levers to get either of two rewards. Press one lever, out comes a drop of sugar water. Press the other and they get a drop of different tasting sugar water.

研究人员训练老鼠去推动控制杆，推动之后能得到两种报酬中的一种——推动第一个控制杆，就会渗出一滴糖水；推动第二个控制杆，它们则能得到另一滴不同味道的糖水。

Then things got interesting. For one of the treats, scientists gradually increased the amount of effort required for the payoff—from one lever-press to five, then 10, then 15. So by the end of the session, one type of sugar water cost 15 times more effort than the other.

然后事情开始变得有趣了。科学家逐渐加大获得其中一种糖水的难度，从刚开始的推动一次控制杆，到后来的推动五次、十次……再到最后要你推动十五次。因此，在实验的最后时间里，获得这种糖水消耗的精力是获得另一种的十五倍。

The mice then retired to their home cage where both treats were freely available. And they showed a strong preference for whichever reward they’d worked harder to obtain. Based on how fast the mice sipped, they appeared to find the costlier sugar water more tasty.

随后这些老鼠回到它们的笼子里，这时两种糖水都是无偿供应的。老鼠们对那种更难获得的糖水表现出强烈的偏爱。根据它们喝水的速度推断，看来老鼠们觉得代价更高的糖水味道更好。

Which makes evolutionary sense. An animal wouldn’t survive if a little hard work left a bitter taste in its mouth.

这结果有着一定的进化意义。假如加倍努力只能换来满嘴的苦涩，那这种动物就不会努力让自己存活下来了。

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