Question 35 - Paragraph Comprehension Practice Test for the ASVAB

We think of chit­chat and small talk as the things peo­ple say to pass the time or kill an awk­ward si­lence. But new re­search sug­gests these idle con­versa­t­ions could be a so­cial-bonding tool pas­sed down from our ape-like an­ces­tors. Sci­en­tists with Prince­ton Un­ivers­ity stud­ied ring­tailed lemurs, an­i­mals that are con­sid­ered among the more an­ces­tral forms of pri­mates—the ev­o­lu­tion­ary line­age that in­cludes hu­mans, apes and mon­keys. The study con­cludes that lemurs call to each oth­er es­sen­tially as a re­place­ment for mu­tu­al groom­ing, or clean­ing each oth­er’s fur, a wide­spread so­cial-bonding be­hav­ior among non-hu­man pri­ma­tes.