Imagine that an alien species landed on Earth and, through their mere presence, those aliens caused our art to vanish, our music to homogenize, and our technological know-how to disappear. That is effectively what humans have been doing to our closest relatives—chimps (大猩猩).

        Back in 1999, a team of scientists led by Andrew Whiten showed that chimps from different parts of Africa behave very differently from one another. Some groups would get each other’s attention by rapping branches with their knuckles (指关节), while others did it by loudly ripping leaves with their teeth. The team identified 39 of these traditions that are practiced by some communities but not others—a pattern that, at the time, hadn’t been seen in any animal except humans. It was evidence, the team said, that chimps have their own cultures.

        It took a long time to convince skeptics that such cultures exist, but now we have plenty of examples of animals learning local traditions from one another.

        But just when many scientists have come to accept the existence of animal cultures, many of those cultures might vanish. Ammie Kalan and her colleagues have shown, through years of intensive fieldwork, that the very presence of humans has eroded the diversity of chimp behavior. Where we flourish, their cultures wither. It is a bitterly ironic thing to learn on the 20th anniversary of Whiten’s classic study.

        “It’s amazing to think that just 60 years ago, we knew next to nothing of the behavior of our sister species in the wild,” Whiten says. “But now, just as we are truly getting to know our primate (灵长类) cousins, the actions of humans are closing the window on all we have discovered.”

        “Sometimes in the rush to conserve the species, I think we forget about the individuals,” says Cat Hobaiter, a professor at the University of St. Andrews. “Each population, each community, even each generation of chimps is unique. An event might only have a small impact on the total population of chimps, but it may wipe out an entire community—an entire culture. No matter what we do to restore habitat or support population growth, we may never be able to restore that culture.”

        No one knows whether the destruction of chimp culture is getting worse. Few places have tracked chimp behavior over long periods, and those that have are also more likely to have protected their animals from human influence.

        Obviously conservationists need to think about saving species in a completely new way—by preserving animal traditions as well as bodies and genes. “Instead of focusing only on the conservation of genetically based entities like species, we now need to also consider culturally based entities,” says Andrew Whiten.

解析：C。根据题干中的Cat Hobaiter和chimp conservation可定位到第六段前两句。定位句提到了凯特·霍贝特对保护物种的看法：在急于保护物种的过程中，我认为我们忘了个体的重要性。每一个种群、每一个群落、每一代猩猩都独一无二。也就是说，凯特·霍贝特认为应该重视个体的重要性，研究每一个种群、每一个群落、每一代猩猩。C项与此内容相符，其中unique和each generation of chimps在第六段第二句中复现，故为正确答案。

错项排除：A项利用第五段第一句中的sisters species和in the wild设置干扰，但这里只是说60年前我们还对自己生活在野外的近亲物种几乎一无所知，并不是说我们应该理解猩猩在野外的行为，而且这是怀顿的观点，不是霍贝特的观点，故A项排除。B项利用第六段第二句中的each community设置干扰，但该句只是在强调个体的独特性，没有说我们应该保护每一个猩猩种群，故B项错误。D项利用第六段最后一句中的restore habitat和support population growth设置干扰，但该句是说就算付出再大努力，保护猩猩文化可能也为时已晚，并非霍贝特倡议的保护猩猩的方法，故D项错误。