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题型:阅读理解-阅读单选 难度:0.65 引用次数:77 题号:11829596

Insects rarely worry me. Mosquitoes annoy me, but only because I don’t like the unavoidable itching (痒) that follows. I don’t get spooked by spiders or terrified by white ants. Bedbugs (臭虫), though, are my big exception. I’ve never seen one, but I religiously check for them when I travel. And I’ve woken up from nightmares of them moving across my bed and up my legs.

While they aren’t disease carriers, a large number of bedbugs can eat away at your mental health as well as your pocketbook. Ultrasonic (超声波的) devices marketed to drive bedbugs away don’t have any effect. Bug bombs don’t work. Bedbugs are developing resistance to a common insecticide that once killed them. Even if the chemicals work, they can be dangerous for the humans exposed to them. High heat can be effective, but that’s not always a practical solution.

Some studies have indicated that cold might kill bedbugs after as little as one hour of exposure. But new research published in Journal of Economic Entomology finds that’s not the case. Cold can kill a bedbug, but only after days.

Joelle F. Olson and his colleagues froze bedbugs at various stages of life, fed and unfed, for varying lengths of time. The bad news was that the bugs didn’t die nearly as quickly as other studies had found. “In our study, bedbugs survived lower temperatures, with eggs surviving in short-term exposure to temperatures as low as -25℃,” the researchers write. But the bugs are not freeze-tolerant, the scientists found, and they can be killed—no matter what their stage of life or feeding status is. All it takes is 80 hours in temperatures of -16℃.

The finding confirms a standard practice for museum collections and food products: potentially infested (被寄生的) items are frozen to kill any hidden insect pests. And it provides a completely safe method of control for people, at least for items they can fit into the freezer.

1. What’s the meaning of the underlined word “spooked” ?
A.Frightened.B.Interested.
C.Surprised.D.Impressed.
2. What does the new research find?
A.Bedbug eggs are more tolerant of cold.
B.Low temperature is the key to killing bedbugs.
C.The level of cold bedbugs stand varies with age.
D.Bedbugs survive cold, but not for too many days.
3. In which aspect will Joelle’s finding make its contribution?
A.Improve the efficiency of freezers.
B.Overcome psychological fears of bugs.
C.Help people protect food from insect pests.
D.Find a standard practice for museum collections.

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文章大意:这是一篇说明文。文章主要讲述了每只黑猩猩都有自己独特的个性,不同的黑猩猩对新事物的反应不同。看护者总是在寻找更多的方法来让黑猩猩参与到精神活动中来,比如邀请音乐家为黑猩猩表演,看看它们会有什么反应,有的很感兴趣,有的执着于对钢琴的破坏,有的很反感。看护者很尊重它们,给黑猩猩选择的自由。

【推荐1】One of the greatest challenges in caring for such intelligent animals as chimpanzees(猩猩) is providing them with enriching experiences. Every day, the chimpanzees at Project Chimps receive morning and evening food-based enrichment devices, but caregivers are always looking for more ways to keep the chimps mentally engaged. With 79 chimpanzees, each with their distinctive personality, care staff often find that different chimps react differently to new enrichment.

Last year, we began inviting musicians to perform for chimps to see what they may respond. A violin performance received quite the response. Additional musicians were lined up to visit but the coronavirus has stopped the activities, which we hope to resume in the near future.

This past week, we brought an electric piano for the chimps to investigate. Some chimps, like twins Buttercup and Clarisse, were immediately interested and could not wait to tap out a few notes. Others, like Emma, were more interested in trying to take it apart.

29-year-old Precious has very little tolerance for the piano. She sat off to the side for a few minutes, but eventually she decided enough was enough. She called an end to the enrichment session by throwing a handful of waste at the piano. Receiving her message loud and clear, we removed the piano.

We could never have guessed how 33-year-old Luke would react to it. As with many retired lab chimpanzees, Luke has some anxiety issues. He seems particularly distrustful of anything new, including people, food, and enrichment. But when we presented the chimps with the piano, Luke was the first to investigate. We could not believe our eyes—this usually anxious chimpanzee bravely chose to explore something new!

To us at Project Chimps, this is what it is all about: giving chimpanzees the freedom to choose. We are honored to be part of their journey.

1. Why do chimpanzees respond differently to new enrichment?
A.They are of different skins.B.They have natural curiosities.
C.They have their unique characters.D.They are as intelligent as monkeys.
2. Who had the least interest in the piano?
A.Buttercup.B.Emma and Clarisse.
C.Luke.D.Precious.
3. What does the underlined word “resume” in paragraph 2 mean?
A.Postpone.B.Continue.
C.Control.D.Dispose.
4. What can we know from paragraph 5?
A.Luke has cured his anxiety problems.
B.Luke was the first to get involved in the investigation of the piano.
C.Luke lost interest in all the instruments.
D.Luke was too old to learn anything new.
2022-02-24更新 | 51次组卷
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【推荐2】Human beings are not alone in having invented vaccination, while honeybees got there first and they can run what look like vaccination programmes, which has been confirmed by Gyan Harwood of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Queen bees vaccinate their eggs before they are laid. But the question is how the queen receives her antigen supply, for she lives purely on royal jelly, a substance secreted by nurse bees when they are in the life stage of feeding the young. Dr Harwood wondered if the nurses combined the royal jelly they produced with pieces from pathogens they had consumed while eating something brought in from outside.

To test this idea, they collected about 150 nurse bees and divided them among six queenless mini hives equipped with the young to look after. They fed the nurses on sugar-water, and for three of the hives they added Paenibacillus larvae, a bacterium causing a disease, to sugar-water.

Dr Harwood and Dr Salmela labeled the bacteria with a certain dye, to make them easy to track. And, sure enough, microscope confirmed that Paenibacillus larvae were getting into royal jelly secreted by those bees which had been fed with the sugar-water. Moreover, examination of this royal jelly revealed higher levels of defensive substance, compared with royal jelly from bees that had not been mixed with Paenibacillus larvae. This substance is thought to help bee immune systems fight against bacterial infections.

All told, these findings suggest that nurse bees are indeed, via their royal jelly, passing antigens on to the queen, then into eggs. They also mean, because the young receive royal jelly for the first few days after they hatch, the nurses are giving the young the second antigens. Each young bee is therefore being vaccinated twice.

1. What puzzled Dr Harwood from paragraph 2?
A.What the royal jelly consists of.
B.Where nurse bees receive pathogens.
C.How the antigen come into the queen bees' bodies.
D.Whether honeybees run vaccination earlier than man.
2. How did Dr Harwood develop his experiment?
A.By dividing bees into different roles.
B.By keeping track of the special bacterium.
C.By changing the components of royal jelly.
D.By observing nurse bees' different behaviors.
3. What can we infer according to the results of the experiment?
A.Nurse bees are the key to vaccination for bee group.
B.The nurse bees pass the antigen only to the queen.
C.Bacteria-used royal jelly has fewer defense substances.
D.Two vaccinations are given to young bees by caregivers directly.
4. Where is the text probably taken from?
A.A pet guide.B.A social website.
C.An official document.D.A medical magazine.
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【推荐3】Do Wild Animals Get PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)?

Every few years, snowshoe hare numbers in northwestern Canada climb to a peak. As hare populations increase, so do those of their predators. Then the hare population falls suddenly and predators start to die off. The cycle is a famous phenomenon among ecologists.

    1     Hare numbers decrease not just because predators eat too many of them. There's another factor: The long-term stress of living while being surrounded by killers. The trauma(创伤)of living through repeated predator chases triggers lasting changes in brain chemistry. Those changes keep the hares from reproducing at normal levels, even after their predators have died off.

And it's not just snowshoe hares, as ecologists Liana Zanette and Michael Clinchy have shown. Zanette and Clinchy, both at the university of Western Ontario,   study the ecology of fear. It combines the psychology of trauma with the behavioral ecology of fear in wild animals.     2       The off-springs of frightened song sparrows like those of stressed snowshoe hare, are less likely to survive to adulthood and succeed in reproducing.

These findings add to a growing body of evidence which shows that fearful experiences can have long-lasting effects on wildlife. The work is also part of wider debate over whether PTSD is unique to humans.

Studies of the ecology of fear started in the 1990s. Before then, scientists believed that the impact of a predator on an individual animal was either deadly or fleeting.

    3     But   research   shows   that   fear   can   change   the   long-term behaviour and psychology of wild animals.

The reasons to fear are clear. Recent studies have found that up to 25% of harbor porpoises in the southern North Sea have claw and bite marks from gray seals. Almost 100% of manta rays in some African waters bear multiple bite wounds from sharks.

    4    

Some of the most dramatic impacts of trauma have been observed in African elephants. Their populations have declined sharply due to poaching and habitat loss. Today, many surviving elephants have witnessed the cruel killing of their mothers and aunts. This has resulted in orphaned elephants running amok as they grow into adolescence.

A.This fear is beneficial, because it keeps you alive to bred another day.
B.In recent years, however, researchers have come to an unusual conclusion.
C.These survivors may carry memories of terror along with their physical scars.
D.If a zebra escaped the claws of a lion, it would move on and live its life as before.
E.The same pattern has been shown in wild mice and in fish living with high levels of predator threat.
F.They've found that fear of predators can cause other wild animals to bear and raise fewer young, too.
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