【推荐1】What is the number one favourite pet in the UK? If you think the answer is “dog”—you are wrong. There are 8.6 million cats and 8.3 million dogs in Britain according to recent figures. But experts predict(预测) that there will be more dogs than cats next year as dogs become more and more popular.

Dogs as accessories(配饰)

We like to spend time with our pets. The Queen is famous for her corgis(威尔士矮脚狗) and is often photographed with them. Nowadays some dog owners are more extreme-a few TV celebrities even take their dogs shopping or to restaurants. Chihuahuas(吉娃娃犬) are especially popular as “handbag dogs” because they are so small.

Dog holidays

People are also giving their pets holidays. Many UK hotels and holiday parks now welcome dogs as guests. What about owners who go abroad? They can leave their pets at a dog hotel or dog spa while they are away. Some even provide their canine(犬) guests with a TV.

Dogs are for life

The British charity, Dogs Trust, finds homes for thousands of lost and homeless dogs every year. Their famous slogan “A dog is for life and not just for Christmas” was created in the 1970s to teach people about the responsibility of owning a dog. Dogs Trust told British people not to give dogs as gifts or treat them like toys.

Dogs on TV

Victoria Sitwell is the host of the popular TV programme called “It’s me or the dog”. In the show Victoria helps dog owners with their pets’ bad behavior. She tries to find solutions to problems such as a Dalmatian who thinks he owns the house and won’t let the family sit on the sofa, dogs that will only eat ice cream and biscuits and even a bulldog who uses the owner’s bed as a toilet. Yuck!

Fashion for dogs

You can shop online or on the high street for the latest in dog clothes and accessories. Specialist shops sell items such as dog boots, dog fancy dress costumes, dog coats, dog dresses and dog pants.

【推荐2】Rats and other animals need to be highly tuned to social signals from others so that they can identify friends to cooperate with and enemies to avoid. To find out if this extends to non-living beings, Loleh Quinn at the University of California, San Diego, and her colleagues tested whether rats can detect social signals from robotic rats.

They housed eight adult rats with two types of robotic rat — one social and one asocial — for 5 days. The robots rats were quite minimalist, resembling a chunkier version of a computer mouse with wheels — to move around and colorful markings.

During the experiment, the social robot rat followed the living rats around, played with the same toys, and opened caged doors to let trapped rats escape. Meanwhile, the asocial robot simply moved forwards and backwards and side to side.

Next, the researchers trapped the robots in cages and gave the rats the opportunity to release them by pressing a lever.

Across 18 trials each, the living rats were 52 percent more likely on average to set the social robot free than the asocial one. This suggests that the rats perceived the social robot as a genuine social being. They may have bonded more with the social robot because it displayed behaviours like communal exploring and playing. This could lead to the rats better remembering having freed it earlier, and wanting the robot to return the favour when they get trapped, says Quinn.

The readiness of the rats to befriend the social robot was surprising given its minimal design. The robot was the same size as a regular rat but resembled a simple plastic box on wheels. "We'd assumed we'd have to give it a moving head and tail, facial features, and put a scene on it to make it smell like a real rat, but that wasn't necessary," says Janet Wiles at the University of Queensland in Australia, who helped with the research.

The finding shows how sensitive rats are to social cues, even when they come from basic robots. Similarly, children tend to treat robots as if they are fellow beings, even when they display only simple social signals. "We humans seem to be fascinated by robots, and it turns out other animals are too," says Wiles.

【推荐2】Deciduous forests(落叶林) are home to many wild animals. The development and expansion of human presence in the forests has caused many of their native species to become endangered.

Giant Panda

The giant panda, one of the most recognizable endangered species, is a large, docile species of bear native to the deciduous forest of eastern China, Myanmar and Vietnam. Because of its lim-ited diet— the panda’ s main source of food is bamboo— the species is limited in its habitat to areas where bamboo is available. Now the species only can be found today in 20 small patches of forest at the western edge of its historic range.

Gray and Red Wolves

The gray wolf, which once ranged from the East Coast of America to the West, and south to Mexico, now has a population of only 5, 000 in the lower 48 states, mostly in the Rocky Mountains. The smaller red wolf, native to the southeastern United States, was declared extinct in the wild in 1980, though conservation efforts have reintroduced small captive populations to the wild in California.

Red-Crowned Crane

The red-crowned crane is native to Japan, Korea and eastern China. Agricultural expansion and deforestation (森林砍伐) in these areas have removed a great deal of the marshes and forests that are the crane’ s primary habitats. For a time, the crane was thought to have completely disappeared from Japan, but the recent discovery of cranes in Japanese marshlands has restarted conservation efforts. Today,   around 2, 500 cranes live in the wild, including 1,000 in Japan.

European Mink

Native to Europe, the European mink ranges from France in the west to Finland in the north, Russia in the east and the Balkans in the south. Destruction of the mink’ s aquatic (水的) habitat and use of the species for fur have caused dramatic drops in the species’ population, which has been reduced by 85 percent since the mid-19th century.

【推荐3】As human beings retreat (退回) into their homes with the covid-19 expanding across the world, nature seems to be taking back urban areas.

According to The Straits Times, many wild animals have recently skipped onto empty streets in many cities. In Spain, a wild boar (野猪) climbed down the hills and wandered around Barcelona. Sika deer nosed their way around the deserted subway stations of Nara in Japan. It is certainly great news for species because this is the habitat they once had and that humans have taken away from them.

Hundreds of years ago, people lived in harmony with wildlife. They shared natural resources from sunlight to water and from forests to land. But as human beings evolved and formed their own civilizations, they fought with animals for more space and resources. Gradually, human beings came to lose connection with nature. More skyscrapers were built to meet the needs of the flock of people in the cities, which drove away many wild animals from their habitats.

However, the recent lockdown of cities during the pandemic gives a chance of freeing space for other animals and reflecting on humans’ relationship with nature. Stuck indoors, with their worlds reduced to a few square meters, urban people have suddenly become keen bird-watchers. They have realized that the sky is a great arena — anything can fly past and, at the very least, it will give them peace. The message is simple: keep looking up.

Right now the most important phenomenon perhaps is humans’ relationship with nature is changing-with people locked up in their homes realizing how much they miss nature. More importantly, by missing nature, humans may come to respect — and live in harmony with-nature once again.

【推荐3】Imagine a school where self-awareness is celebrated, students are encouraged to solve maths problems by writing on the walls and applying learned lessons to real life is more important than homework. These are a few of the concepts that makes Space of Mind School unique.

Located in a home built in 1896 in Florida, US, the program serves students in grades 2 through 12 and will accept kindergarten students next year. It also offers an after-school program for students who attend traditional schools, as well as evening programs for adults and educators and weekend events for families.

There is a different atmosphere from that of a traditional school building. Tables and brightly colored walls are white boards. In the science room, students are studying climate changes at a weather station, while in the music room, a student is solving an equation (等式) with his academic coach while he connects music theory and maths.

The daily schedule at the school also stands out. “ We don’t assign boring or exhausting homework.” said Space of Mind founder and CEO Ali Kaufman. “ Instead of homework, we ask that they go home and take a video of themselves applying a lesson they learned or cooking a meal for their family that they learned how to make at school.”

For lunch, instead of traditional cafeteria dishes such as pizza, the school offers organic meals made out of products from local gardens and farms. “ Our students also run a business at the Delray Beach Green Market on Saturdays so they can understand sustainable living practices and how to run a business,” Kafman said.

“ We are also the first school program in Florida to start and end each day with 15 minutes of meditation (冥想),” Kaufman said. “ The positive results we have been seeing in the students from meditation are amazing. We are really about infusing social, emotional and creative skills with academic and life skills.”