Security is the condition of feeling protected against danger. A lack of security causes stress, which can negatively impact your parrots’ health. Stress often leads to their picking feather (羽毛), screaming and biting.
Since parrots are flock animals, they are born to live as part of a group. It is the most important for their security. Parrots left in isolation (孤独) without the benefit of direct contact and interaction do not develop a sense of security. They need to interact with their household flock to become comfortable and develop a sense of belonging.
The decision on where to place your bird’s cage is a critical one. Placing at least one side of the cage against a wall may help your bird feel sheltered from predators (捕食性动物). Placement opposite the entry to the room allows your bird to observe who is approaching and what is going on. Also, avoid placement in a room with a ceiling fan or directly in front of a window so they can relax and stop worrying about flying predators. Making use of cage covers or tents surrounded by lots of toys can also provide a parrot with hideaway and feel more secure when they want to sleep.
Parrots are less stressed when there are household routines that provide them with the opportunity for regular sleep hours, regular feeding and watering times and special one on one time. Since they have no means to do it for themselves, caged parrots are entirely dependent on us to provide them with clean water and a nutritious diet. They need to know they can rely on this. Daily interactions also reinforce your parrot’s sense of security. For example, greetings in the morning, goodbyes when leaving for the office, game playing when coming home, silly songs during activities such as feeding or bathing all help to reassure your bird.
The earlier in life you start to expose your bird to changes of a non-threatening nature, the less likely they will be threatened by things commonly encountered (遇到) in life such as household moves, family additions, time away from their flock (vacations, business trips). Variations in diet and toys, travel, and exposure to new people and places all help to make your bird more flexible and adaptable to change.
1. What will parrots show when under stress?| A．Undesirable behaviors. | B．Joyful reactions. |
| C．Direct contact. | D．Lost memories. |
| A．Having a safe cage. | B．Living within a flock. |
| C．Being left in isolation. | D．Interacting with owners. |
| A．Strategy. | B．Adventure. | C．Fitness. | D．Shelter. |
| A．Might is right. | B．Change is good. |
| C．Practice makes perfect. | D．Nature creates ability. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Pachyrhynchus weevils (球背象鼻虫) are found on most islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean. These weevils could not fly. But why are they so widespread? Wen-San Huang of the National Museum of Natural Science in Taiwan thinks he has the answer.
One theory, which dates back to 1923, is that the beetles float from place to place by a tiny air cavity beneath its outer shell.
Dr Huang began his research into the weevils and discovered that the beetles do float. But he also reports floating in seawater does not do them much good. All 57 adults he tried it with died within two days. Clearly, adult weevils are not good sailors.
Pachyrhynchus weevils have a love for laying their eggs inside the fruit of a plant called the fish-poison tree. This reproduces reminding us of coconut palms. It drops its fruits into the ocean, which carries them away to come up on distant beaches. Coconuts are protected from being eaten on their travels by having a hard, thick shell. Fish-poison-tree fruit are also protected from hungry sea creatures. But in their case, as their name suggests, the protection is chemical.
Given the relationship between weevils and plant, Dr Huang wondered how beetle larvae (幼虫) would fare if they were deep inside a piece of fruit floating in seawater.
So he tested this as well. His experiment suggested that such larvae are 'tolerant of saline (含盐的) conditions.
Specifically, of 18 grubs (蛆) thrown into seawater inside a piece of fruit, two survived for six days. Moreover, these larvae went on to develop into healthy, sexually mature adults. So Dr Huang argues that such numbers would easily support the immigration of weevils to the islands.
He also observes that the Kuroshio Current, which carries water from the Philippines, past Japan and onwards into the Pacific, moves so swiftly that a piece of fruit caught in it could easily travel 90km in a day, enabling the flightless beetle to cover the distance of 400km between the islands effectively.
1. What did Wen-San Huang find in his research?| A．The old theory accounts for weevils. | B．Adult weevils are good at floating. |
| C．Fish-poison-tree fruit protect weevils. | D．The weevils cross the islands in a day. |
| A．Survive. | B．Travel. |
| C．Grow. | D．Float. |
| A．By travelling with sea creatures. |
| B．By wearing shells for protection. |
| C．By laying eggs in coconuts sinking under the sea. |
| D．By staying in the floating fish-poison-tree fruits. |
| A．To introduce the research result. |
| B．To compare the coconut palms and weevils. |
| C．To tell how weevils immigrate to the islands. |
| D．To praise Wen San Huang for his research. |
【推荐2】Camouflage(伪装) is a type of coloration or pattern that helps an animal blend in with its surroundings. Camouflage is often used by prey as a way to disguise themselves from predators. It is also used by predators to conceal themselves as they follow their prey.
Concealing coloration allows an animal to blend into its environment hiding it from predators. Some animals have fixed camouflage, such as polar bears, whose white coloration helps them blend in with the Arctic snow. Other animals can change their camouflage at will based on where they are. For example, some marine creatures can alter their coloration to blend in with surrounding sand and rock formations. Some other animals have a type of seasonal camouflage. This includes the snowshoe hare, whose fur turns white in winter but brown during summer.
Disruptive coloration includes spots, stripes, and other patterns that breakup the outline of an animal’s shape and sometimes conceal particular body parts. The stripes of a zebra’s coat, for example, create a disruptive pattern to flies, whose compound eyes have trouble processing the pattern. Some animals have a particular type of camouflage called a disruptive eye mask. This is a band of color found on the bodies of birds, fish, and other creatures whose eye is usually easy to spot because of its distinctive shape. The mask makes the eye nearly invisible to avoid being seen by predators.
Disguise is a type of camouflage where an animal takes on the appearance of something else in its environment. Some insects, for example, disguise themselves as leaves by changing their shading. Other creatures also disguise themselves, like the walking stick or stick-bug, which resembles a slim branch.
Mimicry is away for animals to make themselves look like related animals that are more dangerous or otherwise less appealing to predators. This type of camouflage is seen in snakes, butterflies, and moths. For example, the scarlet kingsnake, a type of harmless snake found in the eastern United States, has evolved to look like the coral snake, which is highly poisonous. In this case, the animals’ deceptive coloration helps ward off other creatures that might be looking for a meal.
1. What’s the relationship between prey and predators?| A．They are competitors for food. | B．Prey is the food source for predators. |
| C．They rely on each other to find food. | D．Prey is the natural enemy of predators. |
| A．Concealing coloration. | B．Disruptive coloration. |
| C．Disguise. | D．Mimicry. |
| A．Fading. | B．Annoying. | C．Confusing. | D．Surprising. |
| A．Hiding by looking less attractive in the environment. |
| B．Changing colors according to the living environment. |
| C．Forming certain appearances to fit into the environment. |
| D．Evolving into a permanent color or shape to avoid danger. |
【推荐3】Technology usually distracts us from nature. But now technology is “offering us an opportunity to listen to nonhumans in powerful ways, reviving our connection to the natural world,” wrote professor Karen Bakker in her new book, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants.
All around the animal kingdom, there are sounds that we struggle to pick up and decipher. Elephants, for example, communicate with each other using infrasound, a sound frequency far below our human hearing range. Coral in the ocean also communicates with each other through sound waves, with one purpose being to attract baby coral to areas where it can successfully grow.
This is a shocking fact as coral doesn’t have any ears! Scientists have placed listening devices in these environments to pick up sounds humans are normally unable to detect.
After the sounds are recorded, AI is then able to determine their meaning, according to the news website Vox. There are now whole databases of whale songs and honeybee dances. Bakker wrote that one day this information could be turned into “a zoological version of Google Translate”.
One animal language Bakker wrote about is that of the elephant. She explained how elephants “have a different signal for honeybee, which is a threat, and a different signal for human,” in an interview with Vox. “Moreover, they distinguish between threatening humans and non-threatening humans,” she said.
This technology can not only understand the animals, but also communicate back to them. For example, bees use dances to communicate to their peers where to go in search of nectar. A research team in Germany, therefore, fed the bee language AI database system into a robot bee, allowing the robot to create a dance routine that can tell the bees which direction to move, Vox reported. Whereas in the past language creation had been limited to mainly apes, with there being many examples of chimpanzees (黑猩猩) having been taught sign language to communicate with humans, this new technology now allows humans to socialize with different animals throughout the animal kingdom.
1. What does the underlined word “decipher” most probably mean in paragraph 2?| A．Understand. | B．Hear. | C．Produce. | D．Record. |
| A．Infrasound. | B．Sounds within human range of hearing. |
| C．Sounds through its ears. | D．Sound waves. |
| A．Bees used dances to warn their peers of danger. |
| B．Human fed listening devices into coral to detect it. |
| C．Elephants have different signals for different purposes. |
| D．Elephants can tell whether there are threatening animals around. |
| A．To collect more bee dances. | B．To convey direction to bees. |
| C．To learn the language of bees. | D．To help bees search for their friends. |
【推荐1】Growing up in Georgia, Thanksgiving for me meant driving a couple hours south to my mom’s house in Augusta on Wednesday night and staying up late playing. First thing the next morning,at around 4 or 5 a.m., my mom would put the bird in the oven and roast it low and slow for eight hours, applying oil to it every 30 minutes and watching it like hawks. For this practice, for years I thought turkey was the absolute hardest thing to cook in the world.
I also thought that turkey was, on principle, meant to be dry. The thing is, roasting a great, juicy turkey isn’t as complicated(复杂的) as people make it out to be. For me, I’ve found that the best method is to just roast it like a chicken. No black magic.
Defrost your turkey (if it’s frozen). Ideally you’d let this happen gradually in a 40°F refrigerator. Bring your turkey to room temperature. A fridge-cold bird will not cook as evenly as a room-temperature bird. Truss(捆绑) your turkey, which will ensure even cooking. Season your turkey in the sink. This is very important. Most people season their turkeys straight in its roasting pan, leading to extra salt at the bottom. Another issue is that if you’re applying melted(融化的) butter and some of that drips off into the pan, the milk fats can burn, and the one thing we don’t want on Thanksgiving Day is for the smoke alarm to go off. Roast your turkey. Many recipes(食谱) call for a high start and a low finish. But I like to roast my turkey from start to finish at a moderate 350°F. Rest your turkey. Do not carve the bird until it’s rested for at least 30 minutes. Don’t worry, it’ll still be hot—better yet, the juices will have spread all over and you’ll be looking at the tenderest, juiciest turkey of your life.
1. How does the author introduce the topic?| A．By raising a question. | B．By giving an example. |
| C．By making some comments. | D．By explaining a phenomenon. |
| A．Make use of. | B．Sort out. |
| C．Separate something from. | D．Add something to. |
| A．The milk fats on the pan catch fire. |
| B．The butter applied to the turkey melts. |
| C．The temperature of roasting the turkey is high. |
| D．Some extra salt is left at the bottom of the pan. |
| A．A simplest way to cook your turkey. | B．A celebration for Thanksgiving Day. |
| C．Roasting turkey is a traditional custom. | D．The turkey symbolizes Thanksgiving Day. |
【推荐2】A team in Europe are working with wood, but not in the usual ways. They are not carpenters (木匠). Instead, they are scientists exploring how wood can lead to a greener electronic device, a transistor (晶体管) made from balsa wood, whose production releases less climate-warming gas into the air.
Transistors play an important role in computers and other devices. They act like tiny switches to control the flow of electricity. Engineers use them to process and store data. Today’s laptops may host billions of them. So they must be tiny — only a little wider than a strand of DNA.
The new transistor being built by physicist Isak Engquist and his team at Sweden’s Linkoping University isn’t as small as those. Big enough to see and hold, it can stand only an electric pressure that pushes electrons along. And it controls a current using charged particles (粒子) called ions.
This new technology shows a “proof of concept” that the idea can work, even if the new device is not yet ready to put into today’s electronics. “While it seems large by today’s standards, such a transistor still might prove useful for electronics that require low electric pressures,” says Engquist.
“The new transistor suggests that future electronic devices might be made in living plants,” Daniel Simon, a physicist in the team, says. “Imagine peeling away some bark from a living tree,” he says, “and stamping electronic circuits into the living wood.”
In fact, Engquist says, “There are so many ways we can use wood and the components of wood that we would never have thought of.” For instance, he can now imagine a wood-based sensor that could monitor crop health, measure pollution or survey a forest for fire risk.
1. Which can best describe the transistor?| A．Costly. | B．Widely used. |
| C．Time-saving. | D．More environmentally friendly. |
| A．It is much bigger. | B．It can’t stand electric pressure. |
| C．It can’t be seen. | D．It is made from metal. |
| A．Uncertain. | B．Doubtful. | C．Positive. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Wood’s surprising roles in modern electronic design |
| B．Wood-made transistors: a step toward greener electronics |
| C．Scientists are researching the history of transistors |
| D．Scientists are working as carpenters to invent transistors |
【推荐3】A new UBC Okanagan study finds children not only gain the benefits of working with therapy (治疗) dogs – they enjoy it too.
“While we do frequently see children improve in therapy dog programs, we didn’t have data to support that they enjoyed the time as well,” says Nicole Harris, who conducted this research while a master’s student in the School of Education.
The research saw 22 children from the Okanagan Boys and Girls Club take part in a series of sessions to help them build their social skills. Over six weeks, the children were accompanied by therapy dogs as they completed lessons. Each week the children were taught a new skill, such as introducing themselves or giving directions to others. The children would first practice with their assigned therapy dog before running through the exercise with the rest of the group. In the final phase, the children, accompanied by their new furry friend, would practice their new skills with university students located in the building.
“Therapy dogs are often able to reach children and facilitate their growth in surprising ways. We saw evidence of this in the social skills of children when they were paired with a therapy dog,” says Dr. John-Tyler Binfet, associate professor in the School of Education and director of BARK. “The dogs helped create a non-threatening climate while the children were learning these new skills. By interacting with them, the children’s moods improved and their engagement in their lessons increased.” While the children were learning and practising their new skills, the research team collected data.
At the end of the six weeks, Harris interviewed eight children, aged 5 to 11 years old, who regularly attended the sessions. Each child indicated the social skill-training program with therapy dogs was an enjoyable and positive experience and the dogs were a meaningful and essential part of the program.
As a full-time elementary school teacher, Harris notes that schools have become increasingly important in helping students develop social and emotional skills, and this research could contribute to the development of future school-based or after-school programs.
1. What was Harris’s research meant to explore?| A．When and how children could learn new social skills well. |
| B．Whether working with therapy dogs was pleasant to kids. |
| C．Why therapy dogs benefited kids’ learning of social skills. |
| D．What helped children learn and practice new social skills. |
| A．Promote. | B．Maintain. | C．Influence. | D．Determine. |
| A．The behavior of 22 children aged 5 to 11 was recorded. |
| B．The participants were taught a skill and tested 6 weeks later. |
| C．University students were also involved to help with the study. |
| D．Most participants were interviewed at the end of the research. |
| A．It’s an important part of elementary school education. |
| B．It should be carried out in elementary school separately. |
| C．It can help develop students’ social and emotional skills. |
| D．It serves as reference for developing school programs. |
