There once lived a king who built many lively things. His people loved him. As he grew old, the king thought, “I will build a perfect palace to __________ my whole life. It will be the best one not only in my kingdom (王国), but also in neighboring states.

In a month, the king __________ out a perfect design for his palace. He invited many people, as well as __________ people from neighboring states, to get their ideas about the design.

“Unbelievable! It will be a perfect palace,” all the people said, except for an old man standing in the __________.

The king turned to the old man and asked, “Why are you __________? Don’t you think that my palace will be a perfect one?”

The old man __________ in a calm voice, “Dear king! Your palace will be strong and __________ forever. It will be beautiful— __________ not perfect. It may take tens of thousands of workers a whole life time to build it, working day and night. Your palace will __________ a lot of money, which must come from the people. If your people live worse because of this building, __________ perfect can it be?”

The king thought for a while and thanked the old man for his words. He decided to give up his plan and care more about people’s lives.

A BBC documentary(纪录片) shows animal relationships in a special way, more closely than ever before.

Spy in the Wild (《荒野间谍》) is a documentary. The video team sent 34 robot animals into the ________. They look and move like real animals, but in fact they are spy robots with ________ inside them.

A wild spy dog was sent to the grasslands of Africa. The spy dog first ________ to other wild dogs as a way of saying, “I am friendly.” This allowed him to be accepted ________ by the group.

A spy monkey became ________ with real monkeys after living with them for a month. One day, he ________ from a tree. All the other monkeys thought he died. They were so sad that they surrounded(围绕) his “body”. One ________ hugged the “body” of his robot friend.

However, not all of the newcomers were welcomed. The spy squirrel(松鼠) wasn’t so ________. The real squirrels first stole his food, and then they ________ his camera, too. Animals can be more like humans than you might think. They have ________ of love, friendship and anger, just like we do.

With the help of the spy animals, the documentary lets us explore the wildlife world.

For most freshmen(大一新生), August is the month for military(军事的) training. It serves as a good chance to meet our classmates and get ready for campus(校园) life.

Our school’s training took place from Aug. 23 to 29. One of the challenges was to make a blackboard newspaper for our new classroom. I was nervous. Could I manage to both complete this project and practice for the closing concert?

The project began on Aug. 24. The three other girls in the group all have talents. My group gave up our lunch break to work. One girl in my group asked about my design, saying that we should shorten the text and leave more space for pictures. The arguments between us troubled me from time to time, but I tried to stay cool. I found that she had a lot of good ideas. As time went by, even when I was absent from practice, I wasn’t worried about leaving the project to her.

Finally, it was time for our project to be judged. Our class won the first prize in the competition. But our teacher said that no matter what the results might be, our efforts were praised.

I had never seen a class with such a strong sense of group honor, and at that moment, I realized that I was working with a great group of students.

Over thousands of years, men have taught dogs to do many kinds of work besides guarding the home. For example, sheepdogs are famous for their ability to control hundreds of sheep. But do they know that we are humans? Or do they actually think that we are just strange-looking dogs?

In fact, many kinds of animals do not notice such differences very much at all. For example, the cuckoo (布谷鸟) lays its eggs in the nest (巢) of another bird. These birds will feed the baby cuckoos, even though they look nothing like their real babies. This is because the birds feed in a natural way.

Sheepdogs leave their mothers when they are born. They grow up with sheep, and come to see them as their family. For this reason, they never attack (攻击) the sheep, and help protect them, they probably think the sheep are dogs too, but we can’t be certain.

Similarly, if you keep a dog from birth, the way it sees the world will be different from a dog that grows up with other dogs. It will probably think it is the same kind of animal as you. This can even be true of humans. A Russian boy called Ivan Mishukov, born in 1998, was raised by dogs for two years and came to believe that he was a dog himself.

Have you ever read the book The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants? It talks about how AI is helping us to understand animals.

All around the animal kingdom, there are sounds that we can hardly pick up and decipher (破译). Elephants, for example, talk with each other, but we can’t hear—far below our human sound. Coral in the ocean also sends sound waves (波) to pull baby coral to safer areas to grow. This is surprising as coral doesn’t have any ears! Scientists have placed listening equipment (设备) into these environments to pick up the sounds humans cannot hear.

After the sounds are recorded, AI can study their meanings. For example, researchers used AI to translate bats’ 15, 000 calls. They found that more than 60 percent were arguments about four things: food, sleep positions (姿势), personal space, and unwanted love.

This technology can not only understand the animals but communicate back to them. For example, bees use dances to communicate. A research team in Germany, therefore, put the bee language AI system into a robot bee. They asked the robot to create a dance routine (路线) to tell the bees where the nectar (花蜜) was.

There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to be patient and wise. So he asked them to take turns looking at a pear tree faraway.

The first son went in winter, the second in spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in fall.

After they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen.

The first son said that the tree was ugly and weak.

The second son disagreed: It was covered with green buds (花蕾) and full of hope.

The third son didn’t agree with either of them. He said it was covered in flowers that smelled sweet and looked beautiful.

The last son also had his own opinion. He said the tree was ripe (成熟的) and full of fruits, ready to be picked.

The man then explained to his sons that they were all correct because each of them saw just one season in the tree’s life.

He told them that you cannot judge a tree or a person by only one season. You can see how someone changes and grows as time goes by. If you give up on someone when they are living through the “winter” of their lives, you will miss the promise of their spring, the beauty of their summer, and the greatness of their fall.