African savanna elephants are the largest species of elephant and the biggest animal on land. They are easily recognized by their very large ears which allow them
African savanna elephants are found in 23 countries and live in a variety of habitats
African savanna elephants always can be seen within the open areas where they live, so they are well studied
2 . As any cat owner will tell you, talking to your cat is totally normal. And even though feline(猫) friends may seem distant to these adoring talks, a new study in Animal Cognition suggests they are really listening.
Researchers in France exposed house cats to recordings of their owner or a stranger saying phrases in cat-or human-directed speech. Like baby talk, cat-directed speech is typically higher pitched with short, repetitive phrases. The team found that felines tended to react to their owner speaking in cat-directed speech—but not to their owner speaking in adult tones or to a stranger using either adult-or cat-directed speech.
Previous research had shown similar findings in dogs, but much less is known when it comes to cats. “Some people still consider cats independent—you cannot have a real relationship with cats,” says lead study author Charlotte Mouzon, a cat behaviorist at the University of Paris Nanterre. Some people might be embarrassed about using special vocalizations for cats, she says, but this research shows “people shouldn’t be ashamed.”
Mouzon and her team recorded 16 cat owners saying such as “Do you want to play?” or “Do you want a treat?” in cat-and human-directed speech. Then they filmed each cat before, during and after playing it a series of recordings of its owner and other owners’ speech. The researchers used software to rate the cats’ reactions from multiple dimensions, making the result more convincing.
“Although cats have a reputation for ignoring their owners, a growing body of research indicates that cats pay close attention to humans,” says Kristyn Vitale, a cat behavior scientist at Unity College in Maine, who was not involved in the study. “Cats can learn that specific speech has certain meanings.” But she notes the study is too small and that future work is needed to expand the research to other cat populations.
1. According to paragraph 2, what do house cats respond obviously to?| A．The owner’s cat-directed tone. | B．A stranger’s human-directed talks. |
| C．A stranger’s cat-directed recordings. | D．The owner’s human-directed speech. |
| A．Strategies. | B．Trainings. | C．Sounds. | D．Rhymes. |
| A．Continuous filming of cats’ responses. | B．Comprehensive analyses backed by software. |
| C．Multi-dimensional evaluations of cats’ habits. | D．Further reference to previous studies on dogs. |
| A．Lack of sample types. | B．Absence of owners’ support. |
| C．Absence of scientific tools. | D．Lack of experts’ involvement. |
1. 简要介绍你所在的校园环保社团；
2. 指出校园塑料大量使用的情况；
3. 发出减少塑料使用的倡议。
注意: 1. 写作词数应为80 左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Dear fellow students,
I am head of the School Environmental Protection Club.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The School Environmental Protection Club
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号(Λ)，并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用(\)划掉。
修改：在错的词下画一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词;
2. 只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。
Being caught in a flood is incredible dangerous. Like many other natural disaster, floods can occur with little and no warning. Flash floods are known to rip trees out the ground, destroy buildings and cause bridges to collapse. However, the flood itself isn’t an only issue to deal with it. The aftermath(后果)can be deadly, so it may not be possible to deliver essential supplies such as water and food to the disaster areas. So what should we do to save us? Avoid passing through bridges that crosses rapidly-moving water, as flash floods can cause bridges to collapse. If trap within a flooding building, move to the highest floor. Only move to the roof if necessary.
5 . Shop Sustainably
If you have to name one thing that contributes most to your ecological footprints, you may say the energy you use at home, or your car’s emissions.
●
●Avoid unnecessary packing. Buy loose fruit and vegetables instead of pre-packaged produce, and avoid products that contain multiple single packages or double packaging, like grain in a box and a bag. Consider switching from tea bags and coffee pods to tea leaves and ground coffee.
●Go organic when you can. In addition to the benefit organic farming has to insect biodiversity, it’s also considered more sustainable and better for the environment.
●Buy seasonal and native products.
| A．Take reusable grocery bags. |
| B．Select single-use plastic bags. |
| C．It supports local farmers and food producers. |
| D．You can also refill your own containers with loose-packed food. |
| E．When buying organic products, look for those officially certified. |
| F．But it’s what we eat that accounts for up to 60% of our personal demand. |
| G．You’ll find it convenient whenever you buy tea or coffee in the supermarket. |
6 . Sulphur-crested cockatoos (葵花凤头鹦鹉) are common in western Australia, where they normally live in wooded areas. But as forests have been cut down, cockatoos have gotten used to living near people. Scientists report that people in Sydney, Australia are in a battle with these birds.
Last year, scientists at the Max Planck Institute reported that the cockatoos had learned how to open the covers of trash bins. That’s not an easy job. The cockatoos must lift the heavy cover with their beaks (喙) and then walk along, pushing the cover up until it falls over.
When scientists first began studying the cockatoos in 2018, only three areas near Sydney had cover-opening cockatoos. A year and a half later, cockatoos in 44 different areas knew the trick. This time the scientists weren’t just studying cockatoos. They were also studying humans.
The scientists spent weeks studying more than 3,200 trash bins in four different areas of Sydney. They wanted to see how many bins were protected and what methods were used.
In one area, over half the bins were protected. The most common way of protecting the bins was to put a brick or some other heavy objects on the cover. Some people put things like rubber snakes on the top of their bins. The scientists discovered that the humans were teaching each other tricks, too. In most neighborhoods, many people used the same cockatoo-stopping methods as their neighbors.
The researchers say it’s like a race between humans and cockatoos to learn new ways of doing things. Now many cockatoos have learned how to push heavy items off the bins. As a result, humans have figured out ways to attach the items to the top of their bins. The scientists describe the situation as a “human-wildlife conflict”. They expect these conflicts will become more common as humans take over more areas that used to be wild.
1. What can we infer about the cockatoos from the text?| A．They like copying humans’ behavior. |
| B．They are newly found in Australia. |
| C．They don’t like living with people. |
| D．They are very clever birds. |
| A．How the cockatoos learned the trick. |
| B．Why the birds in more areas did the trick. |
| C．How humans responded to the birds’ trick. |
| D．Why humans taught the birds to do the trick. |
| A．They wanted their habitat back. |
| B．They intended to make humans angry. |
| C．They could adopt new ways to open bins. |
| D．They disliked looking for food themselves. |
| A．A battle over trash bins between cockatoos and humans |
| B．A human-wildlife conflict all over Australia |
| C．A problem caused by cockatoos to humans |
| D．A big problem of “homeless” cockatoos |
7 . 
NASA will crash a spacecraft into an asteroid (小行星) to try to change its orbit, attempting to prevent humans going the same way as the dinosaurs.
Earth is constantly being disturbed by small pieces of debris (碎片), but they usually burn up or break up long before they hit the ground. Once in a while, however, something large enough to do significant damage makes impact. About 66 million years ago, one such crash is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs. Someday, something similar could end human beings-unless we can find a way to tackle it.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) mission is the first attempt to test if such asteroid redirection is a realistic strategy: investigating whether a spacecraft can autonomously reach a target asteroid and intentionally crash into it, as well as measuring the amount of redirection. “If it works, it would be a big deal, because it would prove that we have the technical capability of protecting ourselves,” said Jay Tate, the director of the National Near Earth Object Information Center.
The 610kg Dart spacecraft is scheduled to be launched at the target—the Didymos system-a harmless pair of asteroids consisting of a 163-metre “moonlet” asteroid called Dimorphos that orbits a larger 780-metre asteroid called Didymos (Greek for “twin”). The plan is to crash the spacecraft into Dimorphos when the asteroid system is at its closest to Earth-about 6.8 million miles away.
About 10 days before the impact, a miniaturized satellite called LiciaCube will separate from the main spacecraft, enabling images of the impact to be relayed back to Earth. Combined with observations from ground-based telescopes, and an onboard camera that will record the final moments before the crash, these recordings will enable scientists to calculate the degree to which the impact has changed Dimorphos’s orbit. The expectation is that it will change the speed of the smaller asteroid by approximately 1% and reduce its orbit around the larger asteroid.
Then, in November 2024, the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft will visit the Didymos system and conduct a further close-up analysis of the consequences of this snooker (斯诺克) game, recording details such as the precise makeup and internal structure of Dimorphos, and the size and shape of the hole left by Dart. Such details are vital for transforming asteroid redirection into a repeatable technique.
Even then, it is impossible that any single redirection strategy would be enough. “The problem is that no two asteroids or comets are alike, and how you redirect one depends on a huge number of variables. There is no silver bullet in this game. What you need is a whole folder of different redirection methods for different types of targets,” said Tate.
So, while this may be one small step towards planetary protection, many more are likely to be necessary to avoid destruction.
1. What is the purpose of Paragraph 2?| A．To examine the impact of dinosaurs’ extinction. |
| B．To explain the necessity of NASA’s Dart mission. |
| C．To show the damage caused by small pieces of debris. |
| D．To highlight the crisis threatening human beings at present. |
A． | B． |
C． | D． |
| A．Sending impact data back to Earth. |
| B．Calculating the length of Dimorphos’s orbit. |
| C．Helping the satellite separate from the spacecraft. |
| D．Recording the scientists’ ground-based observations. |
| A．There is no challenge too big to overcome. |
| B．There is no possibility to satisfy NASA’s needs. |
| C．There is no single solution to the complex problem. |
| D．There is no strategy to help make an obvious decision. |
Lately, I was deeply touched with two movies about faithful dogs：A Dog's Purpose and A Dog's Way Home. A dog's life cycled and cycled only to meet his first owner while the other covered 400 miles of toil and hunger all the way back to her home. I had a faithful dog too when I was a little girl, but it was a different story.
When my dad first took him home in a cardboard box, he was so quiet that I even doubted whether there was really a dog in it. When I peeped through two small holes on the side, I just saw a patch of grey fur. My dad assured me that it was just a small dog before I dared to open the box. There he was! What a lovely grey dog! He was slim and looked smart. I was on my knees as I cheerfully observed him. However, he tried to avoid eye contact with me, apparently a little scared with everything strange around. I wanted to pet his head but he only turned his head away.
When he became familiar with me, I called him Billy and he was really delighted, zagging his tail. Every time I left for school, he saw me off. When I came back, he ways waited on my way home and greeted me with his licks and brushed his head against legs. When Billy was in the kitchen with my father, lying on a small heap of firewood side the furnace （灶）,he could always know which piece of firewood my dad would pick and raised his paw in time. It always surprised me how intelligent and considerate Billy I imagined him turning into a small boy carrying my schoolbag for me and talking my dad. With Billy brightening every day of my childhood, I was more than happy.
Paragraph 1：But one day, Billy was seriously ill.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2：
A few years later, I went to a dog's shelter to try my luck.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________When I was a kid in Pennsylvania, my family rehabilitated (使康复) wild animals.
I grew up with animals running around the house. We would go travelling to Bermuda and I would watch the whales off the shore. I fell in love with them and wanted to know more about what they got up to underwater. Now I've been studying whales for more than30 years and I am the president of the Center for Whale Research and Conservation.
In 2017, I was on a boat around Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, working on a film about whale conservation. The crew wanted to get more footage of me in the water with the humpback whales — I often slip in quietly to record their behaviour for research. Seeing a couple of humpbacks in the distance, I slid off the boat wearing a mask and swam towards them.
As I was approaching, one of the male humpbacks came right up to me, touching me with his head and pushing me through the water. It caught me off-guard — in 33 years of doing this work, this had never happened. I put my arm out and tried to push myself away while he attempted to roll up me under his pectoral fin (胸鳍).
My scientist brain was in overdrive as I tried to work out what he was doing. I felt a mixed sense of excitement and fear. Then the whale swam underneath me and lifted me out of the water on his fin. I signaled to the boat, then — swoosh — I was pushed back under.
After minutes of being pushed around by the humpback, I saw what I thought was a second, smaller whale. But then I noticed the tail — whales move theirs up and down, and this one was moving side to side. I realized with horror that it belonged to a huge, 18-foot tiger shark. Tiger sharks are known to attack people, sometimes fatally (致命地).
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
The shark had arched its body, which meant that it was in attack mode.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Just over a year later, I was on a boat in the same area when I heard of a whale sighting in the harbour.
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10 . Historical accounts often described the now-extinct California grizzly bears as huge beasts ready to attack humans and livestock at any time. But according to a new paper, scientists say the truth might have been less dramatic: The bears ate a mostly vegetarian diet and were smaller than previously described. California grizzly bears once roamed in the Golden State. But European settlers often hunted, poisoned and trapped the creatures. Over time, because of these human activities, the California grizzly population declined. The last reliable sighting of a California grizzly bear occurred 100 years ago in 1924, and the animals disappeared completely sometime after that.
Researchers wanted to get a better understanding of the factors that accelerated the bears’ extinction. They also hoped to gain more insight into the creatures’ behavior, size and diet. To do so, they turned to documents and California grizzly specimens in natural history collections. They measured the animals’ skulls and teeth and analyzed their bones and pelts. The researchers found that California grizzly bears were much smaller than the 2,000 pounds often reported at the time. Historical accounts might not necessarily have been wrong, but they might have only included the largest bears. In addition, analyses of the animals’ bones and skins suggest the bears were primarily eating plants, which stands in contrast to their fear some hyper carnivorous (超级食肉的) reputation. “The bears likely increased meat consumption due to landscape changes coupled with the arrival of livestock,” says study co-author Alexis Mychajliw. However, researchers found the animals still ate a majority vegetarian diet and killed far less livestock than historical accounts suggested.
By digging beyond the bears’ reputation, the researchers gained a more accurate understanding of the California grizzly’s biology and natural history. And since scientists and land managers often rely on historical accounts when reintroducing animals to their former habitats, the study serves as a reminder that those old newspapers and journals do not tell the whole story.
1. What does the underlined word “roamed” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Disappeared. | B．Declined. | C．Fought. | D．Wandered. |
| A．They mainly fed on livestock. |
| B．Their diet consisted mostly of plants. |
| C．They ate a balanced diet of plants and meat. |
| D．The absence of livestock changed their dietary habit. |
| A．They are unique. | B．They are one-sided. |
| C．They are accurate. | D．They are comprehensive. |
| A．The natural habitats of California grizzly bears. |
| B．The extinction process of California grizzly bears. |
| C．The reveal of the truth of California grizzly bears. |
| D．The significance of the arrival of California grizzly bears. |
