| A．The birds are not beautiful enough. |
| B．The woman prefers to teach a cat to talk. |
| C．The birds actually cannot imitate human voice. |
| D．The woman won’t have the birds at such a price. |
| A．The summers are even hotter in Hong Kong. |
| B．He wishes that he were in Hong Kong last summer. |
| C．It is difficult to compare the summers in different places. |
| D．Hong Kong is the hottest place in the world. |
| A.medical B.relieve C.shelter D. growing E. alternative F. doubled G.fantastic H.marketing I. present J. conducts K.practically |
More and more cats and dogs are getting the human treatment. There are pet spas, pet therapists and pet clothes. And the latest trend is pet hospices(临终关怀医院)。
Around the United States, a growing number of vets are offering hospice care and
It’s part of a vet’s job to
“They’re in their own environment, not only the pets but the owners as well,” said Dr. Gardner, co-founder of Lap of Love, one of the leaders in this small but
Dr. Michele Price, a vet in Northern Virginia whose in-home hospice care business has
4 . Happiness of dolphins
For those of us who’ve ever been to a marine(海洋的) park, the best part was probably seeing the beautiful and friendly dolphins.
And the luckier people among us may have even had the chance to swim with these amazing creatures.
At the same time, however, we can’t help but think that these animals would be happier in the wild, rather than be forced to perform for humans in captivity(囚禁).
According to a recent study though, we needn’t think like that.
The study, which was published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science, was led by scientist Isabella Clegg, who carried out her research at a dolphinarium(海豚馆) in France.
As the first of its kind, the study’s aim was to look at captivity from the animals’ point of view, according to BBC News.
Over the course of three years, Clegg and her team put together a series of experiments to figure out how captive dolphins felt about their lives.
“We wanted to find out what activities in captivity they like most,” she told BBC news.
There were three kinds of experiment: one in which the dolphins were left alone, one in which toys were added to their pool, and one in which a human played with the dolphins.
It was found that of the three types of experiment, the dolphins seemed to enjoy playing with humans the most.
“Their leaping(跳跃) from the water during training, and their curious approaches to the edge(边沿) of the pool appeared to be enthusiastic(热情的).” wrote BBC News science correspondents Victoria Gill.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean dolphins are happier in captivity than they are in the wild.
According to wildlife and nature platform One Green Planet, being raised in captivity could actually be harmful for dolphins.
“By being born into captivity, they will never learn the skills necessary to survive in the wild. This means that any animal that is born in captivity can never be sent back into the wild,” it wrote on its website.
But while this may be true, at least it seems that captive dolphins still enjoy happy moments with humans.
1. What can we learn about the study on captive dolphins?| A．It was carried out in a dolphinarium in the UK. |
| B．It was the first study on captivity’s influence on animals. |
| C．It compared the behavior of captive dolphins and wild dolphins. |
| D．It studied the feelings of captive dolphins. |
| A．with toys. | B．with humans. |
| C．by themselves. | D．with other sea animals. |
| A．They may not be able to survive in the wild. |
| B．They may be less healthy than wild dolphins. |
| C．They may live an unhappy and lonely life among humans. |
| D．They might be unwilling to return to the wild. |
5 . When Mexican scientist of the evolution of animal behavior, Laura Cuaya, moved to Hungary for her postdoctoral studies in Budapest, she brought her pet dog, Kun-kun, along for the ride. Cuaya couldn't help noticing how locals warmed to dogs. This prompted her naturally curious scientific mind to start asking questions. “Here people are talking all the time to Kun-kun, but I always wonder if Kun-kun can recognize that people in Budapest speak Hungarian, not Spanish?” So she set out to find an answer through a scientific study.
Cuaya and her colleagues decided to use brain images from MRI scanning to shed light on her hunch. They worked with dogs of various ages that had, until the experiment, only heard their owners speak just one of the two languages, Spanish or Hungarian. Not surprisingly, getting the dogs to happily take part in the experiment took some creative coaxing and animal training! The researchers first needed to teach Kun-kun and her 17 fellow participating dogs including a labradoodle, a golden retriever and Australian shepherds, to lie still in a brain scanner. Their pet parents were always present, and they could leave the scanner at any point.
The research team played children's book classic The Little Prince in both Spanish and Hungarian while scanning the dogs' brains with an MRI machine. They were looking for evidence that their brains reacted differently to a familiar and unfamiliar language. The researchers also played scrambled versions of the story to find out if dogs could distinguish between speech and non-speech.
The images reveal that dogs' brains show different patterns of activity for an unfamiliar language than for a familiar one — the first time anyone has proved, researchers say, that a non-human brain can distinguish between two languages. This means that the sounds and rhythms of a familiar language are accessible to non-humans.
Interestingly, the team also found that the brains of older dogs were more skilled at detecting speech “suggesting a role for the amount of language exposure”. They suggest that dogs have refined their ability to distinguish between human languages over the long process of domestication.
1. What is paragraph 1 mainly about?| A．The background of the study. | B．The significance of the study. |
| C．The concern of the researcher. | D．The introduction to the researcher. |
| A．Age limits. | B．Brain patterns. | C．Language exposure. | D．Owners' commands. |
| A．practical | B．contradictory | C．compromising | D．groundbreaking |
| A．Dogs Can Tell Foreign Languages | B．Dog Brains Have Different Patterns |
| C．Old Dogs Know More About Human Speech | D．Dogs Can Differ Speech From Non-Speech |
Norway is Teaching Travelers to Travel
After 15 people died during Easter in 1967, the Norwegian Trekking Association and the Red Cross announced their campaign ‘Welcome to the mountains, but be responsible’. Fjellvettreglene, the ‘mountain code’
Nationally, Norway
Wolves have a certain undeserved reputation: fierce, dangerous, good for hunting down deer and farmers’ livestock. However, wolves have a softer, more social side, one that has been embraced by a heart-warming new initiative.
In a bid to save some of Europe’s last wolves, scientists have explored the willingness of these supposedly fierce creatures to help others of their kind. Female wolves, the scientists have discovered, make excellent foster parents to wolf cubs that are not their own. The study, published in Zoo Biology, suggests that captive-bred wolf cubs(幼兽) could be placed with wild wolf families, boosting the wild population.
The gray wolf was once the world’s most widely distributed mammal, but it became extinct as a result of widespread habitat destruction and the deliberate killing of wolves suspected of preying on livestock. Fear and hatred of the wolf have since become culturally rooted, fuelled by myths, fables and stories.
In Scandinavia, the gray wolf is endangered, the remaining population found by just five animals. As a result, European wolves are severely inbred and have little genetic variability（变异性）, making them vulnerable to threats, such as outbreaks of disease that they can’t adapt to quickly. So Inger Scharis and Mats Amundin of Linkoping University, in Sweden, started Europe’s first gray wolf-fostering program. They worked with wolves kept at seven zoos across Scandinavia. Eight wolf cubs between four and six days old were removed from their natural parents and placed with other wolf packs in other zoos. The foster mothers accepted the new cubs placed in their midst.
The welfare of the foster cubs and the wolves’ natural behavior were monitored using a system of surveillance cameras. The foster cubs had a similar growth rate as their step siblings in the recipient litter, as well as their biological siblings in the source litter. The foster cubs had a better overall survival rate, with 73% surviving until 33 weeks, than their biological siblings left behind, of which 63% survived. That rate of survival is similar to that seen in wild wolf cubs. Scientists believe that wolves can recognize their young, but this study suggests they can only do so once cubs are somewhere between three to seven weeks of age.
If captive-bred cubs can be placed with wild-living families, which already have cubs of a similar age, not only will they have a good chance of survival, but they could help dramatically increase the diversity of the wild population, say the researchers. Just like the wild wolves they would join, these foster cubs would need protection from hunting. Their arrival could help preserve the future of one of nature’s most iconic and polarizing animals.
1. What’s the theme of the passage?| A．Giving wolf cubs a new life | B．Foster wolf parents and foster cubs |
| C．The fate of wild wolves | D．Changing diversity of wild wolves |
A． | B． |
C． | D． |
| A．Female wolves are willing to raise wolf cubs of 3 to 7 weeks old. |
| B．Foster cubs are accepted by foster parents and are well bred. |
| C．Man’s hostile attitude towards wolves roots in myths, fables and stories. |
| D．Foster cubs and their biological siblings have similar growth rate and survival rate. |
| A．To help wolves survive various threats |
| B．To improve wolves’ habitat and stop deliberate killing |
| C．To save endangered wolves by increasing their population |
| D．To raise man’s awareness of protecting wolves |
| A. capable B. effectiveness C. employing D.exposure E.famously F. joining G. limitation H. minimal I.precisely J.recognizing K.worthwhile |
Clean Air Act
The air in modern homes and offices is pretty clean,but not as clean as it might be.Often it contains small amounts of volatile(挥发性的）,poisonous,organic compounds.Long-term
Finding an effective way to do so has proved difficult.But Stuart Strand, Long Zhang and Ryan Routsong, of the University of Washington,in Seattle,think they have succeeded,As they report in Environmental Science and Technology, their method involves
The idea of
Dr Strand, Dr Zhang and Mr Routsong thus sought something suitably transgenic ( 转 基 因 的),but that does not flower indoors. The plant they settled on was Devil's vine,
9 . In the 1966 science-fiction movie One Million Years B. C., the movie characters had a time travel and arrived in an ancient landscape inhabited by dinosaurs and early humans. The movie was low on science and high on fiction: by then dinosaurs were long dead and modern humans were millions of years away.
A more accurate picture of Earth’s inhabitants at the time is now being revealed. In research published in Nature, a team of scientists led by Anders Gotherstrom at the University of Stockholm, and Love Dalen at the Centre for Palaeogenetics (古遗传学), also in Sweden, describe sequencing (测序) DNA samples from mammoths (猛犸象) that lived and died in north-eastern Siberia around a million years ago.
The team’s work represents a new record, for their mammoth DNA is, by some half a million years, the oldest ever successfully reconstructed. Extracted (提取) from horses, bears and even Neanderthals and Denisovans, two close cousins of modern humans, such ancient DNA has proved an invaluable tool for investigating the past. Although fossils preserve the basic physical features of extinct animals, they are silent about many crucial details that even an incomplete genome (基因组) can help to fill in.
The trouble with DNA is that it breaks down after death. The more broken down it is, the harder it is to sequence. Scientists think that, after about 6m years, all that would be left would be individual base pairs (碱基对), the equivalent of trying to reconstruct a book from several letters. Under the right conditions, however, such as the extreme cold of Arctic permafrost (冻土层) this decay can be slowed.
Dr. Dalen and his colleagues were interested in three mammoth molars (臼齿) extracted in the 1970s from Siberian geological layers that suggested great age. Samples from each were sent to Dr. Dalen’s laboratory in 2017. Having checked they had not been contaminated by bacteria or the shaking hands of Paleontologists, the DNA were extracted, sequenced, and dated. Whereas DNA samples from a living animal can run to several hundreds of thousands of letters, the ancient mammoth samples yielded merely dozens of letter long. This is close to the limit of what is scientifically usable, says a biologist named Ludovic Orlando.
1. What does the underlined word “contaminated” probably mean?| A．Protected. | B．Polluted. | C．Estimated. | D．Discovered. |
①the limited number of DNA in mammoth samples
②the break-down of mammoth’s DNA after death
③the wide spread of mammoth samples
④the damage done to the mammoth samples from external environment
⑤the difficulty in extraction of the mammoth’s DNA
| A．①②④ | B．②④⑤ | C．②③④ | D．①③④ |
| A．The fact that DNA can break down makes it easier to sequence. |
| B．The incomplete genome can’t give any details of the extinct animals. |
| C．Mammoths’ DNA samples are invaluable for their extremely long history. |
| D．The research team created a new record for reconstructing an ancient book. |
| A．The movie One Million Years B. C revealed the early human civilization. |
| B．Scientists have uncovered the secrets of life by studying mammoths’ DNA. |
| C．The mammoths’ DNA may give a clearer picture of ancient inhabitants on earth. |
| D．Discoveries of mammoths’ DNA samples help the development of DNA reconstruction technology. |
10 . Elephants have four distinct personalities that help their herd survive in the African bush, scientists have found.
With their grey skin, mournful eyes and slow heavy pace, you could be forgiven for thinking elephants are uniformly blue creatures. But scientists have now discovered the largest living land animals have personalities to match their size. In a new study of African elephants, researchers have identified four distinct characters that are common in a herd -- the leaders, the gentle giants, the playful rogues and the reliable plodders.
Each of the types has developed to help the giant mammals survive in their harsh environment and is almost unique in the animal kingdom, according to the scientists. Professor Phyllis Lee and her colleague Cynthia Moss studied a herd of elephants in the Amboseli National Park in Kenya known as the EB family - famous for their matriarch Echo before she died in 2009. Using data collected over 38 years of watching this group, the researchers analyzed them for 26 types of behaviors and found four personality features tended to emerge.
The strongest personality to emerge was that of the leader. Unlike other animals, where leadership tends to be won by most dominant and aggressive individual, the elephants instead respected intelligence and problem solving in their leader. Echo, the matriarch and oldest in the group, her daughter Enid, and Ella, the second oldest female, all emerged as leaders.
The playful elephants tended to be younger but were more curious and active. Eudora, a 40-year-old female in the herd, seemed to be the most playful, consistently showing this trait through out her life while playfulness in some of the other elephants declined with age.
Gentle elephants, which included two 27-year-old females Eleanor and Eliot, caressed and rubbed against others more than the others.
Those that were reliable tended to be those that were most consistent at making good decisions, helped to care for infants in the herd and were calm when faced with threats. Echo and her youngest daughter Ebony seemed to be the most reliable. Professor Less said that elephants with these features tended to be the most socially integrated in the group while those who tended to be pushy and less reliable were more likely to split from the herd.
1. The reason why elephants have four distinct personalities is that ________.| A．scientists can distinguish them from each other more easily. |
| B．the four personalities can help them survived in Africa. |
| C．the elephants will be unique in the animals kingdom. |
| D．the elephants can avoid being caught by human beings. |
| A．the researchers reached their conclusion by analyzing the data. |
| B．the research centered on the 26 types of behavior of the matriarch. |
| C．the scientists conducted the research by comparing elephants with other animals. |
| D．Professor Phyllis Lee and her colleague spent nearly 38 years tracking the herd. |
| A．mother and daughter | B．the two oldest female |
| C．the most gentle ones | D．leader and member |
| A．Not all the types can help the elephants survive in their environment. |
| B．Leadership tends to be won by the most dominant and aggressive elephant. |
| C．The playful elephants not only tended to by younger but also were more curious. |
| D．The reliable elephants are likely to rely on others to decide what to do. |
