1 . Four Tips for Using Less Plastic(塑料)

As we all know, the world has a plastic problem — and it is increasing. Scientists are working to find along-term solution by making plastic more biodegradable(生物可降解的).     1    

Quit using plastic bags.     2     People use a trillion plastic bags worldwide every year About 10 percent a reused in the United States alone. That’s almost one bag per American per day. In contrast, the average Danish uses four single-use bags per year. Today, other countries (such as Germany and New Zealand) either make customers pay for plastic bags or have stopped using them completely.

    3     Today, around 8 3 billion plastic straws(吸管) pollute the world’s beaches. So when you order a drink, say no to the straw, or bring your own reusable one. In 2018, Seattle became the first major U. S. city to ban plastic straws, and many other cities are set to follow its example.

Don’t use plastic bottles. Buy a reusable bottle and fill it with any type of drink you like. Some cities, like Bundanoon in Australia and San Francisco in the U. S., have completely or partially(部分地) started quitting bottled water     4    .

Avoid plastic packaging. Buy bar soap instead of liquid soap in plastic containers. Don’t buy fruit or vegetables in plastic packaging.     5     They also want to tax plastic take out containers.

A．Don’t use plastic straws.

B．Don’t pollute the beaches.

C．Instead, take your own reusable shopping bag to the store.

D．Therefore, pollution has been largely decreased across the world.

E．In the U. K., leaders are calling for supermarkets to have plastic-free areas.

F．Globally, however, people still buy nearly a million plastic bottles every minute.

G．But in the meantime, here are four things you can do to reduce plastic waste now.

2 . If there was to be a praise to the frog, it would have to contain one new piece of information: its ability to predict earthquakes. A scientific study has suggested that they escape an area just before such disaster strikes.

The evidence, published yesterday in the Journal of Zoology, centers on a population of breeding (繁殖) frogs in Italy. It seems that, a few years ago, these creatures had suddenly escaped from their home five days before an earthquake struck their breeding ground.

The frogs’ ability to sense the earthquake is not fully understood, but 96 percent of male frogs escaped and returned a day after the danger had passed. This discovery baffled Dr. Rachel Grant, who hadn’t set out to learn about frogs’ reactions to earthquakes, but to study the effect of the lunar cycle on them. She now believes that frogs may be able to sense some signs and use them as an early-warning system for earthquakes.

Frogs are not the only creatures born with an unusual power to predict natural disasters. In 2004, elephants in Thailand made loud noises before the tsunami hit, while bats in Sri Lanka flew around in anxiety before the disaster.

While most of these animal warnings have been ignored, there are times when they have been noticed. In 1975, scientists in Haicheng, China, noticed unusual behavior in the city’s dogs and cats. They demanded the evacuation of the city, expecting a major disaster. Their warning came five-and-a-half hours before an earthquake struck, resulting in 2,000 deaths. Without the evacuation, another 150,000 people could have been killed.

“There are things we can’t see and sounds we can’t hear. But many animals can. There is a sense called electro-perception that fish and sharks use to form a picture around them, while dolphins and bats use sonar to find their way around,” says Professor Daniel Mills, an expert in animal behavior at Lincoln University.

1. According to paragraph 3, Dr Rachel Grant was ______ about the frogs’ unusual behavior

A．worried

B．confused

C．disappointed

D．anxious

2. How does the author develop paragraph 4?

A．By giving examples.	B．By listing numbers.
C．By explaining causes.	D．By presenting contrasts.

3. What is the author’s purpose in mentioning the earthquake in Haicheng?

A．To stress the seriousness of the disaster.	B．To praise the government’s timely action.
C．To describe a successful evacuation in history.	D．To show the benefit of noticing animal warnings.

4. What are Prof. Daniel Mills’s words mainly about?

A．Why animals can sense disasters.	B．What his study will focus on next.
C．How humans learn about the world.	D．How animals behave before disasters.

3 . NatureScot, an organisation that looks after Scotland’s natural world, has agreed to release(放出) Scottish wildcats into the UK’s largest national park.

About 60 wildcats have been raised at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig. They will be released in June into an area of the Cairngorms National Park in the Scotish Highlands. Researchers will monitor the cats through GPS, tracking their movements as they live in their new home.

Wildcats already live in the Cairngorms, but researchers say they are under threat from extinction because of habitat loss and disease. Wildcats look a bit like pet cats but they are about twice the size and have thicker fur. They have longer legs and their ears are more sticked out to the side.

Wildcats were once found in England and Wales too, but they were hunted for their fur and lost a lot of their natural habitat because of human activity. They haven’t been seen in the wild outside Scotland for more than 100 years. However, another protection programme is planning to release around 40 of the animals into secret countryside locations in Cornwall, in southern England. Wildcats hunt small animals, so wildlife experts are hoping that the cats will keepdown the numbers of rabbits and mice, which damage young trees and crops such as corn, fruit and wheat.

The Scottish wildcats will be released in a part of the park called Caimgorms, where experts are working to restore(恢复) woodland areas. The plan is for as many as 20 cats to be set free every year, and it is hoped that other sites in Scotland will be considered too. Dr Helen from Saving Wildcats said, “The fight to restore Scotland’s wildcat populations is just beginning.”

1. How will researchers keep an eye on the released wildcats?

A．By using technology.	B．By working in the park.
C．By observing their new home.	D．By controlling their movements.

2. Why are wildcats going to be released to the national park?

A．They are being hunted by human beings.

B．They need a new home due to habitat loss.

C．They can catch animals damaging the environment.

D．They haven’t been seen in the wild for a long time.

3. What does Dr Helen say about wildcats?

A．It is difficult to restore wildcats’ habitat.

B．Wildcats will begin to fight with humans.

C．The number of wildcats has greatly increased.

D．There is a long way to go to increase wildcat populations

4. Which of the following is the best title for the text?

A．Wildcats in danger.	B．Wildcats set free in highlands.
C．Wildcats’ habitat destroyed.	D．Wildcats different from pet cats.

4 . For a period of more than 10 years, improvements were seen in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. Deforestation rates(毁林率) dropped and stayed below 10,000 square kilometers a year. But that changed in January 2019, when President Jair Bolsonaro took office.

Researchers and environmentalists have blamed(贵备) Bolsonaro for causing sharp increases in deforestation rates. Bolsonaro is set to leave office on January 1, 2023, after recently losing re-election to former President Silva.

“Part of the tree cutting and burning during the dry season happens in areas that are supposed to be protected. In recent years, deforestation has reached protected areas where previously there was almost no destruction,” said Jakeline Pereira, a researcher with the Amazon Institute. Pereira told the AP, “In Paru’s region, rainforest was destroyed to enlarge land for crops and cows.” Bolsonaro has been blamed for weakening environmental agencies to support economic development.

Brazilian President-elect Silva recently promised cheering crowds at the U.N. climate meeting in Egypt to end all deforestation across the whole country by 2030. “The climate problems will be more serious if the Amazon isn’t protected,“ he said.

The Amazon rainforest covers an area twice the size of India. It acts as a buffer against climate change by taking in large amounts of CO2 . It is also the most biodiverse (多种生物的) forest in the world, and the home of tribes that have lived in the area for thousands of years.

1. How much might the forest lose in 2018?

A．9,400 square kilometers.

B．10,000 square kilometers.

C．11,000 square kilometers.

D．13,000 square kilometers.

2. Why was President Jair Bolsonaro blamed?

A．He ignored the development of the economy.

B．He lost the re-election to former President Silva.

C．He took actions to reduce the area of rainforest.

D．He focused more on economy at the cost of deforestation.

3. What does ”buffer“ underlined in paragraph 5 refer to?

A．Railway.

B．Shelter.

C．Computer.

D．Person.

4. What is the main idea of the text?

A．Silva was researching the rainforest.

B．Brazilian people hated deforestation.

C．Brazilian rainforest in danger needs protecting.

D．Silva was a better president than Jair Bolsonaro.

5 . When ivory hunters target elephants, the hunters can affect more than just animal numbers. In Mozambique, past hunting pressure led to an increase of naturally tuskless (无长牙的) elephants in one park, a study finds.

During 1977 to 1992, people hunted elephants and other wildlife for food and ivory. This caused the number of these large animals to drop more than 90 percent in the country’s Gorongosa National Park. Records show that as elephant numbers plummeted, the proportion of tuskless female African savanna elephants rose from about 18 percent to 51 percent.

Decades of poaching appear to have made tusklessness more beneficial from an evolutionary perspective in Gorongosa, encouraging the rapid increase of tuskless females with mutations (变异) in two tooth genes, researchers report in Science.

“The rapid killing of tusked individuals changed the makeup of features in the elephant population in only two decades, leaving behind more tuskless individuals,” say evolutionary biologist Shane Campbell-Staton and his colleagues. “The tuskless feature is heritable (可继承的), and the evolutionary change in the population may stick around for several generations at least, even as poaching eases.”

The team also analyzed the genetic instruction books of 18 tusked and tuskless females, zeroing in on two genes with mutations in tuskless females. “In humans, the influence of one of those genes can cause tooth fragility and the absence of a pair of upper teeth at the front of their mouth,” Campbell-Staton says, “Abnormalities in the other gene’s protein product can cause incorrect formation of the tooth root and tooth loss.”

Hunting “changing the course of evolution” in Gorongosa’s elephants, Campbell-Staton says, can have profound effects through the ecosystem given elephants’ dramatic impact on their surroundings. “Tusks are not just decorative. They serve a purpose,” he says, detailing how elephants use tusks to dig for water and strip tree bark for food. “If an elephant doesn’t have the tool to do those things, then what happens?”

1. Which of the following is true according to the study?

A．Ivory hunters killed elephants for their tusks.

B．Elephants lost their tusks due to natural evolution.

C．Hunting affects the number and appearance of elephants.

D．Human activities brought about great changes to the ecosystem.

2. What does the underlined word “plummeted” in paragraph 2 probably mean?

A．Decreased.	B．Increased.
C．Remained stable.	D．Became Unpredictable.

3. What do we know about the tuskless elephants?

A．They have the same genes as the tusked.

B．Their tuskless feature can be passed down.

C．Their tuskless feature doesn’t exist in males.

D．They have a biological advantage over the tusked.

4. Why does Campbell-Staton mention the example of human teeth?

A．To explain the cause of gene mutations.

B．To show the impact of mutated tooth genes.

C．To raise humans’ awareness of protecting teeth.

D．To call for actions to protect tuskless elephants.

7 . Yong male songbirds usually learn their songs from adult songbirds. But when those young birds do not have older ones to teach them, they have less success attracting mates.

For five years, ecologist Ross Crates with Australian National University has studied the singing ability and mating success of birds called regent honeyeaters (王吸蜜鸟).

Male birds once formed large groups in the winter. Now they are spread out across the country, so many fly alone. That means fewer honeyeater adults are nearby during the young birds first year of life.

“Song learning in many birds is a process similar to humans learning languages—they learn by listening to other individuals,” said Crates.

“If you can’t listen to other individuals, you don’t know what you should be learning.”

Researchers found that a large number of male birds appear to be learning tunes only used by other species. About 12 percent of male regent honeyeaters end up producing versions of songs usually sung by friarbirds and lack-faced cuckoo shrikes, among other birds.

The scientists released their research in the publication Proceedings of the Royal Society B. They found that males who sang unusual songs were less successful in attracting mates.

Peter Marra is a conservation biologist at Georgetown University and was not involved in the study. He said, “This research suggests that the loss of a song language once the population reaches a very small size could accelerate their decline.”

Scott Ramsay is a behavioral ecologist at Wilfried Laurier University in Ontario, Canada. He was not involved in the research. He said the songs were like an advertisement: “When male birds sing, it’s like putting out an ad saying, ‘I’m over here...and I’m really interested in finding a partner.”

Ramsay added that female honeyeaters may not even recognize these unusual singers as possible mates, and so do not approach them. Or it could be that they approach, “but then things go wrong if the males do not behave as expected.”

1. What might be the scientists’ attitude towards the regent honeyeaters?

A．Positive.

B．Concerned.

C．Optimistic.

D．Critical.

2. What’s the result if regent honeyeaters learn songs from other species?

A．It’s more possible for them to fail in mating.	B．They attract other species successfully.
C．Most regent honeyeaters will follow them.	D．Female honeyeaters like other versions of songs.

3. What can we learn according to Peter’s or Scott’s study?

A．People can understand the language of honeyeaters.

B．Males sing wrong songs because they’re not interested in mating.

C．Females are likely to mistake male honeyeaters for other birds.

D．Regent honeyeaters can put out an advertisement apart from singing songs.

4. What is the main idea of the text?

A．Singing is an important skill for every bird.

B．Honeyeaters and other birds have a close relationship.

C．The failure to acquire the song language may speed up the decrease of honeyeaters.

D．Honeyeaters are losing their capability of learning singing from other individuals.

9 . Past surveys have shown that more than 80% of dog owners report observing jealous (妒忌的)behaviors from their dogs when they give attention to other dogs.

Dogs appear to be one of the few species that might show jealous behaviors in ways similar to a human child showing jealousy when their mother shows love for another child.

To test how and when dogs show jealous behavior, researchers set up an experiment where 18 dogs imagined their owners interacting (互动)with either a realistic-looking stuffed (毛绒填充的)dog or a similarly sized wool-covered cylinder that looked nothing like a dog. The stuffed dog played the role of a possible competitor.

In the experiment, first, the dogs watched the stuffed dog next to their owner. Then, an object was placed between the dog and the stuffed animal so they could no longer see the possible competitor. The dogs pulled strongly on their ropes when their owners appeared to be petting the stuffed dog behind the object. In a second experiment, the dogs pulled on the ropes with less force when the owners appeared to be petting the wool-covered cylinder.

Through their study, Bastos and her colleagues found that dogs showed human-like jealous behavior. The finding is different from earlier research because it's the first to show dogs can mentally imagine social interactions that they can't directly see, Bastos says. It also showed that the jealous behavior happened due to the interaction, and not when the owner and the competitor were in the same room but not interacting.

This research is only the first step, and more research is necessary to figure out if dogs experience jealousy the same way people do. "This is a very difficult question to answer scientifically," Bastos says. "We may never have an answer!"

1. Which of the following is true according to the passage?

A．Most of the animals besides dogs can show jealous behaviors.

B．The experiments show that dogs are friendly to their competitors.

C．Dogs show jealous behaviors when their owners pet their children.

D．The conclusion Bastos and her co-workers drew differs from earlier research.

2. What can we learn from the last paragraph?

A．Study on dog's jealous behavior has a long way to go.

B．It has been proved that dogs are jealous of their competitors.

C．The way dogs experience jealousy is exactly the same as humans do.

D．It's no use doing further research since there will be no scientific answer.

3. What can be the best title of the passage?

A．Sociable Pets — Dogs	B．Dogs Love Their Owners
C．Jealous Species — Dogs	D．Dogs Dislike Other Animals