One morning, Ann’s neighbor Tracy found a lost dog wandering around the local elementary school. She asked Ann if she could keep an eye on the dog and she planned to find its owner. Ann agreed, but she said that she could watch it only for the day because she needed to take care of her son. At the time, her son Thomas was 10 years old, who was recovering from a heart operation.
Later, Tracy took photos of the dog, printed off 400 FOUND fliers, put them in mailboxes and began to find the dog’s owner. Meanwhile, Ann bought some pet supplies, warning her son not to fall in love with the dog. However, her son was filled with excitement as he knew that his mother got a dog back home. He planned to provide the dog with some food everyday.
Four days later, Ann and her son were still looking after the dog, whom they had started to call Riley. During the four days, they took care of the dog carefully, provided some food, took a shower and played with it, and they had already become the best friends.
The evening of the fifth day, when Ann arrived home from work, the dog threw itself against the door and barked madly at her. As soon as she opened the door, Riley dashed into the boys’ room where Ann found Thomas suffering from a heart attack. Riley ran over to Thomas, but as soon as Ann bent over to help him, the dog went silent.
The doctor said if it hadn’t come to get his mother in time, Thomas would have died. Luckily, with the doctor’s help, Thomas could go home tomorrow morning.
“Mum, can we keep it if we can’t find its owner? Even we can ask for permission if we find the owner,” Thomas asked his mother when they came back home.
“Well, since no one has called to claim it, we decide to keep it,” his mother replied. Hearing that, Thomas was excited.
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。
However, the next day, Ann was told a man named Peter recognized his lost dog.
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Peter’s car came and Thomas stood silently beside his car.
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Chengdu has dozens of new millionaires, Asia’s biggest building, and fancy new hotels. But for tourists like me, pandas are its top
So it was a great honour to be invited backstage at the not-for-profit Panda Base, where ticket money helps pay for research. I
On my recent visit, I held a lively three-month-old twin that had been rejected by
3 . In 2017, my husband-to-be, Ricardo, brought his border collie (牧羊犬), Jack, on our first date. I was swiftly struck by the pair of them. Fast forward 18 months and they’d fitted in
Then came our
One day, Cayla scootered (玩踏板车) off out of sight along the footpath, Jack and Ruby by her side. Before long, with an
Cayla looked up smiling, overjoyed that the dogs had come through for her in her moment of
A.beautifully | B.awkwardly | C.naughtily | D.passively |
A.secret | B.difference | C.bond | D.tension |
A.nervous | B.ready | C.cautious | D.patient |
A.letter | B.guide | C.introduction | D.trip |
A.approached | B.panicked | C.listened | D.left |
A.important | B.noisy | C.still | D.noble |
A.fear | B.excitement | C.surprise | D.despair |
A.failed | B.moved | C.hurt | D.worked |
A.continued | B.began | C.neared | D.slowed |
A.urgent | B.uncomfortable | C.amusing | D.annoying |
A.hide | B.escape | C.accept | D.follow |
A.anger | B.need | C.stress | D.loneliness |
A.carried | B.greeted | C.found | D.tended |
A.opportunity | B.excuse | C.example | D.concept |
A.support | B.contact | C.imagine | D.save |
4 . In nature, octopuses (章鱼) hunt mainly with their sense of touch, using their eight arms to feel out their environment for hidden creatures. Researchers at the University of Minnesota recently studied a different way octopuses hunt—when they identify prey (猎物) based on sight. The study findings show that the marine creatures are quite consistent and methodical in how they approach prey.
Lead researcher Trevor Wardill and his team placed California two-spot octopuses into water tanks, hiding them in caves where they would have one eye looking out. They then placed either fiddler crabs or white shrimp in the tanks to see how the octopuses would try to catch them, capturing the interactions on video. The crabs and shrimp behave differently when trying to escape from predators (捕猎者), so using both species gave the researchers an opportunity to see whether this led the octopuses to use a different arm for hunting depending on the prey.
Wardill’s team found that the octopuses almost always used the same arm to grab their prey. Specifically, the second arm from the middle of the octopuses’ body, on the same side of their body as the eye, caught the prey. If they needed more arms to grab prey, they would use the ones next to the second arm.
The octopuses also attacked differently depending on the prey. When faced with crabs, an octopus would move suddenly on top of the crab with its whole body. However, when catching shrimp, the octopuses would take one arm and reach out very slowly toward the shrimp, then grab it and latch (缠住) onto it with its other arms to pull it in.
Wardill and his team hope to do more research. They want to study the octopus’s brain as it attacks pre y to develop a better understanding of what role the creature’s nervous system plays in selecting the arms it uses.
1. What is the recent study mainly about?A.Octopuses’ ability to hide itself. | B.Octopuses’ way to track prey. |
C.Octopuses’ hunting mode via eyes. | D.Octopuses’ method of perceiving the environment. |
A.They adopt different strategies to hunt. | B.They stretch arms slowly to catch crabs. |
C.They move suddenly to prey on shrimps. | D.They use the second arm to catch prey anytime. |
A.Whether they’re nervous in hunting. | B.How their nerves work during hunting. |
C.How they choose their arms in hunting. | D.Whether they use their brain during hunting. |
A.Octopuses: Skillful Hunters | B.Octopuses: One-armed Predators |
C.Octopuses: A Sharp-eyed Species | D.Octopuses: A Mysterious Creature |
In southern China, there is a famous road
This road is sure
For the next few months, this road is not above the surface
6 . Some ants have figured out how to avoid getting lost: build taller anthills, according to a recent study.
Desert ants living in the hot, flat salt pans of Tunisia spend their days looking for food and reach as far as 1.1 kilometers from their nests. To find their way home, desert ants use a navigation system, relying on the sun’s position and counting their steps to track their location relative to their nest.
But this system becomes increasingly unreliable as the distance from the nest increases. “We realized that, whenever the ants in salt pans came closer to their nest, they suddenly pinpointed the nest hill from several meters distance,” says Markus Knaden, a researcher at Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. “This made us think that the hill serves as a nest-defining landmark.”
So Knaden and colleagues captured ants from nests in the middle of salt pans and from along their shorelines. Only salt-pan nests had distinct hills, up to 40 centimeters tall, whereas the hills on shoreline nests were lower or barely noticeable. Next, the team removed any hills and placed the captured insects some distance away from their nests. Salt-pan ants struggled more than shore ants to find homes. Shore ants relied on the shoreline for guidance and weren’t affected by the hill removal, the researchers concluded.
The team further conducted another study to see if desert ants were deliberately building a taller hill when their surroundings lacked any visible landmarks. So, the researchers removed the hills of 16 salt-pan nests and installed (安装) two 50-centimeter-tall blocks near eight of them. The other eight nests were left without any artificial visual aid. After three days, the researchers found that seven ants from the unaided nests had rebuilt their hills. But only two ants from the nests with man-made blocks nearby had bothered to rebuild.
“It implies that ants regularly assess the complexity of their environment and change their decisions based on their conclusion,” says ecologist Judith Bronstein of the University of Arizona.
1. What aspect of ants is the recent study mainly about?A.Challenges of survival. | B.Landmarks of habitats. |
C.Intelligence of navigation. | D.Comparison of varieties. |
A.Explored. | B.Recognized. | C.Climbed. | D.Crossed. |
A.To observe different ants’ reactions. | B.To prove impacts of various habitats. |
C.To disturb desert ants’ navigation system. | D.To test anthills’ functions and significance. |
A.Evaluate and make changes. | B.Visual aid is a must. |
C.Cooperation brings victory. | D.No man-made blocks are used. |
7 . “A lot of the time when climate change is discussed in mainstream media, people are asking ‘can humans overcome this?’, or ‘what technology can solve this?’. It’s high time we recognized that animals also have to adapt to various changes. We know some animals change their skin colors to escape from natural enemies or due to environment pollution,” says Ryding. “The climate change that we have created is putting a lot of pressure on them, and some species try to adapt by shapeshifting (变形). ”
Strong shapeshifting has particularly been reported in birds. Several species of Australian parrot have shown, on average, a 4%—10% increase in beak (鸟喙) size since 1871, and this is positively linked with the summer temperature each year. North American dark-eyed juncos, a type of small songbird, had a link between increased beak size and short-term temperature extremes in cold environments. There have also been reported changes in mammalian species. Researchers have reported tail length increases in wood mice and leg size increases in masked shrews (鼩鼱).
“The increases in some body parts size we see so far are quite small—less than 10%—so the changes are unlikely to be immediately noticeable,” says Ryding. “However, some body parts such as ears are predicted to increase.”
Ryding intends to investigate shapeshifting in Australian birds firsthand by 3D scanning museum bird specimens from the past 100 years. It will give her team a better understanding of which birds are changing their body parts and why. “Shapeshifting does not mean that animals are coping with climate change and that all is ‘fine’,” says Ryding. “It just means they are adapting to survive it—but we’re not sure what the other ecological consequences of these changes are, or indeed that all species are capable of changing and surviving. ”
1. What may cause animals’ shapeshifting according to Ryding?A.Human hunting. | B.Climate change. |
C.Natural enemies. | D.Polluted surroundings. |
A.Giving examples. | B.Cause-effect analysis. |
C.Making comparison. | D.Process analysis. |
A.Animals can well adapt to changes and survive. |
B.Influence of animals’ shapeshifting is uncertain. |
C.Rdying will research into bird museums in Australia. |
D.All adaptations of animals to climate change are beneficial. |
A.Technology. | B.Health care. | C.Environment. | D.Education. |
8 . My photographs are the items I would definitely take or guard in case of an emergency. But what else? This was the question I asked myself as a
Unlike some friends and
Because when you hear the roar of the winds, or when something
As
Months and years after the hurricane, I often told people that there are two parts to
But we will do it,
A.flood | B.drought | C.wildfire | D.hurricane |
A.hosts | B.partners | C.relatives | D.architects |
A.applying | B.packing | C.exchanging | D.delivering |
A.sign | B.gap | C.clue | D.summary |
A.kit | B.gym | C.space | D.greenhouse |
A.rests | B.erupts | C.carves | D.cracks |
A.cheap | B.expensive | C.graceful | D.economic |
A.destruction | B.appreciation | C.challenge | D.determination |
A.as usual | B.as follows | C.as scheduled | D.as promised |
A.annoyed | B.amazed | C.confused | D.frightened |
A.escaped | B.protested | C.identified | D.processed |
A.causing | B.preventing | C.surviving | D.suffering |
A.cutting out | B.putting back | C.giving up | D.working out |
A.devotedly | B.creatively | C.individually | D.dependently |
A.in favor of | B.in times of | C.in need of | D.in search of |
9 . Open an app at your smart phone and scan the code bar on the garbage can. When you throw garbage into the garbage can, it will show the weight of the garbage and the points you can get from doing so.
In some cities, a variety of multifunctional smart garbage cans are being put into use. In Beijing, for example, a smart garbage can is equipped with an LED screen, which not only shows national policies on garbage classification but also shows the correct steps for garbage sorting. It can also calculate the weight of the garbage and the accumulated points one can get. They can be traded for some articles of daily use.
Garbage disposal is a small issue that involves everybody each day. However, it is also a big issue.
A.Garbage sorting has been a new fashion. |
B.Another kind of garbage can is even smarter. |
C.It is no wonder that residents cheered for their presence. |
D.Such a way of handling garbage has appeared in some cities. |
E.It will affect China’s transformation towards green development. |
F.Over 200 million tons of garbage is produced each year in some cities. |
G.The good habit of garbage classification can improve the living environment. |
People in Bangladesh and India are struggling as they face serious flooding caused by early heavy rains. The floods
The flooding