1 . Pigs may be more intelligent than people thought, as shown in a study where pigs used a joystick (操纵杆) and played a video game. Researchers used 2-year-old Panepinto micro pigs called Ebony and Ivory, as well as Hamlet and Omelet, 3-month-old Yorkshire pigs. Researchers first taught these pigs how to play with a joystick, teaching them the word, “joystick”. Next, on the words “watch the screen”, they learned how to watch targets (目标) on the screen. Of course, praise was given to the active pigs winning a game.

During the experiment, all pigs performed well. As they became more successful, the level of difficulty increased, just like in human video games! At first, the pigs had to hit a three-walled target which was then reduced to two walls and then one wall.

All pigs did well with the three-walled targets; however, the Panepinto pigs performed better on the more difficult levels. One disadvantage for the Yorkshire pigs was that they simply grew so large that they could no longer fit in their test. After a few months, Omelet and Hamlet were taken away from the experiment.

Dr. Candace Croney, a leading animal behavior scientist in Cambridge, said, “The findings of the study are important because what we do to pigs matters to them. It would be nice for people to realize how special pigs are, and how much more intelligent they may be than we recognized. The researchers said that the pigs’ actions were deliberate (故意的). This led them to believe that pigs were able to, successfully do new tasks.

“It may encourage other researchers to use touch screens and computer technology to study pigs intelligence in the future,” Croney said. The team hopes this type of research will make people pay more attention to this farm animal and show people how they can change the lives of animals.

1. What did the researchers do to the pigs at the beginning?

A．They studied their habits.	B．They gave them enough food.
C．They trained them to play a game.	D．They gave them special names.

2. What could we find about the pigs in the experiment?

A．They could keep focused for a long time.

B．They tried hard to win the games for praise.

C．They did all the tasks without any difficulty.

D．They got harder tasks as their performance improved.

3. What made Omelet and Hamlet unsuitable for the experiment later?

A．Their intelligence.	B．Their body size.
C．Their power.	D．Their weight.

4. What is Croney’s attitude towards the results of the study?

A．Positive.	B．Doubtful.
C．Uncertain	D．Surprised.

2 . The honeybee waggle dance has been celebrated as a most complex animal communication system. A study uncovered its new property that bees must partially learn the dance from watching experienced dancers, a discovery that torpedoes the general perception that the dance is wholly inborn. A dancer bee relays information to follower bees about the target location by adjusting herself while shaking her stomach, allowing for impressive flexibility in the angle, duration and her enthusiasm. Her body’s angle corresponds to the sun’s position relative to the nest entrance.

The distance information is conveyed by the dance duration. And the more energetic and passionate the dance, the better the food. She’ll waggle in a straight line for seconds before circling back to repeat the dance, creating the figure eight pattern.

This bee waggle dance system was long assumed to be natural behavior, but researchers made a breakthrough through an experiment. They created territories of newborn bees completely separated from mature ones. When the newborn started visiting flowers and producing their first waggle dances, they consistently made more errors in the way they reported the angle and distance to the food source than bees raised in mixed-aged territories and thus exposed to the waggle dance since they were born. They also generated looser figure eight patterns, making it harder for the follower bees to get the message. Even when placed back into a territory with mature bees, they never seemed to learn how to communicate information correctly.

These results suggest every honeybee is born with a waggle dance model that gives them a basic understanding of how to dance. By watching their elders, they’ll acquire new rules on how to generate the dance unique to their territory.

This is the first known example of such complex social learning of communication in insects and is a form of animal culture, strikingly similar to the way human language generates new languages to shape itself around the local conditions. While the waggle dance is second to human language in terms of the ability to communicate diverse information through random symbols, the newly-discovered property makes it even more language-like and just that much more mind-blowing.

1. What does the underlined word “torpedoes” mean in paragraph 1?

A．Illustrates.

B．Overturns.

C．Fits in with.

D．Gives rise to.

2. On what basis do the follower bees judge the target food’s quality?

A．The dancer’s physical angle.	B．The dancer’s dance duration.
C．The dancer’s dance liveliness.	D．The dancer’s body flexibility.

3. What can we infer about young bees from paragraph 3?

A．They’re absolutely ignorant of the waggle dance.

B．They can’t survive but for contact with mature bees.

C．They enhance dance routines by autonomous trial and error.

D．They can master the local dance by following elders from birth.

4. What does the underlined word “it” in the last paragraph refer to?

A．The waggle dance.	B．Human language.
C．The new property.	D．Diverse information.

3 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个恰当的单词或者括号内单词的正确形式。

Spring is the season for new life. In China, the peak time for spring plowing and sowing is around the Qingming Festival, which falls     1     Wednesday this year, when people from all walks of life go out and plant trees    2     (make) the land greener.

From top leaders to ordinary citizens,     3     (plant) trees has been a widespread practice for the Chinese,     4     voluntarily take part in the country’s massive greening efforts     5     (year) to show just how much the world’s second-largest economy values greenness and ecological conservation.

Since     6     start of afforestation (植树造林) decades ago, China     7     (create) the world’s largest, planted forests. Thick forests have also become a substantial source of income for     8     (local). Last year, the output value of China’s forestry and grassland industry reached about 1. 22 trillion dollars, while the foreign trade volume of forest products     9     (be) 191 billion dollars. Green development with both ecological and economic benefits is a highlight and distinctive feature of Chinese modernization.

Under a long-term plan, China expects to increase its forest     10     (cover) rate to 26 percent by 2035. By then, China’s forest stock volume will rise to 21 billion cubic meters.

4 . Back in 2017, Christopher Vane did something special. He opened up a sanctuary (避难所) for farm animals where they could live out the rest of their days in comfort. Since then, more than 150 animals have found their way to him, and it’s saved their lives.

Christopher has always had a deep love for animals, partly because his mom was so passionate about them herself. For the longest time, he wanted to do something to help, which is how Little Bear Sanctuary came to exist. It was sad for Vane to lose his mom just a few months before the place opened, but he knew she’d be proud of him. After all, he was giving back to the animals that both of them loved so much.

The sanctuary is home to a number of different species, including sheep, cows, goats, and even a tortoise. Around half of its residents are pigs, including Willy, the sanctuary’s very first resident. The majority of the animals here were to be killed, which would be the same fate, but thankfully, Christopher gave them a second chance of life. Now, while they might still be scarred by their terrible pasts, at least they have an opportunity to be happy.

Although the sanctuary doesn’t make any money, Vane isn’t bothered by the lack of income. Going outside and seeing his animals fee to walk around the 30-acre property gives him all the satisfaction he needs. Of course, if he wants to keep opening the sanctuary’s doors to new resident, he does need some money coming in. That’s why he set up a GoFundMe so that anyone who wants to help out with the expansion project can do their bit. So far, $15,000 of the $55, 000 goal has been raised.

It’s nice to see these farm animals getting another shot at happiness. We’re so grateful for what Christopher’s doing.

1. Why did Christopher Vane open up the sanctuary?

A．For a shared love.	B．For a stable income.
C．To realize his mum’s dream.	D．To save endangered animals.

2. What animals will most probably be taken into the sanctuary?

A．Rare animals.	B．Would-be-killed Animals.
C．Newborns.	D．Wildlife.

3. What will the sanctuary depend on for its future expanding?

A．On his own money only.	B．On the entrance fees.
C．On nonprofitable organizations.	D．On social donation.

4. What does the sanctuary bring to Christopher?

A．Good income.	B．A second chance.
C．Great happiness.	D．Trouble with farm animals.

5 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。
                                                                                                                                                                                       Being Planted

“106!” The cry of disappointment breaks the silence of the peaceful night.

In darkness, he stands still there, with tears dropping continuously from his eyes.

He is a 5th-year Ph.D. student majoring in biology. This is his 106^th attempt to cultivate strawberries which could bear extreme climates. In his 105th experiment, he did all the pre-processes that he knew which could lead him closer to his goal. Every generation of the strawberry seemed to bring him closer to success, but every time the result was alike — failure, failure, failure. He has literally got used to it. But this time, he can hardly help feeling frustrated and angry.

“Who stole my experimental strawberry!”

Last night, when he got to the field, he was thrilled. Although most of the plants were obviously dying, one plant stood vigorously in the middle of the experimental field. The plant was labeled “Plant No. 106” . What a coincidence! In his 106^th attempt, the 106^th plant was finally mutating (变异) in its ideal way — the spark of hope, to him.

Last night, Plant No. 106’s fruit started to turn red. He was never so close to success. What he needed to do was to wait for several days to harvest that pink, shiny, attractive fruit.

But this night, the fruit disappears. So does his hope.

“3 years’ effort!   1096 days’ struggling! 13152 hours’ DNA editing and experiment. ALL GONE!” he murmurs to himself. He regrets that he didn’t get a small sample of the stolen strawberry last night.

Now he is using his fingers to dig the ground. He doesn’t know why he is doing so. He is well aware that the results of the past 106 attempts are all wasted because of the incident and his not taking the sample in time. He has no seeds left. At the present, he seems to have only 2 choices: to start from the very beginning, or to give up.

要求：
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。

He uses his finger to dig the soil of that inch of field which used to contain his hope.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

He is so excited that he bursts into tears.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Mining has seen ups and downs but traditional condiment (调味品) continues to appeal. Any mention of Zigong, Sichuan province, reminds people    1     its salt production and, until recently, this was    2     important source of revenue (财政收入).

The city, about 200 kilometers from Chengdu has a history of mining salt    3     (stretch) back 2,000 years. The salt was sold all over Sichuan and other provinces, and was consumed by one-tenth of China’s population. The salt is from wells. One of them, the Shenhai well, was opened in 1835, and is still in    4     (operate). With a depth of 1,001.42 meters, it is among the world’s deepest of its kind and    5     (current) produces around 2,000 kilograms of salt per day. Visitors to the well can buy packs of iodine-free salt    6     (mine) just three days earlier.

But, during Spring Festival,     7     ends with the Lantern Festival on the 15^th day of the first lunar month — falling on Sunday this year — more people from around the country flock to Zigong    8     (view) its world-famous lanterns. Viewing lanterns became a Spring Festival custom in Zigong during the Tang Dynasty. Since then, the    9     (city) lantern show has been held in more than 70 countries and regions around the world, becoming a calling card of both Zigong and China. The popular show    10     (start) from the economic dilemma in the 1980s, when Zigong’s economy over-relying on a single product became a problem.

7 . Sustainability for kids can start with a seed. We put together some ways to involve the whole family in protecting the environment.

Go on a hike. Parental involvement in early childhood education looks different in various settings from preschool to home and to the grocery store.     1     Going on a hike together can be an ideal thing to investigate a local ecosystem, look for signs of the changing season, and gain an overall appreciation of the world outdoors. Plus, by bringing an extra garbage bag and gloves to pick up trash along the way, parents can show kids some educational activities.

Go green for holidays. Make holidays fun while also supporting a green environment for kids. Use LED lights for decorative lighting.     2     Decrease your carbon footprint and purchase holiday gifts from local shops.

    3     Parents don’t need an acre of land to teach their children that food doesn't grow at the grocery store. All they need is sunlight, water and dirt. A windowsill is the perfect spot to grow herbs. A back deck can grow beautiful tomatoes. Plant peach seeds in a small container.     4    

Recycle together. Recycling activities for kids can be fun and support family involvement in education at the same time.     5     Then work with them to make something new out of the recycled items, such as making boxes out of recycled cardboard and storage tins out of recycled cans.

A．Plant a “garden”.

B．Don’t buy food from the grocery.

C．Protecting the environment for kids is important.

D．Parents should tell children what they can recycle.

E．And the children can watch a little peach tree grow.

F．Recycle Christmas trees instead of throwing them away.

G．To a child, every setting and every moment can be a teachable one.

8 . About 400 pounds of food is wasted per day from 5 pm to 8 pm in Douglass Dining Hall. “We scrape(刮掉) the food from the conveyor belt into the buckets by hand. Working for Dining Team Green, I don’t expect to basically become a garbage girl,” Roll said. “We do the work because we care much about it. We all have a responsibility to take care of the environment.”

To have more approachable composting(把……制成堆肥) machines on campus, Roll now has a new sustainable project investing in Lomi, an automated compost machine. “I learned about Lomi through an ad,” Roll said. “Funny enough, I just saw it and thought it perfect. It really interested me how the mechanism worked. ”

Lomi is a new technology that can break down food waste into natural compost. According to Roll, it breaks down waste in the way: grinding(碾碎) the food into plant fertilizer. Unlike most composting machines, Omi can compost animal products, such as small bones. Another huge benefit is that it doesn’t have smell and can convert waste to compost in a shorter time.

Roll plans on using the compost in the Gilbert community garden so that Dining Team Green can give back to the community. “It’s very exciting to see our food waste that would otherwise have gone in the trash and pollute the environment go to our community,” she said.

Roll is excited to introduce a new form of composting to the residents. She hopes that this machine will inspire other composting machines in all residential buildings. “I want Lomi not only to be a way to reduce food waste on the floor, but an educational tool to make people compost in a real way and not just talk about it in a theoretical sense,” Roll said.

1. Which of the following can best describe Lomi?

A．Elegant.	B．Widespread.
C．Low-powered.	D．Environmentally friendly.

2. What does paragraph 3 mainly talk about?

A．The reasons for designing Lomi.	B．The impact of wasting food.
C．The solution to food waste.	D．The advantages of Lomi.

3. What may be Roll’s expectation?

A．More people will get involved in composting initiatives.

B．Dining Team Green will become an educational tool.

C．More developed composting machines will be invented.

D．Dining Team Green will build community gardens.

4. What can we know about Roll?

A．She lives in the Gilbert community.

B．She is a member of Dining Team Green.

C．She knows a lot about residential buildings.

D．She plans to design more composting machines.

9 . The sperm whale is an astonishing creature. It’s longer than a semi-truck, weighs more than 90, 000 pounds and is the largest member of the toothed whale family. It’s known to dive 6, 500 feet in search of food, and to stay down there for longer than an hour at a time.

Perhaps most fantastically, the sperm whale’s brain weighs as much as 20 pounds-the biggest of any species on Earth. But when it comes to brains, is size all that matters? There’s a lot we don’t know about the sperm whale’s intelligence because it’s difficult to carry out neurological (神经的) testing on such a huge marine mammal. But some clues point to sperm whales being much smarter than we give them credit for.

A 2021 study published in Biology Letters, for example, looked back to 19th-century historical logbooks from whalers. Researchers found that sperm whales were at first easy to catch-but almost immediately, the whales learned how to evade hunters and whaling success dropped by 60 percent. The study suggests that the whales passed information to one another through soundwaves to avoid being caught.

Animals that have big brains usually have a few things in common. They usually live long lives; for example, sperm whales can live for 70 years or longer. Additionally, they’re capable of complex behaviors and they tend to be more socia1. Whales may work together to hunt or communicate in a language all their own.

What’s more, humans, whales and dolphins all have spindle neurons in their brains. These nerve cells make us capable of deeper thought, such as reasoning skills, memory, communication and adaptive thinking. And like humans, whales have emotional intelligence- meaning they＇re capable of empathy, grief and sadness. Still, in proportion to (与…成比例)our body size, the human brain is bigger than that of the sperm whale.

Yet there’s still so much we don’t know about how smart sperm whales really are. And just like the whalers of a century ago, we have likely been underestimating marine mammals, whether large or small, for as long as we’ve known of their existence.

1. Why do people know little about the sperm whale’s intelligence?

A．Sperm whales’ big size makes research difficult.

B．It didn’t attract scientists’ attention until recently.

C．Whalers didn’t keep enough records of their hunting.

D．Sperm whales usually stay deep down in the ocean.

2. What does the underlined word “evade” mean in paragraph 3?

A．Track.

B．Avoid.

C．Locate.

D．Trick.

3. What conclusion can we draw from paragraph 5?

A．The nerve cells distinguish humans from animals.

B．Sperm whales have smaller brains than humans.

C．Spindle neurons make higher intelligence possible.

D．Emotional intelligence is unique to whales and humans.

4. Which is the most suitable title for the text?

A．Sperm Whales Are Astonishingly Smart

B．Sperm Whales Have the Biggest Brain

C．Break the Code of Whale Language

D．Unlock the Mystery of Sea Mammals

10 . A Swedish company training crows to pick up litter in exchange for food, claims that its program could save communities a fortune in cleaning costs.

Teaching humans not to throw cigarette butts on the street has so far proven impossible, but a Swedish company claims it can teach crows to pick up after us and save local communities millions of dollars in cleaning fees every year. It teaches wild crows to do our dirty work through a step-by-step learning process by rewarding the birds with food for every cigarette butt they collect.

“They are easier to teach and there is also a higher chance of them learning from each other. At the same time, there’s a lower risk of them mistakenly eating any rubbish,” company founder, Hanssen, said. “They’re wild birds taking part in on a voluntary basis.”

Crows are among the smartest birds on Earth, and such training programs have proven successful several times in recent years. In fact, the company is so confident it can pull it off that it has expressed interest in testing it in on a larger scale, in the town of Södertälje.

Hanssen believes that the initiative could save the municipality(自治市)at least 75% of the costs involved with picking up cigarette butts, depending on how hard the crows work. If it proves successful, the company hopes that it will provide a permanent cleaning solution that can be used in other parts of the country and eventually nationwide.

The approach to litter cleaning has gotten positive feedback online, but there are those who think the fact that we can train crows to pick up cigarette bults, but we can’t get humans not to throw them away is hard to accept. Plus, there are the health problems of constantly exposing the birds to the cigarette butts.

1. What is the advantage of the program?

A．It can save food.	B．It can save money.
C．It helps protect birds.	D．It helps change people’s bad behavior.

2. Why are crows chosen for the program?

A．They have a strong ability to learn.	B．They have a strong sense of smell.
C．They are good at collecting rubbish.	D．They are in large numbers in Sweden.

3. What can we know from the last two paragraphs?

A．Only a few people support the program.

B．The program can do harm to the crows.

C．The company can get a fortune from the program.

D．The program has served as a cleaning solution nationwide.

4. What can be the best title for the text?

A．Crows Learn to Exchange Food	B．Crows Are Good at Collecting Litter
C．Crows Are Trained to Pick Up Litter	D．Crows Begin to Feed on Cigarette Butts