1 . A baby giraffe born with a leg abnormality has been fitted with special leg braces (支架) to help her walk.

The giraffe is named Msituni. She ________ from a condition called carpal hypertension (腕骨高血压). It ________ the young animal’s front legs, which was especially ________ to a giraffe. The abnormality was putting a lot of ________on her joints and bones. Zoo workers ________ that she could die if they did not quickly correct the ________. This is because it could ________ the giraffe from getting food and from being able to walk around.

Zoo officials ________ experts to treat the giraffe. The medical team had a lot of ________ fitting people with braces to correct leg problems. But they had ________ treated an animal before. Ara Mirzaian was a member of the medical team. He found the situation strange and ________ went online to start learning as much as possible about giraffes.

The team ________ models of the giraffe’s legs. It took the team about a week to ________ the braces, which were made of a ________ called carbon graphite (碳石墨). After 10 days in the special brace, the problem was ________. In total, Msituni was in braces for 39 days from the day she was born. She ________ in the animal hospital the whole time.

Mirzaian said he planned to ________ a picture in his office of the baby giraffe wearing her special brace so that the children he treats might be ________ to wear their own braces. “It was the   ________ thing to see an animal like that walk in a brace,” he said. “It feels ________ to know we saved a giraffe’s life.”

2 . Around a bend (拐弯处) on a narrow trail that runs deep into the forest of Gabon’s Loango National Park, Kamaya comes into view. The huge silverback gorilla (大猩猩) coolly watches _______ arrive, then goes back to his meal.

Seated on a _______ branch, the 150-kilogram beast greedily pulls more _______ from the tree to his mouth with a _______ but powerful movement before slowly climbing down the trunk. Soon he falls asleep calmly.

After two years of a total _______ due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Parks Agency has decided to restart _______ observations of Gabon’s gorillas,_______ the iconic (标志性的) species will serve as a“loss leader” to _______ ecotourism.

That Kamaya and his _______ of about 10 members are so used to humans is the ________ of long labors by a team of scientists who also ________ data.

They work to make ________ to protect a species ________ with extinction and to ________ foreign tourists. Spending one hour with Kamaya and his family costs $500, on top of charges for ________ to the site and accommodation.

Loango Park, which ________ more than 155,000 hectares of the thickly ________ country, offers rich reward for a 4-5-hour road ________ from Port-Gentil, the second city, followed by the track and a ________ stage by boat.

Though expensive, the price is much lower than that paid to see the mountain gorillas in Uganda or Rwanda. It also gets income to manage protected areas that ________ a safe place for the animals.

4 . Laura encourages her two kids to make crafts and drawings from old bits of packaging. She began _________ her family’s waste when she moved house and decided that she would leave all single-use _________ behind.

“It’s cheaper and you know that the item will _________ being used instead of being set aside — so it’s just perfect! Each of us play a big _________ in taking care of the environment. It’s _________ to try to help rather than just keep complaining about the current situation.”

Any glass container is _________ and repurposed for something else. This means that the family only send a piece of _________ to landfill every two weeks on average. She tries not to buy any plastic at all, but when she does, she will get it _________ washed and recycled.

The family also grow their own tomatoes, lettuce, and some other vegetables in the garden, and have orange trees outdoors. Laura has also _________ herself in a community of friends who __________ items with each other that they need, like furniture or plates.

She said, “We tried to use the minimum __________ and take over some toys and baby equipment from friends and relatives. If we really had to __________ anything, first we tried at the __________ market.”

To help educate her kids, Laura takes them out on nature walks to the forest where they __________ rubbish as they go. “They enjoy this __________, because they know it’s better for the environment,” she said.

5 . For most birds, eyes are essential to life on the fly. _________ when studying how birds might adapt to our quickly changing world, ornithologists (鸟类学家) have largely overlooked eye size in favor of traits such as wing length and beak shape. Now, though, a lost “treasure trove” (宝库) of avian (鸟的) eyeball measurements offers a new view.

In 1982 University of Chicago graduate student Stanley Ritland carefully _________ the eyeballs of nearly 2,800 species. He never published his data, but Ian Ausprey, a graduate student at University of Florida, has just given it a second look. His analysis _________ previous work in Peru showing that smaller-eyed birds adapt better to changing habitats.

“We’re able to show strong correlations between eye size, the type of _________ the birds use, as well as their food-searching behavior,” Ausprey says. Ritland’s measurements indicated an inverse relation between eye and _________ size. Birds with smaller eyes tended to be _________, traveling across many habitats; larger-eyed species had _________ ranges, concentrated around the equator (赤道) and often covered by dense forest shade. The study suggests that smaller-eyed birds can _________ handle varying light levels as they travel, whereas larger-eyed birds struggle with bright light outside of their dim woodlands.

Ausprey had already seen this _________ in Peru’s mountainous cloud forests. In these biodiversity hotspots, he says, “eye size is __________ related to how birds respond to agricultural disturbance.” Larger-eyed birds tend to __________ from brightly-lit agricultural and deforested landscapes; smaller-eyed birds adapt. The new study __________ Ausprey’s Peru observations to a wider variety of birds elsewhere, including parrots and woodpeckers.

Allison Shultz, an ornithologist involved in the research, praises it for highlighting the importance of birds’ light __________. Her own work has found a link between bird coloration and environmental light, and she looks forward to future research exploring how light pollution and deforestation might further shape bird eyes. “I’d be very curious if we’re actually seeing eyes __________ to better match newer light environments,” Shultz adds.

Ausprey says the study underscores the importance of __________ habitats across the light-availability spectrum (光谱), especially areas of dense rain forests, to protect birds with eyes of all sizes from habitat loss.

6 . Mount Tai, located just north of Tai’an city in East China’s Shandong Province, is a mountain of historical and cultural_________, with impressive views and beautiful natural scenery.

Among the Five Sacred Mountains (the other four are Heng Mountain of Hunan Province, Hua Mountain of Shaanxi Province, Song Mountain of Henan Province and Heng Mountain of Shanxi Province), Mount Tai is only the third highest. Why is it seen as the _________of the Five Sacred Mountains?

In absolute terms, Mount Tai cannot be considered as the highest of China’s mountains, but because it is_________ to the sea and rivers and rises abruptly from the relatively low hills and plains, its _________height is quite impressive, with a (an)_________ of over 1, 300 meters. _________, in Chinese culture east is regarded as a sacred direction, since it is where the sun and the moon rise. Therefore, Mount Tai is often regarded as the first of the Five Sacred Mountains. It is associated with sunrise, birth and_________,

Many Chinese emperors climbed to the top for enthronement (登基) or other significant ceremonies in ancient China, for they considered it to be a _________ of Chinese power given by master of nature. The earliest activities could _________to Xia Dynasty and Shang Dynasty, so it __________a good many of cultural relics and historic sites. Famous writers, poets and celebrities were attracted here and thousands of poems and __________ about Mount Tai are best-known nowadays.

Mount Tai is famous for its various stone inscriptions, which are the works of either ancient emperors or celebrities. The stone inscriptions__________ different bodies of calligraphy, and most of them are inscribed with beautiful diction, elegant writing style and __________ design. Besides historic relics, Mount Tai also boasts unique natural scenery, and it is well known for its__________. Overlapping mountains, gigantic rocks, centuries-old pines and cypresses (柏树), ever-changing clouds make Mount Tai __________with brightness and peaceful with miracle. As a result, it attracts lots of tourists from the whole world.

7 . Returning home from a fortnight’s holiday, we noticed there had been a lot of rain in our area. As I was checking out some pole holes that my husband, Peter, had _________, I noticed that they were a quarter _________ with rain. I was surprised to see that a little hedgehog (刺猬) had _________ into one of them.

I am still amazed that he did not _________. Peter put some gloves on, reached in and pulled the _________thing out. It was quite _________ in the evening so we put him on a _________ to keep warm and gave him some vegetables. The next morning when Peter went out to _________ the hedgehog, he was nowhere to be seen.

We didn’t see him again until six months later. It was about 8 pm when I heard a(n) _________ sound and light knocking at the front door. I opened the door, and to my __________, there was the hedgehog.

I had read somewhere that hedgehogs carry worms so I tried to __________ him out. I didn’t want him to __________ on my carpet. The children, on the other hand, were quite __________ because the hedgehogs rolled up into a __________ when they touched him. After sticking around for a few minutes, he slipped off. I came to the __________ that he had come in to thank us for saving him.

9 . Year 2020 has witnessed the nation’s battle with the novel coronavirus pneumonia (肺炎). To prevent the _________ from spreading further, people from all over China have been making changes to their everyday lives.

Most people take their _________, wear masks, wash their hands often and don’t go out _________ it’s necessary. One of the most _________ changes was that many Chinese people didn’t _________ to celebrate the Spring Festival, a tradition that _________ over 4,000 years ago.

Indeed, people have _________ chosen to stay home to prevent further human-to-human spread.

The situation is quite unusual. Many schools and places of work have _________ their return date, although that didn’t stop _________ and students from working and studying at home.

February 17 was planned to be the first day of the new term. On that day, many teachers began __________ online lessons. Bored at home, some people began to learn new things to __________ their newfound time, such as baking a cake or knitting a sweater.

The film Contagion (2011) showed the worst-case scenario (可能的情况) after a worldwide epidemic. Fortunately, the situation in China couldn’t be more __________ than the movie. Rather than __________ and food storage, everything has worked out rather well in China so far. More than 30,000 healthcare workers in over 100 medical teams gathered and thousands of __________ workers came to build hospitals in Wuhan, Hubei province. Thousands of volunteers are working nonstop to help deliver supplies and ________ the affected regions.

It’s not the first time people have come together during a natural __________. When Hurricane Katrina hit the US in 2005, over 60,000 people, from both the affected communities and outside it, __________. These helpers brought food and water, removed waste and searched for __________ victims on rooftops.

“It’s a popular myth (谬见) that when disasters strike, people fall into __________. In reality, we’re more likely to rush in to help others than run past them to __________ ourselves,” wrote American psychologist Kelly Caldwell in Pacific Standard. “It’s an exercise in mass healing (集体治疗).”

10 . Some twenty years ago, Poonam visited Ranthambore, with her husband Aditya Singh. She was _______ by a tigress with three cubs (幼崽) on a hill. At the end of the trip, she asked Aditya if they could move to the Ranthambore and he agreed.

Over the years, the couple bought about 35 acres bordering the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve on one side. The area, called Bhadlav, had _______ vegetation but has since been _______ into a green forest.

After _______ in Ranthambore, Aditya first visited the Bhadlav area with a BBC film-maker. He became _______ that the farmers were _______ their land because of the risk of predators (食肉动物) searching for food. “I just bought this and did nothing to it except _______ the aggressive species. We _______ the land to recover and now after 20 years, it has become a green forest which is frequented by all kinds of animals, including tigers.”

Not only did the couple have the _______ to let the natural habitat renew itself, they also created several water holes to ensure the wild animals have enough drinking water even during the hot summers. Because of their efforts, the ________ to the farmers in the area has been dramatically reduced. “The animals understand in this forest they get food, water and safe shelter without any ________.” Aditya explained. They have had many ________ from buyers for the land but the Singhs are not interested in selling ________ their love for nature and wildlife. “Money was never the ________,” they said.

Aditya and Poonam’s story has inspired others in the area to follow their example. Aditya has also been receiving ________ from people across India who want to create a comparable model in their own states.