1 . The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the
The
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But today, they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan. How did they
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| A．islands | B．waters | C．towns | D．tanks |
| A．feed | B．enlarge | C．reduce | D．increase |
| A．slower | B．longer | C．farther | D．faster |
| A．wasted | B．spent | C．took | D．saved |
| A．quarrel | B．problem | C．conflict | D．argument |
| A．encouraged | B．advised | C．forced | D．allowed |
| A．However | B．Thus | C．Besides | D．Otherwise |
| A．through | B．between | C．among | D．beyond |
| A．price | B．value | C．cost | D．money |
| A．surprised | B．puzzled | C．tired | D．excited |
| A．stopped | B．avoided | C．built | D．faced |
| A．change | B．follow | C．manage | D．exist |
| A．already | B．even | C．also | D．still |
| A．move | B．march | C．mend | D．rise |
| A．alone | B．sleepy | C．alive | D．alike |
| A．promised | B．realized | C．predicted | D．remembered |
| A．wolves | B．lions | C．tigers | D．sharks |
| A．overcoming | B．collecting | C．obeying | D．searching |
| A．curious | B．independent | C．energetic | D．gentle |
| A．thankfulness | B．sadness | C．stillness | D．weakness |
2 . When the European Commission’s LIFE program first brought together more than 20 organizations in 2002 to rescue the lynx ( 山 猫), the species had all but disappeared. Widespread hunting and a virus had wiped out ( 彻底消灭) most of the Iberian Peninsula’s European rabbits, the lynx’s main prey (猎物).
Lynx breed in captivity ( 圈 养) easily, however. Near one main release location, Iberian lynx have even learned to live in neighborhoods, in olive groves (橄榄树丛), and around highways.
“Thanks to the work carried out over the last 20 years, the number of lynx has increased greatly,” says Francisco Javier Salcedo Ortiz, regional coordinator of the Iberian lynx recovery plan.
But the cat’s not out of danger just yet. Its thousand-square-mile territory is a collection of five — soon to be seven — isolated ( 孤 立 的) groups. For Iberian lynx to fully recover, they must be able to travel from one group to another, ensuring the species’s long-term health by diversifying gene pools. That’s why the next stage of the LIFE project will focus on creating at least 10 6-square-mile areas of rabbit-rich habitat, which act as passageways among the existing lynx groups. Scientists selected these habitats based on predictions of where lynx are most likely to travel. For instance, lynx prefer to take the shortest paths through undeveloped habitats, and avoid broken-up areas of farmland.
The cat is popular, even among farmers and landowners, but a few view lynx as pests and occasionally will poison them for supposedly harming domestic animals. Illegal killings make up nearly 25 percent of annual lynx deaths on the peninsula, the second highest cause of non-natural death, after vehicle strikes. That’s why education is the “best tool to improve the lynx population,” says Maribel García Tardío, lead technician for Andalusia’s Iberian lynx recovery plan. She and her colleagues regularly meet with landowners and hunters, explaining how lynx rarely kill larger domestic animals.
The Iberian lynx is one of 33 small-cat species, many of which are endangered or threatened. These animals have long been eclipsed by their bigger cousins such as lions and tigers, but lately people have begun to recognize the world’s little-known cats.
1. Which of the following words can best describe the Iberian lynx according to paragraph 2?| A．Active. | B．Adaptable. |
| C．Funny. | D．Dangerous. |
| A．To free existing lynx from hunger. |
| B．To set up a gene pool of existing lynx. |
| C．To turn some farmland into lynx habitat. |
| D．To help existing lynx connect with each other. |
| A．She educates landowners and hunters regularly. |
| B．She works to reduce vehicle strikes in lynx habitats. |
| C．She suggests separating lynx from large domestic animals. |
| D．She clears up the misunderstanding between landowners and hunters. |
| A．Confused with. | B．Protected from. |
| C．Keeping step with. | D．Living in the shadow of. |
A. These homes can easily collapse during earthquakes or slip and slide downhill in landslides, especially after heavy rain.
B. On the top of that, there is the added aspect of global warming. This has mainly been caused by the huge amount of carbon dioxide produced by factories and vehicles.
C. The reason why nature is beginning to turn on us is that overpopulation. The population of the world is growing at the rate of 10,000 people an hour, nearly 90 million a year.
D. The destruction of the world’s forests plays a part, too. As a result, a hotter ocean causes stronger winds. Atlantic hurricanes are 40% stronger now than they were 30 years ago.
E. Most of the growth is in the developing world. Poor people in agricultural areas often move to the cities. They build homes from whatever materials they can find.
4 . Unlike well-trained dogs that are able to distinguish (辨别) between common orders like “sit” and “stay”, some “Gifted Word Learner” dogs can associate objects with words.
One year ago, Shany Dror and her colleagues at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary discovered that some dogs have an obviously excellent natural ability to acquire object names. To study this further — how many words they can learn in a certain period of time and whether they can still remember the words after an extended period — they looked for more “Gifted Word Learner” dogs online and, in the end, they found six qualified dogs.
The researchers sent each dog’s owner six new toys. Owners then had six days to teach their dogs the names of the toys with their usual methods. These generally involved playing with the dog and each toy, often for just half an hour a day. At the end of the six-day learning period, the research team used online video conferencing to test the dogs’ abilities to pick out each toy by name from a number of old and new toys. Each owner sat with their dog in one room and told them to fetch a given toy from a second room. All the dogs successfully brought back at least five of the six new toys. The team then sent another 12 new toys and repeated the process. All the dogs successfully brought back at least 11 of the toys.
Afterwards, half the new toys were stored for one month, and the other half for two months, and the dogs were tested again after each storage period. Five of the dogs remembered all the toy names after one month, and four dogs remembered all or almost all of them after two months.
Dror says these dogs which are raised in the home like human children, provide an excellent animal model (模式) for studying the way humans acquire language. An animal model offers a basis of comparison for understanding which language-learning skills are specific to humans, and which aren’t. “We want to understand what makes humans different,” says Dror.
1. What is the research mainly about?| A．Dogs’ daily behaviors. |
| B．Dog training methods. |
| C．Dog-human relationship. |
| D．Dogs’ learning ability. |
| A．Their talent for learning object names. |
| B．Their ability to recognize human voice. |
| C．Their tendency to follow human orders. |
| D．Their intelligence to interact with human. |
| A．video games |
| B．continuous training |
| C．counting toys |
| D．playing outdoors |
5 . Many plants and animals live together, and they depend on each other. They are usually very different from their sharing partner, and yet all live easier lives because of each other. It is nature’s idea of sharing.
An example of this is the shark and pilot fish. The pilot fish is a little guy and he would be helpless if he hung around by himself in the great ocean. But his smartness makes up for his size. He cleverly swims along beside the shark and when the shark eats, the pilot fish gets the leftovers. The shark also benefits from this relationship. The pilot fish cleans food scraps (碎屑) and insects from the shark’s skin.
Another example is the sea anemone (海葵) and striped clown fish. The sea anemone looks like a flower but contains poisonous cells. When small fish swim into it, the anemone traps and paralyzes (使麻痹) them. However, the striped clown fish is able to swim into the poisonous anemone without being harmed. To pay for his safety, the clown fish brings food to the anemone. He also guides other fish into the anemone’s deadly trap.
Large mammals such as the ox, antelope and African buffalo form such a relationship with the oxpecker (牛椋鸟). They provide daily meals to the bird that eats insects. The various large mammals act as a restaurant with a varied menu for the oxpecker. What do they get in return from the bird? Free beauty treatments!
Some plants live together in a beneficial relationship. Fungus (菌类) does not have chlorophyll (叶绿素) that plants need to make food. However, the green alga (海藻) does contain chlorophyll. It is, therefore, able to feed the fungus along with itself. But nothing is free! The fungus repays it by protecting the alga. Since it takes in and stores water, it can provide the alga with an unending water supply.
1. Why does the pilot fish swim along beside the shark?| A．Because he likes eating the waste given off by the shark. |
| B．Because he can help the shark get food. |
| C．Because he can get food and protection. |
| D．Because he needs the help of the shark to lead his way. |
| A．paralyzes small fish for him | B．helps him catch other fish |
| C．does some cleaning work | D．warns him of the danger |
| A．Energy and light. | B．Energy and light. |
| C．Light and chlorophyll | D．Chlorophyll and water. |
| A．①→②③④⑤ | B．①→②③→④⑤ |
| C．①②③④→⑤ | D．①②③→④⑤ |
6 . My sister Alice and I have been trying to get people to stop dropping cigarette butts (烟头) for seven years. One day, we were walking in our hometown and saw hundreds of cigarette butts on the ground. They made the town look so ugly that we decided to start a group to make people stop dropping butts. We called it “No Butts About It”.
At first, we drew pictures with “The Earth is not your ashtray (烟灰缸)” written on them. We put the pictures around our hometown — in parks, on beaches, and along roads. We wanted to make people understand that dropping butts hurts the environment. Most smokers don’t think that dropping butts hurts the Earth. But it does, and all rubbish does!
Later, we wrote to companies and asked them for money to help us. We used the money to buy ashtrays and gave them to smokers. We wanted smokers to carry the ashtrays with them so they didn’t have to drop butts.
At the moment, we are trying to get cigarette companies to put an ashtray in each pack of cigarettes. Some companies want to do it. Many people have started to join our group since it began. Today there are 45 other “No Butts About It” groups in America.
Now there are even groups in England, Australia, and India! Many newspapers have written about my sister and me over the last seven years. And we have won many prizes for what we do. But we are not interested in prizes. We just want to make the Earth a better and cleaner place for animals, plants and people. One day, it will be.
1. What did the writer think about the cigarette butts in the first place?| A．They made the town smelly. |
| B．They made the town unhealthy. |
| C．They made the town dirty. |
| D．They made the town poor. |
| A．Gave ashtrays to the smokers. |
| B．Stopped people buying cigarettes. |
| C．Picked up the cigarette butts. |
| D．Won prizes for starting groups. |
| A．No companies wanted to give money to them. |
| B．The writer believes that the Earth will be a better and cleaner place. |
| C．There are only 45 “No Butts About It” groups in the world. |
| D．The writer likes to be on newspapers and win prizes. |
| A．Save our town from cigarette butts |
| B．Buy yourself an ashtray |
| C．Cigarette butts also destroy other countries |
| D．No butts prizes |
7 . Standing out from the crowd isn’t always a good thing.
Birds with uncommon traits like big beaks(喙), long tails and extended wings are more likely to be threatened and face extinction, new research finds.
“We are fascinated by the diversity of the planet’s bird species. At the same time, we are deeply concerned about the threats these birds face,” lead author Jarome Ali, a PhD candidate at Princeton University, says. Ali completed the research at Imperial College London.
For their work, researchers analyzed measurement data collected from 9, 943 bird species, which are about 99% of all living bird species. The information came from both living birds as well as museum specimens(标本). The measurements included beak size and shape, as well as the length of legs, tails and wings. Researchers combined the information on physical traits with the birds’ risk of extinction. Next, they ran simulations(模拟) about what would occur if the most threatened birds were to become extinct.
“All our simulations showed that extinction has worse effects on the diversity of bird shapes than we expected. This is deeply concerning, but not shocking given that we first found that threatened birds were more unique than non-threatened birds,” Ali says.
The researchers weren’t sure what could explain the link between unusual birds and their extinction risk. “Unique birds are likely to play specialized roles in the ecosystem. One possible explanation is that as habitats come under threat, these specialized roles are likely to be the first to be targeted,” Ali says. “For example, if you were a hummingbird and specialized to feed on a small subset of plants, then damage to your habitat would be worse than if you were a less unique bird that eats a whole range of foods.”
“The loss of these rare birds has an impact on the environment because their role in the ecosystem is lost,” Ali says. “Our findings imply that we cannot simply hope that non-threatened species will come in and fill the role of the threatened species.”
1. What did the researchers do for the study?| A．They only focused on living bird species. |
| B．They analyzed data on most bird species. |
| C．They saved a number of threatened birds. |
| D．They made a map of all the extinct birds. |
| A．Relief. | B．Disappointment. | C．Surprise. | D．Concern. |
| A．Rare threatened bird species’ role is unique. |
| B．The loss of rare birds is actually unavoidable. |
| C．Non-threatened species will take the leading role. |
| D．The impact of bird loss can be easily controlled. |
| A．Rare birds are the future of the ecosystem. |
| B．Birds with rare features have lost their place. |
| C．The current ecosystem is going unbalanced. |
| D．Unusual birds are more likely to go extinct. |
1.当前的环境问题。
2.提出环保倡议。
注意：
1.词数100左右;
2.短文的题目和首句已为你写好。
Protect our planet
June 5th was named by UN in 1972 as World Environment Day.
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9 . Harbour seals may sound different than expected from their body size. Is this ability related to their vocal (声音的) talents or is it the result of an anatomical (身体结构上的) adaptation? An international team of researchers led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen investigated the vocal tracts of harbour seals, which matched their body size. This means that harbour seals are capable of learning new sounds thanks to their brains rather than their anatomy.
Most animals produce calls that reflect their body size. A larger animal will sound lower-pitched because its vocal tract, the air-filled tube that produces and filters sounds, is longer. But harbour seals do not always sound like they look. They may sound larger —perhaps to impress a rival (对手)—or smaller—perhaps to get attention from their mothers. Are these animals very good at learning sounds (vocal learners), or have their vocal tracts adapted to allow this vocal flexibility?
To answer this question, PhD student Koen De Reus and senior investigator Andrea Ravignani from the MPI worked together with researchers from Sealcentre Pieterburen. The team measured young harbour seals’ vocal tracts and body size. The measurements were taken from 68 young seals (up to twelve months old) who had died. The team also re-analysed previously gathered harbour seal vocalisations to confirm their impressive vocal flexibility.
De Reus and Ravignani found that the length of harbour seals’ vocal tracts matched their body size. There were no anatomical explanations for their vocal skills. Rather, the researchers argue that only vocal learning can explain why harbour seals do not always sound like they look. “Vocal learners will sound different from their body size, but the size of their vocal tracts will match their body size. The combined findings from acoustic (听觉的) and anatomical data may help us to identify more vocal learners,” says de Reus. “Studying different vocal learners may help us to find the biological bases of vocal learning and shed light on the evolution of complex communication systems, such as speech.” “The more we look, the more we see that seals have something to say about human speech capacities.” adds Ravignani.
1. What can we learn from the passage?| A．Harbour seals’ voice matches their body size. |
| B．If harbour seals were in danger, they would sound larger. |
| C．The young harbour seals produce higher-pitched sound than the old. |
| D．Harbour seals have their vocal tracts adapted to allow their vocal flexibility. |
| A．To explain why harbour seals’ voice is flexible. |
| B．To confirm the flexibility of harbour seals’ voice. |
| C．To find out the relation between harbour seals’ vocal tracts and their body size. |
| D．To prove harbour seals are capable of learning new sound because of their anatomy. |
| A．Seals have something to do with humans. |
| B．Studying seals contributes to improving humans speech capacities. |
| C．The more we know about seals’ vocal learning, the better our speech will be. |
| D．The deeper insight into seals’ vocal learning contributes to human speech capacities. |
| A．Harbour Seals’ Voice | B．Harbour Seals’ Vocal Skills |
| C．Harbour Seals’ Vocal Learning | D．Harbour Seals’ Vocal Adaptation |
10 . Moscow-based photographer Anastasiya Dobrovolskaya is not a typical “pet photographer.” Her trademark photos look like something out of a fairy tale, but everything is real - from beautiful and unique people to breathtaking landscapes, and various animals you wouldn’t expect to pose alongside people. Tigers, owls, horses… anything you can think of is featured in Dobrovolskaya’s incredible portfolio, including the most wanted bear model, Stepan, who was rescued as a cub and raised by loving humans.
In July of 2018, Anastasiya started taking photos by accident. After three failed attempts at photography, giving up trying, and finding her way to photography again, she received a message from a woman who wanted a photo shoot with a rooster. Although she had never photographed people with animals and didn’t have much experience altogether, she took on a challenge and fell in love. In a week, she photographed an owl, then a horse, and it kicked off from there with some of her photos going viral online. It was enough to quit her job and pursue a career in commercial photography.
The 30-year-old photographer takes dreamlike photos that capture the magical bond between animals and humans and show how beautifully diverse, yet similar they are. “In my work, I want to show common features between people and animals so that animals become more respected by people and people will do their best to minimize the harm they do to nature.” She says.
However, some people accuse her of using animals - animals suffer during photoshoots, and so on. But they don’t even know how far they are from the truth. In most cases, the animals were rescued from poor conditions, from fur factories, or were abandoned by the owners. Almost all large animals live in the countryside, in spacious areas, in specially equipped enclosures (场所) with regular walking. Each animal feeds on the basis of its species. “Only those animals with a certain character are selected for the photoshoots, and the process is almost always very comfortable.” explained the photographer.
The photographer now has an astonishing 179,000 followers on Instagram—an audience that has become a source of endless support, energy, and inspiration.
1. What is the meaning of the underlined word “portfolio” in Paragraph 1?| A．Exhibitions. | B．Photography works. |
| C．News reports. | D．Self-introduction. |
| A．The life of animals. | B．The love for animals. |
| C．The harm humans bring to animals. | D．The similar characteristics between humans and animals. |
| A．A tiger running after a deer. | B．A stream winding through a valley. |
| C．A boy playing with his kitten. | D．A bird resting on a cow’s shoulder. |
| A．The animals are badly treated. |
| B．Few people appreciate the photos. |
| C．The photographer has worked on photography. |
| D．The photos may arouse people’s awareness of nature protection. |
