Every year the world unites together on World Animal Day on Oct.4 for the improved treatment and well-being of animals everywhere.
It started in 1931
Since then, the yearly event has been used as a means of
In the past decades, China
The Chinese people have also made their voice
In the spirit of World Animal Day, we all can think of more ways
2 . No rainforest is exactly the same—yet most rainforests are now in the small land area 23.26 degrees north and 23.26 degrees south of the Equator (赤道), between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer. You can find tropical (热带的) rainforests in South America and Indonesia. Other rainforests grow well further from the Equator, in Thailand and Sri Lanka.
Despite covering a relatively small area, rainforests have a big role to play in supporting the world. Tropical rainforests are home to a rich variety of plants, food, birds and animals. Can you believe that a single bush in the Amazon may have more species of ants than the whole of Britain? Four hundred and eighty varieties of trees may be found in just one hectare of rainforest.
Rainforests are the lungs of the planet—storing huge quantities of CO2 and producing a large amount of the world’s oxygen. Rainforests have their own perfect system for ensuring their own survival.
Amazingly, the trees grow in such a way that their leaves and branches, although close together, never actually touch those of another tree. Scientists think this is a deliberate (故意的) way to prevent the spread of any tree diseases and make life more difficult for leaf-eating insects such as caterpillars.
To survive in the forest, animals must climb, jump or fly. The ground floor of the forest is not all tangled (缠结的) leaves and bushes, as in films, but is actually fairly clear. It is where leaves are destroyed slowly and turned into food for the trees and other forest life.
Worryingly, rainforests around the world are disappearing at an alarming rate, thanks to deforestation, river pollution and soil erosion (流失) as land is being lost for agriculture and trees are cut down for wood. A few thousand years ago, tropical rainforests covered as much as 12 per cent of the land surface on Earth, but today this has fallen to less than 7 per cent.
We can only hope that the world governments work together to preserve the rainforests—beautiful and important for our existence.
1. What’s the main idea of paragraph 2?| A．The area and history of rainforests. |
| B．The future development of rainforests. |
| C．Rainforests are the lungs of the planet. |
| D．Rainforests are home to animals and plants. |
| A．The leaves of two trees never touch each other. |
| B．There are few leaf-eating insects in the rainforests. |
| C．The leaves and branches of trees are close together. |
| D．The rich soil of the rainforests helps trees grow. |
| A．Rainforests cover a relatively large area. |
| B．Rainforests are under proper protection now. |
| C．Rainforests are the same as described in films. |
| D．Rainforests cover less than 7 per cent of the land surface now. |
| A．Uncared. | B．Angry. | C．Concerned. | D．Acceptable. |
3 . Olivia Sievers, a flight instructor in Germany, is a wonderful person who loves animals. Her flights frequently took her to Buenos Aires, where she had to spend 2 days in a guesthouse. Olivia was walking toward her guesthouse one day when she noticed a stray dog (流浪狗) in front of the hotel room door. She turned her head to this dog and fed him.
The dog seemed to form a relationship with the woman and started to wait for her at the entrance gate from that day forward. Olivia gave him the name Rubio. Rubio gladly rolled his eyes, lay down on one side, and decided to wait for Olivia to stroke (抚摸) his stomach.
Olivia avoided meeting the dog after that event since he always accompanied her. Rubio would obey Olivia out the door or stand in line for her outside the guesthouse anytime she left the house. He desired the focus he once received. Sometimes animals require love and affection (感情).
Olivia continued to feed the dog because she realized she couldn’t avoid interacting with him. She covered him with a blanket when it got cold.
Olivia had to fly to BA each 3 months. The guesthouse staff informed her that the dog had visited the hotel each day for months, looking forward to meeting her. Then he decided to wait for Olivia patiently. Olivia requested that Rubio be taken in by a local shelter. They consented, but nothing came of it: Rubio fled from the shelter and returned to the guesthouse.
Olivia Sievers eventually chose to adopt the dog and bring him to Germany, where Rubio had a happy fresh start. The cheerful dog quickly adjusted to his new life of leisure and play.
1. Why did Olivia go to Buenos Aires?| A．To visit a guest. | B．To adopt a dog. |
| C．To go on a vocation. | D．To go on a business trip. |
| A．He preferred Olivia’s food. | B．He could understand Olivia. |
| C．He was disappointed with Olivia. | D．He desired Olivia’s love and care. |
| A．Refused. | B．Hesitated. |
| C．Agreed. | D．Supported. |
| A．Kind and caring. | B．Generous and brave. |
| C．Ambitious and gifted. | D．Determined and proud. |
4 . Four Beautiful Gardens in the World
Giardini Botanici Villa Taranto, Italy
This beautiful garden lying in Southwest Italy is a large garden spread over 39.6 acres of land. It is one of the largest gardens in Europe and has over twenty thousand plant varieties of over one thousand species. Like French gardens, this garden too has many beautiful fountains, canals, statues and waterfalls that add to the visual appeal (视觉吸引力). There are long walkways built across the garden to let visitors walk through the flower beds.
The Longwood Garden, the United States
The Longwood Garden is one of the largest in the United States and is spread over an area of 1,077 acres. Within the area, there are over forty different types of gardens having flowers and trees from different parts of the world. There are many fountains, ponds and canals in this garden and animals like deer, beavers and many birds are permanent residents (永久居民) here.
Yuyuan Garden, China
One of the beautiful gardens of China, it was finished in 1577 by a government officer of the Ming Dynasty (1368—1644) named as Pan Yunduan. It is simplified as Garden of Happiness and is a beautiful garden lying beside the City God Temple in the northeast of the Old City of Shanghai. In the name of the garden, Yu means peace and satisfaction and it was specially planned for Pan’s parents. It is popular among tourists as “city amid mountains and woods”.
Jardin Majorelle, Morocco
One of the top tourist attractions of Morocco is a botanical garden and artist’s landscape garden lying in Morocco. The garden was created by Jacques Majorelle (French Orientalist artist) in a span of 40 years and he started it in 1923. The cubist villa (别墅) of the garden was designed by the French architect, Paul Sinoir in the 1930s. It was used as a residence (住宅) by the artist and his wife from 1923 until they get their divorce in the 1950s.
1. What is special about Giardini Botanici Villa Taranto?| A．It covers an area of 1,077 acres. | B．It is the largest garden in Europe. |
| C．It was created by a French artist. | D．It has long walkways through the flower beds. |
| A．Pan Yunduan himself. | B．Pan Yunduan’s parents. |
| C．A government officer. | D．A Chinese artist. |
| A．In 1577. | B．In 1923. | C．In 1930. | D．In 1950. |
5 . In the animal kingdom, parents adopt babies that aren’t their own, and even other species. Why do they do it?
For foster(领养) parents, there are huge costs, with no promise of passing on genes.
One of the most striking places to see adoption in the animal kingdom is AnoNuevo Island, rising from the sea less than one kilometer off the rocky California coast.
From 1976, scientist Marianne Riedman studied adoption among the seals and why it was happening. It’s a crowed beach, with high tides and rough surf, which explains why many little seals each year were separated from their mothers at least once, some permanently.
The researchers counted a total of 572 adopted little seals over the course. Interestingly, some adult seals were likely than others to become foster parents. For one thing, all the foster parents were female.
Regular nursing may cause them to give ovulation(排卵).
Another possibility is that mothers are prepared to care for their children immediately following birth.
| A．Considering the absence of their own young |
| B．Scientists have long been interested in adoption |
| C．Once a year, it is home to hundreds of northern elephant seals to give birth |
| D．Because those poor little seals can meet the seals of their own size in the foster family |
| E．That’s unsurprising, for what drives these poor little seals to seek out care is the need to nurse |
| F．In turn it could make a female more likely to give birth to her own child the following season |
| G．Only in this way can the species go on keeping its unity and power to fight against the danger |
6 . A lunar rover(月球车) has spotted a strange cube-shaped object and will change its official course to check it out, needing 2-3 months to arrive. Official observations suggest it could be a rock pushed upward from the impact(撞击) of an outside object that clearly landed next to it, or a technological relic from previous exploration, or hopefully, perhaps something that can’t be explained.
The Chinese Yutu 2 lunar rover spotted it in its cameras while passing a C-shaped enclosure on the moon’s far side. “Under the dark and deep sky, a circle of winding mountains stood on the extension line of the sky and the moon. On the side, people can’t help but admire the extraordinary work of the universe.” wrote Our Space, a Chinese -language blog connected with the national space agency. The drivers zoomed in(镜头拉近) on the pictures, slowly admiring them one by one. Suddenly, a cube on the northern skyline attracted their attention. The object looked like a “mysterious hut(小屋)”.
Right angles are unusual in nature, usually marking out something artificial if we see them through the faint light of a forest. On the moon, however, there’s not a lot of room for possibilities for a cube. After some days, the camera produced an image to share with the world of their “mysterious hut(小屋)”. The blog post suggested it could be evidence of previous moon missions, but noted the presence of a small impact crater(陨石坑) next to the cube, which could have led to the rising of rocks.
Popular Science magazine said the image could simply be pixelated, as it was taken from far away, Yutu2 landed with Chang’e 4, the first two spacecraft ever to land on the moon’s far side. They’ve in fact had the place to themselves since they arrived in 2019.
1. What can we learn about the cube from the first paragraph?| A．It will change its course soon. |
| B．It has been identified to be a rock. |
| C．It will be better observed after 2-3 months. |
| D．It’s identity is a mystery forever. |
| A．What people think of the cube. |
| B．What the cube was like when spotted. |
| C．How the cube was found. |
| D．How beautiful the universe is. |
| A．Clear | B．Unclear | C．Interesting | D．Unique. |
| A．A lunar rover sent by China 3 months ago. |
| B．The environment on the moon. |
| C．An impact crater on the moon. |
| D．A cube object spotted by China’s lunar rover on the moon. |
7 . It is well known that rhinos (犀牛) have poor eyesight, so they mostly rely on their noses to understand the world around them. But there’s one interaction in which sound plays a key role. Southern white rhino males can either be dominant (支配地位的) or subordinate. And only the dominant males hold and defend territories. New search finds that they can distinguish the calls of other males to know who is who.
“ We found that contact calls carry information about the dominance status of the males. It means that only by listening to the calls, you can say if the male is territorial or subordinate.” Ivana Cinkoval, a zoologist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.
She and her team spent almost two years in South Africa’s Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park recording the social contact calls of male rhinos. Then they played those calls back to dominant territorial males and watched the responses.
The researchers asked that the rhino calls not be included in this program due to the concern that calls might be used for illegal hunting. Back to the reactions of the rhinos.
“They started to search for the unexpected visitor the most quickly and spent the longest time searching around for the unwelcome visitor after the playback of the subordinate call, which was quite surprising.”
Only territorial male rhinos hold breeding (交配繁育) opportunities with the female rhinos. Subordinate males could thus be interested in challenging the territorial male for dominance. But dominant males rarely lose their territories to subordinate males, at least while they’re in prime condition.
1. What do dominant males rely on to identify others?| A．Sense of hearing. | B．Sense of touch. |
| C．Sense of sight. | D．Sense of smell. |
| A．To protect their intellectual property rights. |
| B．To keep people from being frightened by them. |
| C．To prevent them from being used for hunting rhinos. |
| D．To cover up the fact of illegal hunting in rhinos. |
| A．They started to search for a hiding place. |
| B．They sought for the comer quickly and carefully. |
| C．They ran away from the unexpected visitors. |
| D．They looked around with great alarm. |
| A．Territorial males’ dominance is generally stable. |
| B．Dominance males’ position is challenging. |
| C．Subordinate males are aggressive. |
| D．Subordinate males have breeding opportunities. |
8 . Southern long-finned pilot whales are marine mammals with a lot to say—and they may use vocalizations (发声) to outsmart a deadly enemy.
Cetaceans (鲸类动物) such as whales and dolphins communicate through sound to find food and mates, to navigate and to interact socially. Their vocalizations
Researchers listened to 2,028 vocalizations of long-finned pilot whales off the coast of Australia, the first time sounds from the species in this region have been
Pilot whales and orcas, the two largest species of cetaceans, are often seen in the same
Mimicry could serve as an
Additional work would
| A．range | B．vary | C．rise | D．drop |
| A．distracting | B．separating | C．forecasting | D．matching |
| A．critically | B．considerately | C．conveniently | D．comprehensively |
| A．partners | B．species | C．enemies | D．mates |
| A．identical | B．responsive | C．contrary | D．inferior |
| A．boundaries | B．societies | C．environments | D．facilities |
| A．initially | B．eventually | C．potentially | D．accidentally |
| A．Motion | B．Emission | C．Conclusion | D．Evidence |
| A．splitting | B．defending | C．dismissing | D．preventing |
| A．accessible | B．additional | C．accurate | D．adequate |
| A．unnoticed | B．uninterested | C．untouched | D．unarmed |
| A．apply to | B．turn up | C．rely on | D．put out |
| A．pursue | B．distinguish | C．demonstrate | D．struggle |
| A．claim | B．calculate | C．confirm | D．clarify |
| A．reflections | B．receptions | C．relations | D．reactions |
9 . In Shark Bay, Australia, bottlenose dolphins that aren’t related have been observed teaching each other a new way to use a tool, a behavior that until now scientists have found only in humans and other great apes. It’s also the first known example of dolphins passing on such knowledge within the same generation, rather than between generations. That’s significant, the authors say, because such social learning between peers is rare in nature.
In a practice called shelling, dolphins will chase fish into abandoned giant snail shells on the seafloor, then bring the shells to the surface and shake them with their noses, draining the water and catching the fish that fall out. In 2007, Krutzen launched a study of Shark Bay’s dolphins, identifying more than a thousand individual dolphins over 11 years. During this time, scientists observed shelling 42 times among 19 dolphins. Half of these events occurred after a marine heatwave in 2011, which may have caused a die-off among giant sea snails, leading to more abandoned shells on the seafloor.
Because of the length of their study, scientists had thorough knowledge of the individual dolphins, family histories, ages sexes, and behavior, making it easier for them to study the 19 dolphins that practiced shelling. For instance, they observed that the dolphins that practice shelling hang out with other shelling hunters, so it’s likely that they copy the action from those they spend time with, says study lead author Sonja Wild, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz in Germany. Although 42 observations are a small data set, the scientists add it’s likely the behavior is actually common; it only lasts a few seconds, making it harder for people to spot it from a boat.
The team had assumed that environmental factors — specifically, whether shelling dolphins did so simply because they lived in a shell-rich area — could explain this peer-to-peer transmission (传递). A genetic trait (遗传特性) among a family group was another possible reason.
So the researchers combined their data on the dolphin sightings, as well as genetic and environmental data, into a computer model that proposed various ways shelling could be passed on between dolphins. The model that supported this kind of transmission was the strongest outcome, according to the study.
1. What do we know about dolphins?| A．They are becoming rare in nature. |
| B．They are as intelligent as humans. |
| C．They cause more sea snails to die. |
| D．They can carry out social learning. |
| A．It could probably happen often. |
| B．It may be hard to understand. |
| C．It is actually meaningless. |
| D．It differs between dolphins. |
| A．Analyze the causes of the dolphins’ behavior. |
| B．Explain the genetic traits of shelling dolphins. |
| C．Summarize the previous paragraphs. |
| D．Get the readers to reflect on the topic. |
| A．Shelling Dolphins Face More Dangers |
| B．Dolphins Learn Tricks from Each Other |
| C．Dolphins Communicate with Sea Snails |
| D．Dolphins Abandon Their Natural Habitats |
10 . Rolling electric power blackouts afflicted(困扰) roughly 2 million California residents in August, 2020 as a heat wave gripped(影响) the Golden State. At the center of the problem is a state policy requiring that33 percent of California’s electricity come from renewable sources such as solar and wind power, rising to a goal of 60 percent by 2030. Yet data showed that power demand peaks just before the sun begins to go down, when overheated people turn up their air conditioning in the late afternoon. Meanwhile, the power output from California’s wind farms in August was erratic.
California electricity grid operators warned that power shortages might become increasingly common when heat waves hit in the coming years. California still has some natural gas power plants that can be ramped up to(提高) supply energy when renewable supplies fail. “But some folks in the environmental community want to shut down all the gas plants,” Jan Smutny-Jones, CEO of the Independent Energy Producers Association, a trade association representing solar, wind, geothermal, and gas power plants, said in August, 2020. “That would be a disaster. 60 percent of the power in the California Independent System Operator electricity network was being produced by those gas plants in this summer. They are your insurance policy to get through heat waves.”
Union of Concerned Scientists analyst Mark Specht, by contrast, said that “The solution is definitely not more natural gas plants. Really, if anything, this is an indication that California should speed up its investments in clean energy and energy storage.”
1. What can we learn from Paragraph 1?| A．The population in California is growing rapidly. |
| B．California is short of wind and solar power. |
| C．People turn up their air conditioning all the day. |
| D．The government required people to use more renewable energy |
| A．Unstable. | B．Abundant. | C．Changed. | D．Increased. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Disapproving. | C．Objective. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．More natural gas plants ought to be built in the future. |
| B．Money should be invested in clean energy early. |
| C．More energy should be produced in the summer. |
| D．California government should carry out insurance policy. |
