1 . My first dependant was a duck called Mr. Kite. As a cream-faced four-year-old, it was my job at the nursery to turn the eggs in the incubator (恒温箱) every day: one side “O”, the other side “X”.
We lived in a small, inner-city house with a long, thin garden in east Oxford at the time. As a gentle-hearted vet's (兽医的) daughter, my mum couldn't resist adopting these ducks. I named them Buttercup, Mr. Kite and Drakey. We made them a pond. The bottom was a mosaic (马赛克) made from all the bits of plate and cup that had been broken during family rows. Within 30 seconds,the pond was so full of duck droppings that we never saw the mosaic again.
One of the most magical moments during my caring for ducks was the night it snowed. Mum, over whelmed by pity and grandmotherly concern, insisted that Mr. Kite and her friends — yes, Mr. Kite was female — be spared another freezing night in the wooden house my dad had built for them at the end of the garden; we caught them, flapping and shouting, and brought them in to sleep in the kitchen.Have you ever seen three ducks go wild in a tiny kitchen? It was one of the best moments of my childhood. It smelled like the underside of hell's socks by the time they had left.
I used to spend my summers lazing in a swimming pool with Mr. Kite and the others. Eventually, though, our neighbour complained that they were being woken at 4:45 a.m.. So, the feathered three went to live with an old couple in the country. Fair enough — you don't move to the city to have the dawn torn apart by quacking — although it must have made a change from student parties and the sound of 19-year-olds being sick by the bins.
I wonder now if this early experience of duck adoption is the reason that, at least three times a week, what ever the weather, you will find me swimming in the Thames or a nearby lake with the ducks. Although they never say hello.
1. Why were there marks of “O” and “X” on eggs?A.To have fun. | B.To count the eggs. |
C.To tell sides apart. | D.To distinguish males from females. |
A.Family preference. |
B.A nursery assignment. |
C.The mother's occupation. |
D.Neighbour' support. |
A.The ducks' smells drove the author mad. |
B.The energetic ducks brought much pleasure. |
C.The ducks were hard to feed in cold weather. |
D.The ducks were offered luxury accommodation. |
A.Rejecting firmly. | B.Ignoring deliberately. |
C.Explaining patiently. | D.Accepting unwillingly. |
2 . Since the 1950s, some 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced globally, of which only about 10% has ever been recycled. Yet environmentally conscious companies and consumers continue to look to recycling as a way to ease the plastic problem. Manufacturing giants claim to be committed to making more of their products and packaging from recycled materials. However, this confidence masks (掩饰) a complex web of issues around plastic recycling. Recycling rates remain extremely low and critics argue that we should look at alternative ways to tackle plastic pollution.
While many plastics have the potential to be recycled, most are not because the process is costly, complicated and the resulting product of a lower quality than the original. Despite rising demand for recycled plastic, few waste companies turn a profit. Part of this is because virgin plastic-linked to oil prices - is often cheaper than recycled plastic, meaning there is little economic incentive to use it. Worse yet, much of our plastic waste is difficult to recycle. Lightweight food packaging, like a mozzarella packet, contains different plastics, dyes and toxic additives (添加剂). This dirty mix means plastic recycled through mechanical methods- the most common form- can only be melted down and moulded (浇铸,塑造) again a couple of times before it becomes too fragile to be reused. And the nature of the process means plastic recycling has a carbon footprint of its own.
Given all of these difficulties, environmental critics say recycling is not the solution-and argue that creating more products from recycled material to attract environmental consciousness merely worsens the problem. “The solution is to use less plastic and to stop misleading the public about the recyclability,” says Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, a US campaign group with a mission to end single-use plastic. “They should stop making false claims about the recyclability of plastics since they know most will either be littered (乱扔) or burned or landfilled (填埋). Using less plastics means shifting to reusable products and relying more on paper, cardboard, glass and metal- -all of which should be made from recycled content.”
1. What is an environmentally conscious customer’s attitude towards recycling plastics?A.Suspicious. | B.Favorable. | C.Indifferent. | D.Disapproving. |
A.motive. | B.issue. | C.crisis. | D.policy. |
A.The recycling process of plastics. | B.Pollutants contained in recycled plastics. |
C.Reasons why users dislike recycled plastics. | D.Contributing factors to low plastic recycling rates. |
A.Using metal or glass food containers. | B.Littering recycled plastics in a landfill. |
C.Processing plastics in a mechanical way. | D.Launching campaigns to promote recyclability. |
3 . In parts of Africa, people communicate with a wild bird — the greater honeyguide-in order to locate bee habitats and harvest their stores of honey. It’s a rare example of cooperation between humans and wild animals, and a potential instance of cultural coevolution (共同进化). Brian Wood from UCLA and Claire Spottiswoode from University of Cape Town were lead authors on a study showing how this valuable partnership is maintained and varies across cultures.
“Our study demonstrates the bird’s ability to learn distinct voiced signals that are traditionally used by different honey-hunting communities, expanding possibilities for mutually beneficial cooperation with people,” Wood said. “Honeyguides seem to know the landscape well, gathering knowledge about the location of bee nests, which they then share with people,” Spottiswoode said. “People are eager for the bird’s help.” The honeyguides also benefit from locating the colonies: They eat the leftover honeycomb.
Spottiswoode and Wood’s study was done in cooperation with the Hadza in Tanzania, with whom Wood has been conducting research since 2004, and the Yao community of northern Mozambique. Their prior work in both communities documented differences in how each culture attracts honeyguides. Among the Hadza, a honey-hunter announces a desire to partner with the bird by whistling. In Mozambique, Yao honey-hunters do so with a “Brr!”... followed by a “...hmm!”
Using mathematical models and audio playback experiments, the team studied these signals, their usefulness to people and their impacts on birds. They experimentally exposed honeyguides in Tanzania and Mozambique to the same set of prerecorded sounds. This enabled the researchers to test whether honeyguides had learned to recognize and prefer the specialized signals that local honey-hunters used or were naturally attracted to all such signals.
The honeyguides in Tanzania were over three times more likely to cooperate when hearing the calls of local Hadza people than the calls of ‘foreign’ Yao. The honeyguides in Mozambique were almost twice as likely to cooperate when hearing the local Yao call, compared to the ‘foreign’ Hadza whistles.
The study proposes that differences in honeyguide-attracting signals are not random, but make practical sense. While honey-hunting, both the Hadza and Yao come across mammals (哺乳动物), but only the Hadza hunt them, using bows and arrows. The Hadza’s hunting might explain the less notable whistles they use. Filmed interviews show Hadza hunters explaining that they can evade being detected by their prey (猎物) because their whistles “sound like birds.” Contrarily, the signal the Yao use to communicate with the honeyguide can help scare off animals they find dangerous.
1. By cooperating with honey-hunting communities, honeyguides can _____.A.nest near human culture |
B.locate bee habitats easier |
C.have access to more food |
D.become familiar with the landscape |
A.To study their mathematical models. |
B.To check if they are a natural preference. |
C.To investigate their usefulness to humans. |
D.To see if they increase birds’ ability to find honey. |
A.The human-bird relationship can change with new signals. |
B.The Yao community hunts animals while looking for bee nests. |
C.The honeyguides are more responsive to calls from the local people. |
D.The signals from the Hadza were more effective in attracting honeyguides. |
A.How mammals react to different signals. |
B.How hunting techniques are applied to prey. |
C.How whistles enable honeyguides to find targets. |
D.How signals are associated with hunting practice. |
4 . A sleeping animal cannot look for food or flee from danger. But the fact that sleep is widespread among animals shows its restorative powers are essential. Some animals, though, try to have their cake and eat it. Dolphins and ducks sleep with half their brains, leaving the other half on guard. A paper in Science by Dr Le reports another innovative workaround. Chinstrap penguins take their sleep in thousands of naps, tiny micro- sleeps-or at least when they are nesting.
Chinstraps sleep with either their whole brain or just one half. Data confirmed they sleep in the ocean or on land. Ducks sleep in long periods, while the penguins nod of for several seconds at a time, hundreds of times an hour. The naps average 4 seconds in length; 72% lasted less than 10 seconds. Micro-sleeps aren’t unknown. Exhausted humans, like jet-lagged (倒时差) tourists and parents of newborn babies, can experience them. Totaling the duration, the researchers concluded Chinstraps get around 12 hours of sleep daily.
Two explanations are given for Chinstraps’ sleep pattern. The first is to do with external threats. Penguins hatch eggs alone while their partners are away seeking for food. Colonies (领地) are threatened by big birds that’ll steal unattended eggs. Broken sleep is a clever strategy of getting some shut-eye during long egg-guarding periods.
Penguins with nests near the edge of the colony are at greater risk than those in the centre, but enjoy more extended naps. The second is threats from within, as penguin colonies are noisy, crowded places. They steal nesting materials from careless neighbors, so penguins in the crime-ridden centre find it harder to sleep than those in the safer suburbs.
Choosing between those theories requires more research. Dr Lee said, “Nor can we measure how restorative such naps are. Chinstraps are evidently able to hatch their young under such conditions, which suggests they’re getting something from their constant nodding-off. So, humans nurturing their newborns should take heart.”
1. Why do dolphins and ducks sleep with only one side of their brains?A.To enjoy their cake. | B.To establish a nice nest. |
C.To be watchful during naps. | D.To obtain high-quality sleep. |
A.Engaging in numerous naps a day. | B.Sleeping nowhere beyond the ocean. |
C.Ranging from 4 seconds to 12 hours. | D.Always sleeping with the entire brain. |
A.Penguins live safely in natural colonies. | B.Penguins encounter a variety of challenges. |
C.Penguins hatch their eggs away from colony. | D.Penguins at the core of the colony sleep longer. |
A.Their duration is hard to detect. | B.They distract the restorative effects. |
C.Adopting them aids human newborns. | D.Taking this sleep mode favors penguins. |
5 . In the animal world, speed is king. Fast animals have a leg up in outrunning other animals, which puts them high on the food chain. It would seem that all animals would go for speed, but then there’s the sloth (树懒). While a lion can go from 0 to 60 miles an hour in only five seconds, it takes a sloth all day to cover no more than 50 meters.
Sloths live entirely in trees on a diet of leaves. And for this, they are extremely rare. While most of the land world is covered in trees, there are very few vertebrates (脊椎动物) that call the tree home. The aim of a 2016 study, says Jonathan Pauli, a University of Alabama professor of forest and wildlife ecology, was to help uncover why sloths are indeed so unique. “Among vertebrates, this is the rarest of lifestyles”, says Pauli. “When you picture animals that live off plant leaves, they are almost all big-things like deer. What’s super interesting about sloths is that they can’t be big.”
For their research, Pauli and his Wisconsin team studied wild sloths at a field site. When the researchers measured the energy use of sloths, they found a wildly low burning of as little as 110 calories of energy a day. And for this, they take the cake: it is the lowest measured energetic output for any mammal (哺乳动物).
“The measurement was intended to find out what it cost sloths to live over a day,”says Pauli, who adds that a diet of little but leaves lacks nutritional value and the animal’s small size doesn’t allow for overeating-so sloths need to find ways to make the most of their diets, which means using tiny amounts of energy, dramatic control of body temperature and living at an extremely slow pace.
Their reward? A wonderfully widespread ecological system to call their own, one slow inch at a time.
1. Why is a lion mentioned in Paragraph 1?A.To admire lions’ speed. | B.To state sloths’ weakness. |
C.To confirm lions’ lead position. | D.To highlight sloths’ uniqueness. |
A.The lifestyle of sloths. | B.The diet of vertebrates. |
C.The species of rare animals. | D.The energy use of creatures. |
A.Break down. | B.Keep on. | C.Stand out. | D.Grow up. |
A.Their slow pace is a balanced choice. |
B.They are in face of possible extinction. |
C.Their slow pace decides a tiny appetite. |
D.They suffer a lot against natural enemies. |
6 . Whenever I order food for delivery, I play a little game to guess how many sets of tableware(餐具)the restaurant will provide with my meal. Sometimes restaurants will throw in two, three or four sets for just one order. But I rarely need any tableware at all, and the waste goes into the trash or collects dust in a kitchen drawer.
Researchers working with Chinese technology group Alibaba tried a simple approach to this problem. Instead of just wastefully doling out tableware, the company required food-delivery customers in some cities in China to pick how many sets of tableware they wanted to receive.The default (默认设置)was set at zero. The result, published today in the journal Science, was a 638% increase in the share of no-tableware orders. If applied across China, researchers found, the approach would save nearly 22 billion sets of plastic tableware. The study doesn’t cover carbon emissions, but it’s safe to say that the impact would be significant. It struck me as a useful reminder of the many low-hanging fruits across the economy that can cut waste, and emissions.
Nudging its customers cost Alibaba nothing more than a few hours of software engineering time and the impact it brought was immense. The concept of nudging comes from the field of behavioral economics known as nudge theory. It suggests that a slight action can encourage good human behavior without the need for policies that limit choice or economic punishment that raises the cost of bad behavior. To nudge customers to eat better, for example, a restaurant might organize its menu by listing healthy options first and bury unhealthy ones at the bottom. More recently, some big companies like Google have also begun to use nudges to advance climate objectives.
Behavioral economics broadly, and nudges more specifically, aren’t without controversy. Some might think it assigns consumers responsibility for addressing environmental challenges. But there is another way to look at it. In the absence of necessary policy—and policy is needed一companies can help encourage a widespread shift of consumer behavior.
And all of that behavioral change can add up. The International Energy Agency found in 2021 that small behavioral changes in energy consumption such as walking instead of driving and adjusting the thermostat could in total shave off 4% of global emissions. The more that companies can do to facilitate such changes, the better.
1. What did Alibaba do with tableware waste?A.It stopped restaurants from handing out tableware. |
B.It withdrew unused tableware from customers. |
C.It updated the food -delivery device regularly. |
D.It allowed picking tableware at customers’ demand. |
A.Easily accessible things. | B.Fast increasing orders. |
C.Exceptionally tough choices. | D.Widely accepted strategies. |
A.It brings about economic loss. |
B.It results from consumption policies. |
C.It indicates small action changes behaviour. |
D.It implies bad behaviour impacts economy. |
A.Nudge theory affects behaviors. |
B.Good behaviors boost economy. |
C.Nudging helps build a greener world. |
D.Behavioral economics benefits customers. |
7 . When most kids go to the beach, they’re too focused on making sandcastles and splashing around to notice litter, but several years ago, for 7-year-old Cash Daniels, noticing a plastic straw sparked a lifelong passion for saving the planet.
Cash, who is now known as the “conservation kid”, has always loved nature. He grew up fishing along the Chattanooga River, after all! But once he learned that 80 percent of all trash from land and rivers ends up in the ocean, he couldn’t sit back.
He started with cleanups along the river, something that quickly went from a family affair to a community effort with volunteers and neighbors. In 2019, Cash, together with a Canadian conservationist, Ella Galaski-Rossen, started a nonprofit called the Cleanup Kids. Despite living in different countries, they managed to create educational videos on their YouTube channel. “We hope to be a really big nonprofit that eliminates plastic in the U. S. and Canada,” Cash said. “We want to inform kids and adults in the landlocked states of how their actions are connected to the water and the ocean,” Cash said.
Cash was selected as one of America’s top 10 youth volunteers of 2021 by the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards. He also earned the title of National Honoree, where he received a$5,000 grant to go to a nonprofit of his choice, and he became the first person to win the Youth Conservationist Award two years in a row from the Tennessee Wildlife Federation.
“I want to travel the world, teach others, and help them feel connected to the ocean. Because if you are connected to the ocean-if you love it and what lives in it—you’ll want to protect it,” he said. “This is my fun, and it becomes more fun with every new discovery.”
1. Which can replace the underlined words “sit back” in paragraph 2?A.Fall asleep. | B.Lose heart. |
C.Turn a blind eye. | D.Lend a hand. |
A.To recycle waste plastics. |
B.To make instructive videos. |
C.To spread marine knowledge. |
D.To appeal for ocean protection. |
A.Sympathetic and devoted. | B.Initiative and talented. |
C.Ambitious and humorous. | D.Determined and modest. |
A.Passion fuels dreams. |
B.Great minds think alike. |
C.Helping others is of great fun. |
D.Actions speak louder than words. |
1. When did the earthquake happen?
A.On Wednesday night. | B.On Thursday morning. | C.On Thursday afternoon. |
A.Forty people lost their lives. |
B.At least 110 people were injured. |
C.A railway was nearly destroyed. |
A.Help the victims. | B.Tell some survival skills. | C.Check the highways. |
9 . Leave-No-Trace Camping
For those of us who love spending time in the great outdoors, wild spaces are very special. These are places we visit to recharge, or to fill our hearts with natural beauty.
Its principles are to treat the wilderness the way a decent visitor would and leave everything just as you found it, with no evidence that you passed through.
You can carry out these ideals in a number of ways. Begin by packing out all your litter. Whenever you go camping, take an empty trash bag with you and put all garbage into the bag. In addition, try not to damage vegetation.
It’s also important that you should not take things away from the wilderness. Rocks, plants, flowers and seashells are all part of the natural landscape.
Leave-No-Trace camping is about being respectful and thoughtful. It’s about honoring the natural world and the creatures that live in it. If you love seeing an untouched mountain stream or a lovely field of wildflowers, then you’ve already taken the first step.
A.This means not stepping into a wild animal’s space. |
B.This is also called “low impact” or “no impact” camping. |
C.Once taken away, they won’t be there for others to enjoy. |
D.An increasing number of people take up camping in the wilderness. |
E.When you put up your tent, try to find a place that’s already bare of plants. |
F.We hate to see them littered with rubbish or any reminders of previous visitors. |
G.Follow these basic practices and you can be models of the Leave-No-Trace philosophy. |
10 . Raising a litter of teething wolf pups (幼崽) is not easy, but the wolves living in Yellowstone National Park are parenting experts. This spring, the park’s biologists shot a video of adult wolves repeatedly returning to their den (窝) with so-called “toys”—in the form of bones and sticks—to keep their little ones happy between meals.
Once they stop eating their mother’s milk, pups rely on adults to go out, hunt, and then bring back food to the den. But when that’s not possible, the adults instead retrieve odd items for the wolf pups to play with.
“Pups wait for food deliveries from successful hunts, but in the absence of food, adults bring ‘toys’,” the park wrote on Facebook. “The behavior of bringing items back to the den may be enhanced from generation to generation and probably helps keep adults from being surrounded by sharp puppy teeth.”
The adult wolves are part of “Mollie’s Pack”, one of ten known wolf packs living within Yellowstone as of January 2023. This particular pack is named after Mollie Beattie, who in 1993 became the first woman to serve as director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
Beattie, who died in 1996, advocated for the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park to help rebalance the ecosystem after the animals were systematically killed within the park Wolf reintroduction was a highly controversial initiative that many people opposed. And yet, Beattie and other wildlife managers ultimately achieved their vision and successfully relocated 41 wolves from western Canada to the park between 1995 and 1997. Today, that number has blossomed to at least 108 wolves living in Yellowstone.
Today, gray wolves are protected under the Endangered Species Act in many states. In late 2020, the administration removed the animals from the endangered list. But in February 2022, they were re-listed as endangered after a judge reversed the decision.
1. What does the underlined word “retrieve” in paragraph 2 probably mean?A.Hide. | B.Fetch. | C.Decorate. | D.Design. |
A.Pups of any kind are playful by nature. |
B.Wolves are intelligent enough to make toys. |
C.Finding food is becoming harder and harder. |
D.Wolves’ “toy-delivery” behavior may be more obvious in later generations. |
A.She helped rebalance the ecosystem in Yellowstone. |
B.She got involved in drawing up the Endangered Species Act. |
C.She succeeded in reintroducing 108 wolves to Yellowstone. |
D.She established the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. |
A.The reason why gray wolves were considered as endangered again. |
B.The factors that contribute to the wolves’ behavior. |
C.People’s response to the Endangered Species Act. |
D.The change in gray wolves’ population. |