1 . Imagine the sound of a dog walking across a tile floor, the “click, click, click” of its claws tapping against the ground. Now, imagine a cat walking across the same floor — the difference is the cat moves in total silence. Cats can fully retract (缩回) their claws, giving them superior ability to remain silence.
But why do cats have retractable claws, whereas dogs do not?
It all comes down to how cats and dogs use their claws. Cats use their claws primarily to attack their target, said Anthony Russell, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. They use their front claws to grab and hold on to their target and their back claws to cut open the target’s belly.
Cats need to keep their claws sharp to secure that next meal. Extended all the time, their claws would get less sharp as they scrape the ground, much like how a nail file deals with sharp points on a human fingernail.
Dogs, on the other hand, are social hunters. They work in groups to take down larger animals, wearing their target out over longer distances. For dogs, “if you’re hunting a moose or something, you wander along for kilometres and bite it until it is fatigued, and then you all jump on it,” Russell said. “Whereas cats essentially have a short burst, and then it’s over. Either the target gets away, or the target is captured.”
With more hunters working together, it’s less important for dogs to be able to grab and hold onto their target, so they don’t have to keep their claws as sharp. Sheer numbers are enough to give them the advantage.
But dogs’ claws aren’t completely useless. Dogs’ claws help them stand firmly on the earth and change directions quickly — a useful adaptation for pursuing target over long distances.
In nature’s silent dance, cats’ retractable claws are knives for quick attacks, while dogs’ strong claws make them good chasers. Each claw tells a tale of adaptation made to their unique hunting styles.
1. Where is the text most probably taken from?| A．An animal novel. | B．A scientific report. | C．A zoology magazine. | D．A pet keeping guide. |
| A．Hungry. | B．Scared. | C．Wounded. | D．Exhausted. |
| A．Cats use front claws to grab and kill the target. |
| B．Dogs use claws to attack and wear their targets out. |
| C．Cats stop hunting if the target escapes from the first attack. |
| D．Dogs work together to capture their targets in a shorter time. |
| A．Cats are better adapted to hunting than dogs. |
| B．Claws are more important for cats than for dogs. |
| C．The sharper the claws, the more efficient the hunt. |
| D．Cats and dogs find different ways to survive in nature. |
2 . From the deserts of Southern California to the forests of Alaska, the U.S. possesses a diversity of nature. For most of her life, Joy Ryan never saw the scenery beyond her home state of Ohio. Then, when she was in her mid-eighties, her grandson Brad Ryan decided to take her on a journey to all of the U.S. National Parks, which took eight years to complete. At the age of 93, Grandma Joy has finally seen all 63 parks, ending her journey in the National Park of American Samoa.
“When I learned she had never seen the great wildernesses of America — deserts, mountains, oceans, I decided to intervene (干预) in some way,” Brad says. This idea sparked their first trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. However, once they were on the road, Brad realised that they could visit more parks that were nearby. Over the years, they managed to see all of the famous sights at Yosemite, the Redwoods, and so on. But Brad values the time spent with his grandmother just as much as the breathtaking places they were able to visit.
Despite Grandma Joy’s older age, she was able to hike mountains. Brad regards her love for life as the key to her good health. She is grateful for each new day and is always Excited for the next journey. Finally, their long journey across the U.S. came to an end with American Samoa. “It’s about 6,700 miles from Ohio, where we live,” Brad explains. “We can enjoy the beach and the beautiful tropical paradise. But as we’ve learned from the rangers that work there, American Samoa is an island community firmly rooted in family. And I think that there’s a bit of a poetic beauty to ending it there, too.”
“I am thankful every morning for giving me another day,” Grandma Joy shares. “And it is your choice whether you’re going to have a rainy day or a sunny day. So, smile at everybody, and let everybody know you’re having a whale of a time.” While her tour of the U.S. has come to a close, she and her grandson are not done traveling. Next up, they have their sights set on Kenya.
1. Why did Brad decide to travel across America with his grandma?| A．To celebrate Grandma Joy’s 93rd birthday. |
| B．To complete a task he promised Grandma Joy. |
| C．To enrich Grandma Joy’s travelling experiences. |
| D．To realise Grandma Joy’s dream of visiting parks. |
| A．Free and adventurous. | B．Tiring but educational. |
| C．Stressful but eye-opening. | D．Amazing and worthwhile. |
| A．The friendly locals. | B．The family bond. | C．The special culture. | D．The beautiful sights. |
| A．Stay Curious, Stay Young | B．It’s Never too Old to Hit the Road |
| C．Laughter is the Best Medicine | D．Travelling Contributes to Long Life |
3 . I’ve had many opportunities to experience living in a foreign culture. But my first experience came in an
With my moving north came culture
My first reaction was fear: I feared I would
I learned quickly never to
“By the end of my internship, I was a little older, a little wiser and
| A．unusual | B．unexpected | C．unpleasant | D．unforgettable |
| A．study | B．live | C．travel | D．explore |
| A．heritage | B．image | C．feast | D．shock |
| A．closed | B．equipped | C．controlled | D．packed |
| A．quick | B．familiar | C．unique | D．relaxed |
| A．changes | B．adapts | C．sleeps | D．disappears |
| A．fail | B．battle | C．revive | D．protest |
| A．desire | B．preference | C．patience | D．respect |
| A．conquered | B．forgave | C．admitted | D．identified |
| A．propose | B．know | C．suppose | D．ensure |
| A．reviewing | B．hiking | C．wandering | D．observing |
| A．proud | B．aware | C．tired | D．afraid |
| A．won | B．grown | C．struggled | D．practiced |
| A．hate | B．miss | C．lose | D．express |
| A．preparation | B．contribution | C．emotion | D．celebration |
4 . OpenAI’s automated AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT has taken the Internet by storm, but not without creating a few issues on the way. With writers, marketers, and seemingly everyone else in between using ChatGPT to generate content, companies worldwide are staring down a tsunami of AI-generated content. With issues of safety and stolen contents constantly swirling around ChatGPT and its output, OpenAI has now released GPT-Classifier, a tool designed to detect whether the text you’re reading was generated by ChatGPT or one of its other GPT tools.
GPT-Classifier attempts to figure out if a given piece of text was human-written or the work of an AI-generator. While ChatGPT and other GPT models are trained extensively on all manners of text input, the GPT-Classifier tool is fine-tuned on a dataset of pairs of human-written text and AI-written text on the same topic. In other words, the GPT-Classifier attempts to compare similarities between known human text and known AI text to find inconsistency that reveal the source writer.
While the idea of easily spotting AI-generated text will be music to the ears of editors and educators, OpenAI has warned that its classifier is not fully reliable.
A test of the GPT-Classifier spotted a human-generated example and marked it very unlikely to be AI-generated, and also correctly indicated that a ChatGPT-generated piece on USB issues was possibly AI generated. Currently, GPT-Classifier correctly identifies 26% of AI-written text while labelling 9% of human text as AI-written. OpenAI also notes that the tool’s accuracy typically improves as the length of the input text increases. For now, although GPT-Classifier is up and running and available for testing, it’s best to take its labelling with a pinch of salt.
Even with the GPT-Classifier’s limitations, the demand for reliable ChatGPT detection is likely to see many people turn to this tool. OpenAI’s commitment to building and releasing a free GPT detection tool is important because as more students, writers, programmers, and others use AI-text generation tools, understanding and detecting this input will become vital.
1. What is paragraph 2 mainly about?| A．GPT-Classifier’s components. | B．GPT-Classifier’s vast datasets. |
| C．GPT-Classifier’s high productivity. | D．GPT-Classifier’s working principle. |
| A．With certain doubt. | B．At face value. | C．With great respect. | D．As a challenge. |
| A．GPT-Classifier demands more users’ trust. | B．GPT-Classifier wipes out users’ belief in AI. |
| C．GPT-Classifier meets diverse growing needs. | D．GPT-Classifier has a limited range of services. |
| A．To discuss the reliability of GPT-Classifier. |
| B．To criticise the problem of Al-generated content. |
| C．To encourage more people to use GPT-Classifier. |
| D．To introduce a new tool for detecting AI-generated text. |
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