1 . A man was visiting a zoo. As he was passing the
He saw a
The man was
A.horses | B.elephants | C.monkeys | D.tigers |
A.huge | B.furry | C.strange | D.sick |
A.chain | B.wire | C.rope | D.ring |
A.dangerous | B.important | C.impossible | D.obvious |
A.bonds | B.guards | C.work | D.habitat |
A.cleaner | B.driver | C.trainer | D.manager |
A.give in | B.get away | C.show up | D.calm down |
A.tired | B.quiet | C.excited | D.young |
A.hunt | B.beat | C.tie | D.threaten |
A.so | B.unless | C.but | D.though |
A.moved | B.amazed | C.pleased | D.annoyed |
A.hesitated | B.promised | C.refused | D.intended |
A.fact | B.habit | C.belief | D.dream |
A.Loneliness | B.Failure | C.Support | D.Friendship |
A.struggle | B.plan | C.job | D.freedom |
2 . What makes people so special? Tool use, self-consciousness, language, and culture are high on the list, but in fact all of these characteristics can be found elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Humans and apes are close relatives, so it is perhaps not surprising that chimpanzees use tools or that gorillas (大猩猩) have a sense of fair play, even rejecting carrots (which they normally accept) when they see their neighbors getting grapes. But the qualities that we often think of as uniquely human exist not just on land, but in the ocean as well.
Among the invertebrates, octopuses (八爪鱼) are known for their intelligence, even exhibiting evidence of playfulness, tool use, and personality. But these skilled predators live alone and consequently lack culture. Dolphins, on the other hand, are large-brained, long-living, social- group-based predators, and it is here that we find the greatest similarity to human-like culture and awareness.
Culture depends on the ability of animals to pass on things they have learned to others. Many animals have culture in this sense, but what sets dolphins apart is what they pass on. Some bottlenose dolphins hold sponges in their mouths that they use as tools to sweep for fish hiding on the ocean floor. This ability is handed down through generations (especially in females), with some families — grandmother, mother, and daughter — all feeding in this highly specialized way.
Another characteristic that dolphins share with humans is their ability to recognize themselves in a mirror. When facing a mirror, most animals behave as though they are interacting with another individual. Even in humans, the ability to recognize that the image in a mirror is oneself does not occur before the age of 18 months. Dolphins not only recognize themselves, but if a black mark is put on the body of a dolphin, it will spend extra time at the mirror to look at the mark.
1. The example of gorillas rejecting carrots shows they ________.A.are not easy to fool | B.prefer fruit to vegetables |
C.have a special taste for food | D.have an awareness of equality |
A.Cooperation. | B.Intelligence. |
C.Tool using ability. | D.Fun-loving spirits. |
A.They tend to hunt in groups. |
B.Their hunting skills are passed down. |
C.Their learning environment is favourable. |
D.Their families are typically female-controlled. |
A.Dolphins enjoy looking at their own reflection in the mirror. |
B.Dolphins are as intelligent as a typical 18-month-old human baby. |
C.Dolphins are generally regarded as the most advanced non-human species. |
D.Dolphins’ ability to recognize their own reflection is a higher-order mental skill. |
3 . GET A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD’S MOST ATTRACTIVE FEATHERED ANIMALS WITH THESE BOOKS
Flamingo (火烈鸟)
Biologist and photographer Claudio Contreras Koob spent 20 years travelling deep into the wet lands and forests of his native Mexico—and beyond—to feed his flamingo attraction. This book offers a unique window into the behavior and life of red-feathered birds, with more than 120 show-stopping shots displaying their beauty. teNeues, £35.
Around the World in 80 Birds
Inspiring secrets, national pride or scientific discoveries, every bird has a story to tell, from the weaver bird building multi-nest “apartment blocks” in Namibia to the bar-headed goose taking on a twice-yearly trans-Himalayan journey at an extreme altitude. Mike Unwin’s tour is accompanied by beautiful illustrations from Ryuto Miyake. Laurence King Publishing, £22.
A World on the Wing
Pulitzer-shortlisted Weidensaul, who’s at the forefront of research into bird migration, here tracks some of nature’s most remarkable journeys. He sails through the stormy Bering Sea, encounters trappers in the Mediterranean and visits former headhunters in northeast India, where a bird migration crisis has become a conservation success story. Pan Macmillan, £9.99.
Galapagos Crusoes: A Year Alone with the Birds
Explore this updated version of the 1968 title, Galapagos: Islands of Birds, by late bird expert Bryan Nelson, with previously unpublished material from his wife, June. The couple spent a year living on two Galapagos islands, studying birds, including the Galapagos albatross (信天翁). This is their clever and amusing account. Bradt Guides, £11.99.
1. By whom is the second costliest book illustrated?A.Claudio Contreras Koob. | B.Mike Unwin. |
C.Ryuto Miyake. | D.Weidensaul. |
A.Flamingo. | B.Around the World in 80 Birds. |
C.A World on the Wing. | D.Galapagos: Island of Birds. |
A.Its humorous description. | B.Its romantic style. |
C.Its vivid imagination. | D.Its moving plot. |
4 . New research on ants has firstly shown that insects have the ability to shrink and then regrow their brains. It relates to how these particular ants, called the Indian jumping ant, reproduce.
“In most ant colonies (种群), the queen is the only member of the colony that lays eggs. When she dies, the colony dies. The workers just do the hunting and take care of the babies and the chores.” says Clint Penick, a professor of biology at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. But this is not true for Indian jumping ants. Their worker ants have the ability to mate and reproduce. So when the queen dies, a dominance tournament starts. They’ll fight each other over a month to decide who’s going to be the next queen.
The queen doesn’t have an exact replacement. Tournament winners — called “gamergates” — all assume queen-like duties of laying eggs. The study found that when the ants take on the role of gamergates, their brains reduce its size by 19% on average, so that they can save energy to focus on producing eggs. The fact that the ants’ brains shrink to reproduce wasn’t new. But what scientists didn’t know was whether they had the ability to regrow.
Penick’s team separated gamergates from their colonies for a few weeks. The thinking was that the lack of social interaction and care would make them return to their previous status. It worked. After several weeks, the ex-gamergates were back to being low-class workers — with their bigger brains regrown. “We are now starting to find that there are animal species that are capable of shrinking their brains and then regrowing them, even humans to some degree.” Penick says.
There are still potential suggestions for humans. According to Penick, the brains are more flexible in size than we knew. The brains of ants have some shared features with humans. So now scientists are looking at digging into the genetic and other neural mechanisms (神经机制) supporting these brain changes.
1. What is special about the Indian jumping ant colony?A.The worker ants fight with the queen. | B.The queen is the only one to lay eggs. |
C.The colony continues even if queen dies. | D.The queen is devoted to baby nursing. |
A.Some ants won the competition of laying eggs. |
B.Gamergates are not willing to regrow their brains. |
C.Whether ants can regrow brains wasn’t known before. |
D.The downsizing of ants’ brains was first found in the study. |
A.shortage of socialization | B.separation from their living space |
C.a return to previous status | D.low-class workloads for working ants |
A.The Special Queens of the Ant Colony |
B.A Genetic Wonder: from Ants to Humans |
C.The Flexible Brain of Indian Jumping Ants |
D.A Shrinking Ant Brain: from a Worker to a Queen |
5 . Recordings (录音) of angry bees are enough to send big, tough African elephants running away, a new study says. Beehives ( 蜂窝) either recorded or real may even prevent elephants from damaging farmer’s crops.
Years ago, scientist Lucy King and her team found that elephants avoid certain trees with bees living in them. Today, Lucy wants to see if African honeybees might stop elephants from eating crops.
But before she asked farmers to set up beehives on their farms, she needed to find out if the bees would frighten elephants away.
Lucy found a wild beehive inside a tree in northern Kenya and set up a recorder. Then she threw a stone into the beehive, which burst into life. Lucy and her assistant hid in their car until the angry bees had calmed down. Next, Lucy searched out elephant families in Samburu National Reserve in northern Kenya and put a speaker in a tree close to each family.
From a distance, Lucy turned on the pre-recorded sound of angry bees while at the same time recording the elephants with a video camera. Half the elephant groups left the area within ten seconds. Out of a total of 17 groups, only one group didn’t react to the sound of the angry bees. Lucy reported that all the young elephants immediately ran to their mothers to hide under them. When Lucy played the sound of a waterfall ( 瀑布) instead of the angry bees to many of the same elephant families, the animals were undisturbed. Even after four minutes, most of the groups stayed in one place.
Lucy is now studying whether the elephants will continue to avoid the sound of angry bees after hearing it several times. She hasn’t tested enough groups yet to know and she has now begun placing speakers in the fields to see if elephants are frightened away.
1. What can be the title of the passage?A.Bees are the King of the Forest | B.How to Keep Elephants Away |
C.Don’t Get Close to Angry Bees | D.Angry Bees Frighten Big Elephants Away |
A.To record the sound of angry bees. |
B.To make a video of elephants. |
C.To see if elephants would run away. |
D.To find out more about the behavior of bees. |
A.Groups of elephants will make bees angry.. |
B.Waterfalls can make elephants stay in one place. |
C.Elephants do not go near trees with bees living in them. |
D.Young elephants ignore African honeybees. |
A.works by herself in Africa |
B.needs to test more elephant groups |
C.has stopped elephants eating crops |
D.has got farmers to set up beehives on their farms |
Norway is to introduce new ways to protect wild salmon (三文鱼) after experts warned they could become endangered as a result of their contact
The government has issued a report that shows that fish farms
The global number of Atlantic salmon
While the Norwegian project focuses on the immediate need to separate salmon species, other long-term plans, such as recovering the habitats, also make a big difference to salmon’s environment that
7 . Wildlife experts are reporting increasing numbers of Atlantic blue fin tuna(蓝鳍金枪鱼)in the Atlantic Ocean. Atlantic blue fins are highly prized by the fishing industry. The fish can weigh up to 454 kilograms. Its meat is often used in sushi products sold at Japanese restaurants.
But the Atlantic blue fin has been a concern for wildlife experts. The species was listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Improved law enforcement appears to be helping the Atlantic blue fin recover after years of overfishing. The popular fish all but disappeared from the Gulf of Maine about 10 years ago. This year, fishers set a record by catching 30 Atlantic blue fins. One of the fish weighed 363 kilograms.
International regulators have eased the catch limits for U. S. fishermen this year, increasing the quotas (限额)by more than 180,000 kilograms. But environmental groups warn increasing the new limits will undo years of wildlife protection efforts.
Scientists have been unable to determine whether or not the Atlantic blue fin population has recovered, so any decrease in the population now is bad for fishermen in the long term.
Blue fin has been at the center of a long battle between the fishing industry and environmentalists. Fishermen can make large amounts of money from a single fish. Environmentalists seek to protect the Atlantic blue fin. Yet many consumers are willing to pay high prices to eat them.
Walt Golet, a professor of marine biology at the University of Maine, says “Probably no other fish has been more politicized than the Atlantic blue fin tuna. From an environmental point of view it's always … Let's try to back off a little bit and make sure that we always have enough fish, and on the other side, we have individuals and organizations that they're making a living out of that fish and that's kind of where the assessment and management come into play. It's kind of balancing all of those opinions and viewpoints.”
1. What do we know about the Atlantic blue fin?A.It is a treasure in fishing industry. |
B.Its meat is sold well in Japan. |
C.It is an endangered species. |
D.It has recovered after 10 years of overfishing. |
A.Ban. | B.Ruin. | C.Undertake. | D.Disapprove. |
A.Helpful. | B.Hopeless. | C.Successful. | D.Unfavorable. |
A.The environmental point of view should be respected. |
B.The battle between experts and fishermen will last forever. |
C.The balance between all those opinions should be achieved. |
D.Individuals and organizations have the right to catch fish. |
8 . Researchers say they have translated the meaning of gestures that wild chimpanzees (黑猩猩) use to communicate. They say wild chimps communicate 19 specific messages to one another with a “vocabulary” of 66 gestures. The scientists discovered this by following and filming groups of chimps in Uganda, and examining more than 5,000 incidents of these meaningful exchanges.
Dr Catherine Hobaiter, who led the research, said that this was the only form of intentional communication to be recorded in the animal kingdom. Only humans and chimps, she said, had a system of communication where they deliberately sent a message to another group member.
“That’s what’s so amazing about chimp gestures,” she said. “They’re the only thing that looks like human language in that respect.”
Although previous research has shown that apes and monkeys can understand complex information from another animal’s call, the animals do not appear to use their voices intentionally to communicate messages. This was a significant difference between calls and gestures, Dr Hobaiter said.
Chimps will check to see if they have the attention of the animal with which they wish to communicate. In one case, a mother presents her foot to her crying baby, signaling: “Climb on me.” The youngster immediately jumps on to its mothers back and they travel off together. “The big message from this study is that there is another species (物种) out there. that is meaningful in its communication, so that’s not unique to humans,” said Dr Hobaiter.
Dr Susanne Shultz, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Manchester, said the study was praiseworthy in seeking to enrich our knowledge of the evolution of human language. But, she added, the results were “a little disappointing”.
“The vagueness of the gesture meanings suggests either that the chimps have little to communicate, or we are still missing a lot of the information contained in their gestures and actions,” she said. “Moreover, the meanings seem to not go beyond what other animal convey with non-verbal communication. So, it seems the gulf remains. ”
1. What do chimps and humans have in common according to Dr Hobaiter?A.Memorizing specific words. | B.Understanding complex information. |
C.Using voices to communicate. | D.Communicating messages on purpose. |
A.It was well designed but poorly conducted. |
B.It was a good try but the findings were limited. |
C.It was inspiring but the evidence was unreliable. |
D.It was a failure but the methods deserved praise. |
A.Difference. | B.Conflict. | C.Balance. | D.Connection. |
A.Chimpanzee behaviour study achieved a breakthrough |
B.Chimpanzees developed specific communication skills |
C.Chimpanzees: the smartest species in the animal kingdom |
D.Chimpanzee language: communication gestures translated |
9 . Twenty years ago, I became involved in pet therapy (治疗) work. As digging deeper into the job, I had an urge to be a recorder of their daily work to let more and more people know their efforts and contributions. After all, they could not say our languages. It was when I got familiar with the work that I got my golden retriever puppy (金毛寻回犬), whom I named Angel. As she matured and went through obedience training, I realized that she would be a good partner.
Angel is ten now and still works every week. As a rule, she visits two hospitals, a day care for the elderly, and our library’s PAWS for Reading program. Angel has also helped out at a children’s special-needs camp. She is so popular that everywhere we go people recognize her, especially the kids she has worked with.
We have seen some very special things through our pet therapy work. I brought Angel to our local hospital to visit a woman who was completely paralyzed (瘫痪的) on her right side from a stroke. One day, my husband, Jack asked her if she wanted to give Angel a treat. She nodded and gently took the treat, raised her right hand and started petting Angel. Her friend was in the room and said, “She hasn’t been able to move that hand since she had her stroke!”
Somehow it seems appropriate that when Angel visits the hospital, she also performs tricks for the patients with her paws. The best one is when she crouches on the floor and crosses her paws. She stays still and doesn’t move until Jack says “Best wishes”. It’s the best wishes for all the people Angel meets as well as for her.
1. Why does the author want to be a recorder?A.Pets cannot record themselves. | B.Pets should be highly praised. |
C.Pets’ labor should be made aware of. | D.Pets daily work is important. |
A.Busy but rewarding. | B.Interesting but tiring. |
C.Funny and amusing. | D.Important and demanding. |
A.She cured her disease. | B.She visited her at times. |
C.She gave her best wishes. | D.She played tricks on her. |
A.A loyal dog. | B.Selfless love. |
C.A silent angel. | D.Great devotion. |
10 . Every year, many dolphins worldwide are captured(捕获)and kept in small pools, performing for people, especially children. These dolphins are fed fish instead of having to
Thus comes the question, "Should captive dolphins be
Jeff Foster, a 55-year old expert, decided to help two captive dolphins, Tom and Misha, to reach their top physical
This program was a big success, but there have been others that failed. For example, another dolphin, Keiko, returned into the ocean in 2002, but
If people want to avoid these accidents, we must go to great lengths and put in the
A.pick up | B.hunt for | C.look after | D.throw away |
A.see | B.dive | C.jump | D.hear |
A.appetite | B.shelter | C.lifestyle | D.popularity |
A.terrible | B.potential | C.unexpected | D.indirect |
A.disturbed | B.released | C.protected | D.prohibited |
A.exercise | B.pain | C.appearance | D.condition |
A.wild | B.clever | C.helpless | D.harmless |
A.If | B.Unless | C.Although | D.Because |
9.
A.hardly | B.exactly | C.possibly | D.awfully |
A.train | B.search | C.survive | D.produce |
A.died | B.escaped | C.returned | D.recovered |
A.led to | B.brought up | C.got over | D.went through |
A.suit | B.serve | C.defend | D.prepare |
A.tank | B.time | C.water | D.effort |
A.inspire | B.treat | C.entertain | D.change |