1 . Thanks to the 1999 Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, 26 endangered species in Australia have seen their populations recover.
It seems like that we're always hearing about new animals that have become endangered, but there's some good news in Australia: 26 animal species no longer meet the criteria to be listed as threatened. Australia’s biodiversity has been in decline, with more than 1, 700 species and ecological communities known to be on the line. In 1999, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act was passed to introduce protections for endangered animals. The burrowing bettong is one of 26 Australian species that have returned from the edge of extinction.
Seemingly these are working, as a recent study published in the journal Biological Conservation reviewed the animals that were previously or currently listed as threatened between 2000 and December 2022, and discovered that 26 species had recovered to no longer meet the criteria. Species that have seen improvement include the charmingly named burrowing bettong, the golden bandicoot and the bulloo grey grasswren.
Factors behind this improvement include habitat management, control of introduced predators (捕食者) and translocation of endangered animals to predator-free islands. However, the species have not been officially delisted at this time. The EPBC Act only allows species to be delisted if doing so will not have a negative effect on their survival, and researchers believe that conservation gains could be lost should management efforts be stopped.
Dr Michelle Ward, a conservation scientist at WWF Australia, told The Guardian, “The key problem with delisting species is that then they no longer have monitoring and no longer need certain funding plans.”
However, it is promising that researchers have found signs of improvement. Hopefully this will continue among these and other species!
1. What do the underlined words “on the line” in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Out of place. | B．At risk. |
| C．Under control. | D．On the increase. |
| A．Some animals are facing extinction. |
| B．Burrowing bettong is a charming species. |
| C．The criteria to be delisted were hard to meet. |
| D．26 endangered species’ populations are recovering. |
| A．their living situation is severe | B．the delisting consequences are uncertain |
| C．the conservation gains are short | D．the habitat management level is poor |
| A．Unconcerned. | B．Doubtful. | C．Positive. | D．Worried. |
2 . The maleo (塚雉), a bird with black feathers and a pink chest, is native to Indonesia’s Sulawesi island and a few neighboring ones. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which identifies wildlife across the world currently facing threats, estimates only 800 to 1,400 adult maleos remain in the wild. Experts do not know how many maleos still live across West Sulawesi island. They were only able to record the presence of nesting grounds in 23 villages based on reports from locals in the area. But of those, only 18 are considered active nesting areas.
Recently, the birds have been faced with new threats, which accelerate their decline. The Indonesian government plans to move the nation’s capital from Jakarta to a new city on Borneo island, which is just a six-hour boat trip apart from Sulawesi island. The island takes on the building of new roads and seaports to be used to transport materials to the new capital. Activities also include tree clearing, digging, and removing stones. The process already has changed the forest environment on West Sulawesi and is harming maleo nesting areas near the beach. These changes have made the trip for maleos to lay their eggs increasingly difficult.
Another problem has been poachers. The Associated Press reports that, regardless of official ban, they steal maleo eggs that the males’ parents have hidden in the sand, and sell the eggs for about $1 to people as food. The eggs are a traditional gift for many people in Mamuju and other parts of Sulawesi.
“As far as I know, maleo birds are in decline,” said Andi Aco Takdir, chief of the West Sulawesi Forestry Agency. He pointed to several reasons for the decline, including destruction of beach areas, and expanding human development activities. He added that government officials there are prepared to take steps to protect the maleos even with the new capital development. Andi said, “Nature conservation must be used as an achievement and must not be built leaving behind problems.”
1. Which word can be used to describe the maleos?| A．Endangered. | B．Adaptable. |
| C．Widespread. | D．Extinct. |
| A．The sudden changes of climate. |
| B．The disappearance of the forests. |
| C．The development of Sulawesi island. |
| D．The supporting work for the new capital. |
| A．People who hunt maleos for their meat. |
| B．People who live by selling maleo eggs. |
| C．People who engage in illegal hunting. |
| D．People who regard maleo eggs as gifts. |
| A．The new capital development might be stopped at once. |
| B．The government will balance conservation and development. |
| C．There seems to be a tough way for the new capital to develop. |
| D．The government will concentrate on solving urban problems. |
3 . Humans can make do with scarves, coats and gloves in cold weather. Some animals can hibernate (冬眠) for the winter. A new study finds that reptiles (爬行动物) and birds do something that is similar to hibernation, but a little different. In very cold weather, their body temperatures greatly drop into an energy-saving state in order to survive. The ability to thermoregulation (体温调节) for reptiles and birds is possible.
In Texas, where the city of Beaumont reached a low of 18 degrees Fahrenheit last month, it looked as if alligators (短吻鳄) had died of cold — yet alive in iced-over water. By ensuring their long noses stayed above the water line, the cold-blooded creatures were able to lower their body temperatures to survive the sudden short period of very cold weather. The process, in the case of cold-blooded animals like reptiles, is called brumation — it’s like a short state of hibernating. While in this state, reptiles become sleepy and they can go for a long time without eating or drinking. For example, alligators can be in brumation from just a few hours to months.
Like reptiles and mammals, birds can go into a state called torpor in order to save energy under very cold conditions. “Torpor is somewhere between a short sleep and hibernation,” said Justin Baldwin, a PhD candidate in biology at Washington University in St. Louis. Baldwin studied 29 species of hummingbirds living in Colombia. Researchers found that hummingbirds can enter into deep or shallow torpor, depending on several factors, including their size and weather conditions. In deep torpor, the birds are much more likely to be affected by disease. And what’s more, they would be easily harmed by their enemies.
Some bird lovers want to help the birds when they are in torpor. For example, the Bird Alliance of Oregon offers a few tips on how to keep the birds from danger.
1. What does the new study show?| A．Body temperature is important for animals. |
| B．Thermoregulation exists in reptiles and birds. |
| C．Reptiles and birds’ thermoregulation is unusual. |
| D．Body temperature drops greatly during reptiles and birds’ sleep. |
| A．They are active in brumation. | B．They are dead in cold weather. |
| C．They face extinction in cold weather. | D．They eat and drink nothing in brumation. |
| A．They can get enough sleep. | B．They may harm other birds. |
| C．They may waste plenty of energy. | D．They may be under threat. |
| A．Risks of animal hibernation. |
| B．His opinions of the study about birds. |
| C．Some detailed measures to protect the birds in torpor. |
| D．Other problems raised by cold weather. |
4 . Most of us are familiar with Groundhog Day, wherein a large groundhog checks to see its shadow on February 2 and helps to predict when winter will end. But have you ever heard about how a mountain town in North Carolina uses a caterpillar (毛毛虫) known as the Woolly Worm to make similar predictions?
According to the folklore (民间传说), the amount of black on the woolly worm in autumn predicts the severity of the upcoming winter. The longer the woolly worm’s black bands (带) are, the longer, colder, snowier, and more severe the winter will be. Similarly, a wider middle brown band is associated with a milder upcoming winter. The position of the longest dark bands supposedly indicates which part of winter will be coldest or hardest. If the head end of the caterpillar is dark, the beginning of winter will be severe. If the tail end is dark, the end of winter will be cold. In addition, the woolly worm caterpillar has 13 segments to its body, which traditional forecasters say correspond to the 13 weeks of winter.
Scientific studies on worm forecasting are few and far between. The most often cited is a small trial that American Museum of Natural History entomologist Howard Curran conducted in 1948. Having heard about the caterpillar folklore, Curran traveled to Bear Mountain State Park to collect woolly worms each fall for eight years. He found that if the worms had brown markings on more than a third of their body, winters tended to be milder.
Most scientists discount the folklore of caterpillar predictions as just a folklore. “It’s a wonderful story, but I do think it was a playful trial,” says Joe Boggs, an entomologist at Ohio State University Extension who has studied woolly worms. “Curran was a real scientist. He had a bunch of papers published, but he never published this one—probably because he knew it wouldn’t stand up to peer review.”
Mike Peters, an entomologist at the University of Massachusetts, doesn’t disagree, but he says there could be a link between the band of a woolly worm and the severity of winter. Peters suggests that the timing of their growth and environmental conditions, such as temperature, moisture levels, and food sources, can impact the appearance of woolly worms, including their size, coloration, and band patterns. By analyzing these characteristics, researchers can potentially infer information about the weather conditions. “The band does say something about a heavy winter,” he says. “The only thing is that it’s telling you about the previous year.”
1. How do people predict the weather through woolly worms?| A．By analyzing their living habits. | B．By measuring the change of their size. |
| C．By studying color bands on their bodies. | D．By calculating the number of their segments. |
| A．A survey on the locals. | B．His personal observations. |
| C．Studies by previous scientists. | D．Statistics collected by the museum. |
| A．consider. | B．believe. | C．doubt. | D．dismiss. |
| A．The caterpillar forecasting needs long-term data to support it. |
| B．The color band of caterpillars can be a mirror of past weather. |
| C．The cold environment has a great impact on caterpillars’ growth. |
| D．Woolly worms can help predict the severity of winter accurately. |
| A．A baby. | B．A cat. | C．A bird. |
6 . Hotter, drier conditions over the past four decades have been decreasing the rainforest birds’ body size while lengthening their wings, a study published in the journal Science Advances said on Friday. “This maybe an adaptation to hotter temperatures. Even in the middle of the primitive Amazon rainforest, we are seeing the global effects of climate change caused by people,” said Vitek Jirinec, lead author on the study.
The scientists have studied measurements and weigh-ins of 77 different bird species in the Amazon rainforest since the early 1980s. Nearly all of the bird species have gotten lighter as time goes on. On average, most species became about 2% lighter every decade. These birds don’t vary that much in size,” said co-author Philip Stouffer, a professor of conservation biology at Louisiana State University. “But when everyone in the population is a couple of grams smaller, it’s significant.”
The researchers found that bird species living in higher parts of the forest—as opposed to closer to the forest floor —saw the most pronounced changes in terms of body composition. Those are the species most exposed to high temperatures. Longer wings and smaller bodies mean that birds have to useless energy to move around, helping them stay cool.
Brian Weeks of the University of Michigan in 2019 researched the average sizes of 52 species of migratory birds in North America from 1978 to 2016. He also found all of them had smaller bodies and longer wings in 2016. This is another example of climate change-human actions globally—affecting a fundamental thing such as the size and shape of the birds. The same effect is likely to be true of other species across the world living in extreme environments.
1. What does the new study find about the birds in the Amazon rainforest?| A．They are flying much higher. | B．They have been physically longer. |
| C．They are more flexible than adaptable | D．They have got smaller and longer-winged. |
| A．By analyzing the collected data. | B．By referring to historical records. |
| C．By observing birds in the forests. | D．By cooperating with other research groups. |
| A．Less food available. | B．Decreased forest area. |
| C．Most exposure to the heat. | D．Inadequate shelter from storms. |
| A．To introduce a new topic. |
| B．To further stress bad effects of humans. |
| C．To popularize some knowledge about birds. |
| D．To tell the difference between the two studies. |
7 . Gorillas (大猩猩) in films such as King Kong and Tarzan are wildly beating their chests when under threat. Researchers have tried to find out what the behavior might mean, and they doubt that the gorillas exhibit this behavior not to start fights, but to prevent themselves — and chest-beating could be used to advertise their body size to other gorillas.
Scientists observed 25 wild male mountain gorillas for over 3,000 hours. The research team used audio (音频) equipment to record the sound frequency, rate, duration, and amount of chest beats. To determine each gorilla’s size, the researchers used cameras to photograph and measure each gorilla’s back.
Although the rate, duration, and amount of beats did not correlate with the size of the gorillas, sound frequency did , the researchers report. The team also noticed that larger gorillas produced deeper-tone chest drumming. Previous research has shown that a gorilla’s larger body size is linked to reproductive success and social rank. The chest-beating could be a way for the gorillas to advertise their size to others and, in turn, avoid fights that could result in serious injury or death.
Though gorillas can obviously observe size just by getting a good look at others, the researchers suggest chest beating is copper-bottomed when trying to communicate through a thick forest. The sounds gorillas created by beating their chests are powerful enough to travel long distance through thick forests and signal others their size and fighting ability.
Animal expert Anna Nekaris says it would be interesting to see if smaller gorillas can imitate the deep tones of larger ones in future studies. Nekaris says, “For now, the researchers will continue to study chest-beating to see if the action can pass on other information, such as dominance rank, sex, and individual identity, to nearby gorillas.”
1. What is the second paragraph mainly about according to the research?| A．Its findings. | B．Its purpose. | C．Its samples. | D．Its method. |
| A．To declare war on other gorillas. | B．To frighten other gorillas away. |
| C．To welcome their companions. | D．To celebrate their victory in a fight. |
| A．If smaller gorillas can make deep-toned chest drumming. |
| B．If gorillas’ chest-beating contains other information. |
| C．If larger gorillas are better at using their body influence. |
| D．If gorillas have other communication skills. |
| A．Health. | B．Entertainment. | C．Science. | D．Sports. |
8 . Sara Dykman is on a 10,000-mile bike trip, following the monarch butterfly from Mexico through the United States and Canada and back again. The purpose of her journey is not just to mark the butterfly’s migrating (迁徙) road, but to warn about the threat it faces — and what we can do to help it.
When I reached Dykman by phone, she was biking through Iowa cornfields. She said she feels more upset than usual, because of what she is seeing — or not seeing — on her travels: Fewer butterflies and milkweed. “In the last two decades, the butterfly population has declined by about 90 percent as a result of the loss of milkweed, a native plant that the butterflies need as part of their life cycle,” she said.
Butterflies go through a four-stage life cycle. In February and March, the adult monarch butterflies come out of winter sleep to look for a mate. Then they migrate north and east to lay their eggs on milkweed plants. It takes about four days for the eggs to hatch. Then the baby caterpillars (毛毛虫) spend much of their time eating milkweed in order to grow. About two weeks later, the fully grown caterpillars will attach themselves to plant branches or leaves to change into butterflies.
But Dykman is not in total despair. A solution, she says, exists within the reach of everyone who owns a home; simply planting some milkweed in the yards to help the butterflies on their journey.
Dykman lives a life as simple and rootless as the butterflies she loves. She doesn’t own a house or car or eat out at restaurants. She carries only what she needs; a sleeping bag and clothing. People help along the way by providing a place to stay and a meal.
“I have failed at everything normal, but I’m pretty good at doing the less normal things,” she admits in her new book Cycling With Butterflies.
“But this trip is about solutions, and it’s about helping people see the consequences of their actions,” she said on the phone.
1. What is the main purpose of Sara Dykman’s bike trip?| A．To live-stream the migrating butterflies. | B．To ask people to grow more native plants. |
| C．To warn about the environmental problems. | D．To encourage people to protect the butterflies. |
| A．Baby caterpillars are very harmful to various crops. |
| B．Milkweed plays a vital role in a butterfly’s life cycle. |
| C．Non-native plants are growing too fast in Iowa cornfields. |
| D．Adult butterflies come out of winter sleep later than they did. |
| A．She is a determined conservationist. | B．She is a good bread-earner. |
| C．She is a competent employee. | D．She is a comfort seeker. |
| A．A diary entry. | B．A book review. | C．An interview. | D．A news report. |
9 . Can you name a famous elephant? Babar, perhaps? Or Dumbo? Though these names may be memorable to humans, they sound nothing like the names elephants give each other. “If you’re an elephant, your name is something more like a low, rumbling sound (隆隆的声音),” scientists say. Researchers have found that African elephants emit sounds in response to individuals in their social group, and the receivers respond accordingly.
Researchers recorded 527 elephant calls in northern Kenya and 98 calls in southern Kenya. They then distinguished which members were separated from the herd at the time of each call, or which members were close to the herd. Researchers correctly identified the receivers of 20.3% of the 625 recorded calls. This marks a step forward in understanding how these highly intelligent animals communicate.
“There’s a contact rumble, an anti-predator rumble and a greeting rumble. If you look at a spectrogram (声谱图) with your eyes, they all look almost exactly the same,” said Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, an elephant biologist at Harvard Medical School. “That’s why artificial intelligence(AI)has been exciting. It allows us to really figure out what the elephants are saying.”
As it turned out, the calls were distinct to the receivers. Even calls from different callers to the same receiver were similar. The pattern was less obvious than it was between a single caller and his or her receiver. This may be because rumbles encode multiple messages at the same time, so the AI system in computer model may not have been able to pick out the “name” used in each call. “It just highlights the complexity of what’s going on. And we’re not skilled enough in these measurements to figure out what’s going on,” said Caitlin.
However, the research shows how elephants are navigating through a large landscape and can still keep in touch with specific individuals. It allows them to spread out much further and still have very close tabs on individuals, not just the group.
1. What can we infer from paragraph 1?| A．Elephants seem to have their own names. |
| B．Elephants’ sounds differ from other species. |
| C．Elephants’ names sound exactly like humans’. |
| D．Elephants’ names sound different from each other. |
| A．By grouping the elephants based on intelligence. |
| B．By observing the elephants’ reactions to the calls. |
| C．By analyzing the relationship within the elephants. |
| D．By copying the elephants’ voice to call their names. |
| A．Simplifying the process. | B．Creating a spectrogram. |
| C．Letting out various rumbles. | D．Making out each rumble. |
| A．How do elephants contact each other? | B．Why do elephants make their voice? |
| C．Do elephants name one another? | D．Do elephants like to be called? |
10 . For Caribbean box jellyfish (水母), learning is literally a no-brainer.
In a new experiment, these animals learned to spot and avoid obstacles (障碍物) despite having no central brain, researchers report in Current Biology. This is the first evidence that jellyfish can make mental connections between events and change their behavior accordingly. “Maybe learning doesn’t need a very complex nervous system, but rather, learning is an essential part of nerve cells,” says Jan Bielecki, a neuroethologist at Kiel University in Germany. If so, the new finding could help trace how learning evolved in animals.
Bielecki and his colleagues wondered if Caribbean box jellyfish could learn that low-contrast objects, which might at first seem distant, were actually close by. The team put 12 jellyfish into a round tank surrounded by low-contrast, gray and white stripes. A camera filmed the animals’ behavior for about seven minutes.
At first, the jellyfish seemed to interpret the gray stripes as distant roots and swam into the tank wall. But those collisions (碰撞) seemed to lead the jellyfish to treat the gray stripes more like close roots in dirty water, and the animals started avoiding them. The jellies’ average distance from the tank wall increased from about 2.5 centimeters in the first couple of minutes to about 3.6 centimeters in the final couple of minutes. Their average collisions into the wall dropped from 1.8 per minute to 0.78 per minute.
“I found that really amazing,” says Nagayasu Nakanishi, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, who has studied jellyfish nervous systems but was not involved in the new work. “I never thought jellyfish could really learn.”
Neurobiologist Björn Brembs views the results more cautiously, noting the small number of jellyfish tested and the variability in their performance. “I want this to be true, as it would be very cool,” says Brembs. Experiments with more jellyfish could convince him that the animals really do learn.
1. What can we know about the jellyfish in paragraph 2?| A．They can avoid obstacles with a central brain. |
| B．They can change their behaviour after evolution. |
| C．They may have learning abilities with nerve cells. |
| D．They may develop a very complex nervous system. |
| A．They completely ignored the gray stripes. |
| B．They gradually started avoiding the gray stripes. |
| C．They could avoid collisions if given enough time. |
| D．They increased their collisions with the tank wall. |
| A．Jellyfish preferred the gray stripes over other things. |
| B．Jellyfish were unable to learn from their environment. |
| C．Jellyfish relied on the distant objects to change their behavior. |
| D．Jellyfish showed a learning process and adjusted their behavior. |
| A．He believes more testing is needed to confirm the results. |
| B．He is excited by the potential implications of the findings. |
| C．He dismisses the findings as irrelevant to jellyfish behavior. |
| D．He is doubtful due to the consistent performance of the jellyfish. |
