1 . Dogs are capable of understanding the emotions behind an expression on a human face. The study is the latest to reveal just how connected dogs are with people. The research also provides evidence that dogs use different parts of their brains to process human emotions. By living in close contact with humans, dogs have developed specific skills that enable them to interact and communicate efficiently with people. Recent studies have shown that the dogs’ brain can pick up on emotional clues contained in a person’s voice, body smell and posture,and read their faces.
In this study,the authors watched what happened when they presented photographs of the same two adults’ faces(a man and a woman) to 26 feeding dogs. The images were placed strategically to the sides of the animals’ line of sight and the photos showed a human face ex-pressing one of the six basic human emotions: anger,fear,happiness,sadness,surprise,dis-gust or being neutral.
The dogs showed greater response and cardiac(心脏的)activity when shown photo-graphs that expressed arousing emotional states such as anger, fear and happiness. They also took longer to resume feeding after seeing these images. The dogs’ increased heart rate indicated that in these cases they experienced higher levels of stress.
In addition,dogs tended to turn their heads to the left when they saw human faces ex-pressing anger,fear or happiness. The reverse happened when the faces looked surprised, possibly because dogs view it as a non-threatening, relaxed expression.“Clearly arousing, negative emotions seem to be processed by the right side of a dog’s brain,and more positive emotions by the left side,”says Siniscalchi.
The results support that of other studies done on dogs and other mammals. These show that the right side of the brain plays a more important part in regulating the sympathetic out-flow to the heart. This is a fundamental organ for the control of the “fight or flight”Behavioral response necessary for survival.
1. What does the new research show?| A．People’s emotions are exactly revealed in dogs’ brains. |
| B．Dog’s brains are highly affected by people’s emotions. |
| C．Dogs own the natural ability to understand people’s emotions. |
| D．Dogs treat human emotions with different sides of their brains. |
| A．By following certain orders. |
| B．By being treated by their owners. |
| C．By being closely connected with people. |
| D．By recognizing different faces on pictures. |
| A．opposite | B．nervous | C．rewarding | D．similar |
| A．Dogs are living in close contact with people |
| B．Dogs understand what’s written all over your face |
| C．Dogs’ heart rate increases when experiencing stress |
| D．Negative emotions affect dogs’ returning to feeding |
On one is a common cuckoo. It's one of 5 cuckoos who were tagged last summer in Mongolia? far to the north of China.
In June, 2020, scientists attached tiny trackers to five cuckoos.
At times, Onon stopped for a few hours or a few days. But some of the long stretches, like crossing the Indian Ocean, had to be done without stopping.
Luckily, cuckoos seem to have a good sense of weather patterns, allowing them to fatten up as much as possible right before they leave. They also seem to be good at finding helpful winds that allow them to travel long distances without getting too tired.
| A．All of them grew well. |
| B．Still, flying such long distances isn't easy. |
| C．Long migrations like this are dangerous. |
| D．Cuckoos originally came from Africa. |
| E．They broke previous records of animal migrations. |
| F．Long migrations are common among sea birds, but cuckoos are land birds. |
| G．These trackers allowed the scientists to follow the movements of the birds on a map. |
3 . Antaretica’s ice-white environment is going green and facing other unexpected threats. Scientists say that as temperatures go up in the polar region, invading (入侵) plants and insects, including the flies, cause a major conservation threat.
More and more of these invaders, in the form of larvae (幼虫) or seeds, are surviving in coastal areas around the South Pole, where the temperature has risen by more than 3℃ over the past three decades. Glaciers have retreated, exposing more land which has been occupied by mosses that have been found to be growing more quickly and thickly than ever before-providing potential green homes for invaders.
“The common house flies are a perfect example of the problem the Antarctic now faces from invading species,” said Dominic Hodgson of the British Antarctic Survey. “It comes in on ships, where it exists in kitchens and then at bases on the continent. It now has an increasing chance of surviving in the Antarctic as it warms up, and that is a worry. Insects like the house flies carry bacteria that could have a deadly effect on native lifeforms.”
The Antarctic has several native species of insects. Together with its native mosses, these are now coming under increased threat from three major sources: visiting scientists, increasing numbers of tourists and global warming. However, it is global warming that is the main driver of the greening of Antarctica.
In 2015, more than 38,000 tourists visited Antarctica. “These tourists are often very careful about not leaving waste or having mud. But they could carry seeds or larvae on their boots when they set foot on the Antarctic,” said Hodgson.
More and more invasive insects and plants have been found on the Antarctic and have required removal. “the insects and plants that are native to Antarctica have survived these for thousands of years,” said Hodgson. “We have got to act now if we want to save the environment.”
1. What does the underlined world “mosses” in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．A kind of plants | B．House flies |
| C．Coastal areas | D．A kind of animals |
| A．Scientists’ coming. | B．Global warming. |
| C．A growing number of visitors | D．The rapid spread of native planting. |
| A．They are native to the Antarctic. |
| B．They will disappear due to the cold climate. |
| C．They seriously affected the Antarctic native species |
| D．They directly fly to the Antarctic from nearby islands. |
| A．The Antarctic Is Faced with Various Threats |
| B．The Antarctic Is Becoming Green and Energetic |
| C．More and More Scientists Get to Explore the Antarctic |
| D．Global Warming has Caused the Temperature in the Antarctic to Rise up |
There are an extremely large number of ants worldwide. Each individual (个体的) ant hardly weigh anything, but put together they weigh roughly the same as all of mankind. They also live nearly everywhere, except on frozen mountain tops and around the poles.For animals their size, ants have been astonishingly successful, largely due to their wonderful social behavior.
In colonies (群体) that range in size from a few hundred to tens of millions, they organize their lives with a clear division of labor. Even more amazing is how they achieve this level of organization. Where we use sound and sight to communicate, ants depend primarily on pheromone (外激素), chemicals sent out by individuals and smelled or tasted by fellow members of their colony. When an ant finds food, it produces a pheromone that will lead others straight to where the food is. When an individual ant comes under attack or is dying, it sends out an alarm pheromone to warn the colony to prepare for a conflict as a defense unit.
In fact, when it comes to the art of war, ants have no equal. They are completely fearless and will readily take on a creature much larger than themselves, attacking in large groups and overcoming their target. Such is their devotion to the common good of the colony that not only soldier ants but also worker ants will sacrifice their lives to help defeat an enemy.
Behaving in this selfless and devoted manner, these little creatures have survived on Earth, for more than 140 million years, far longer than dinosaurs. Because they think as one, they have a collective (集体的) intelligence greater than you would expect from its individual parts.
1. We can learn from the passage that ants are ____________.
| A．not willing to share food |
| B．not found around the poles |
| C．more successful than all other animals |
| D．too many to achieve any level of organization |
| A．escape | B．communication |
| C．warning enemies | D．arranging labor |
| A．Accept. | B．Employ. |
| C．Play with. | D．Fight against. |
| A．Their behavior. | B．Their size. |
| C．Their number. | D．Their weight |
