1 . Historical accounts often described the now-extinct California grizzly bears as huge beasts ready to attack humans and livestock at any time. But according to a new paper, scientists say the truth might have been less dramatic: The bears ate a mostly vegetarian diet and were smaller than previously described. California grizzly bears once roamed in the Golden State. But European settlers often hunted, poisoned and trapped the creatures. Over time, because of these human activities, the California grizzly population declined. The last reliable sighting of a California grizzly bear occurred 100 years ago in 1924, and the animals disappeared completely sometime after that.
Researchers wanted to get a better understanding of the factors that accelerated the bears’ extinction. They also hoped to gain more insight into the creatures’ behavior, size and diet. To do so, they turned to documents and California grizzly specimens in natural history collections. They measured the animals’ skulls and teeth and analyzed their bones and pelts. The researchers found that California grizzly bears were much smaller than the 2,000 pounds often reported at the time. Historical accounts might not necessarily have been wrong, but they might have only included the largest bears. In addition, analyses of the animals’ bones and skins suggest the bears were primarily eating plants, which stands in contrast to their fear some hyper carnivorous (超级食肉的) reputation. “The bears likely increased meat consumption due to landscape changes coupled with the arrival of livestock,” says study co-author Alexis Mychajliw. However, researchers found the animals still ate a majority vegetarian diet and killed far less livestock than historical accounts suggested.
By digging beyond the bears’ reputation, the researchers gained a more accurate understanding of the California grizzly’s biology and natural history. And since scientists and land managers often rely on historical accounts when reintroducing animals to their former habitats, the study serves as a reminder that those old newspapers and journals do not tell the whole story.
1. What does the underlined word “roamed” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Disappeared. | B．Declined. | C．Fought. | D．Wandered. |
| A．They mainly fed on livestock. |
| B．Their diet consisted mostly of plants. |
| C．They ate a balanced diet of plants and meat. |
| D．The absence of livestock changed their dietary habit. |
| A．They are unique. | B．They are one-sided. |
| C．They are accurate. | D．They are comprehensive. |
| A．The natural habitats of California grizzly bears. |
| B．The extinction process of California grizzly bears. |
| C．The reveal of the truth of California grizzly bears. |
| D．The significance of the arrival of California grizzly bears. |
内容包括：
1.为什么说这种动物处在濒危状态；
2.讲述你自己的拯救思路；
3.解释WWF能够提供的帮助。
注意：不能少于80个单词。
Dear Sir/Madam,
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours faithfully,
Li Hua
The Small Friends Pet Shelter was started by a group of high school students and
Today, there are about 70 cats, 50 dogs, three rabbits, and a few
They have already
So if you find
1. 政府方面；
2.个人方面；
3. 你的行动。
注意：1. 词数80左右；
2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
5 . Successful wildlife conservation goes hand in hand with community education and engagement. Volunteers work with community leaders and schools to share their passion for conservation and the environment.
Rhino Conservation in Zimbabwe
The project is home to an internationally renowned Black Rhino Breeding and Release Programme which has supported Zimbabwe’s rhino population since the mid 1980s. To date, 20 rhinos have been born at the conservancy, with 12 rhinos successfully released back into the wild. Volunteers play a role in securing the future of this once-again endangered animal, working alongside anti-poaching rangers (反偷猎护林员), working on rhino research projects and getting involved in the daily care of both black and white rhino.
Our Rhino Conservation Programme is a unique hands-on opportunity to get behind the scenes and experience day-to-day life on a private conservancy, and be involved with the protection and conservation of Zimbabwe’s endangered black rhino.
The aim of the programme is to assist the reserve’s established Black Rhino Breeding and Release Programme, collect meaningful data and information relating to rhino and wildlife conservation and animal behaviour, and engage with the local community about wildlife conservation.
Cheetah (猎豹) Conservation
In 2021, two captive-born male cheetah were introduced to the conservancy as part of an international rewilding programme. The cheetah are now free-wandering in the reserve, and volunteers play an important role in monitoring and observing their behaviour, tracking their movements and recording their hunting rate.
Volunteer Work
Volunteers contribute to a long-term conservation project and get involved with a variety of conservation activities:
·Work alongside rhinos, cheetah and elephants
·Conservancy management
·Wildlife monitoring
·Anti-poaching patrols and snare sweeps
·Educate school-children about conservation, wildlife and the environment
·Learn about what is involved in running a conservancy
1. What can we say about Black Rhino Breeding and Release Programme?| A．Its work pays off. | B．It is limited to Zimbabwe. |
| C．It is home to two cheetah. | D．It has a history of 50 years. |
| A．Their birth rate. | B．Their hunting rate. |
| C．Their area of activity. | D．Their sleep schedule. |
| A．Those who live outside Zimbabwe. |
| B．Those who prefer to work at home. |
| C．Those who like engaging with animals. |
| D．Those who would like to make a fortune. |
6 . Many of us are disgusted by spiders’ furry legs, or even afraid of them. We don’t like to touch them or go near them. But they are more complicated than we can even imagine. Spiders’ legs seem to have minds of their own. According to a new study, each leg of a spider functions as a semi-independent “computer”, with sensors reading the immediate environment and causing movements accordingly. This helps spiders quickly build perfect webs. The researchers imitated surprisingly simple rules to govern this complex behavior, which could eventually be applied to robotics.
The study involves “morphological computation (形态计算)”, the idea of a function controlled by a body part instead of relying on the brain for instructions. Examples include the human knee jerk reflex (膝跳反射) and the act of walking. “Basically there’s a shortcut, and the brain doesn’t even know what’s happening down there,” says Oxford biologist Fritz Vollrath, the lead author of the paper.
Roboticists also show interest in morphological computation: It saves computing power and time. But few studies have deeply looked at the phenomenon in nature. Spiders, Vollrath says, are ideal for an experiment to bridge this gap — not only because it is easy to spot design changes in their webs but also because spiders reproduce broken-off legs.
Vollrath and his co-author, Thiemo Krink, a computer scientist, filmed and digitized the movements of several cross spiders, each with partially reproduced, half-length legs at certain positions. These spiders built webs as quickly and perfectly as those with eight full-length legs. If the brain were computing how to compensate for shorter legs, the researchers say, they would have seen tiny but measurable delays in operation. Instead the study hints a spider’s leg receives basic brain commands but adjusts its movements based on local input from sensors, which include hairs and slits in the body covering.
The researchers tested the rules by programming a simulated virtual spider, and Vollrath says the next step is to build a physical spider robot.
“I find this work extremely interesting, telling us more about spiders and also about morphological computation,” says Cecilia Laschi, a bio-roboticist, now at the National University of Singapore, who wasn’t involved in the study. “You never know what amazing innovations basic science like this could bring.”
1. Why does the author mention spiders at the very beginning?| A．To introduce morphological computation. |
| B．To stress the unique features of their webs. |
| C．To draw attention to their potential applications in medicine. |
| D．To present the common functions that spiders and humans share. |
| A．To highlight the specialties of spiders in the wild. |
| B．To explain the benefits of morphological computation. |
| C．To illustrate the principle of morphological computation. |
| D．To show the cause of selecting spiders for the research subjects. |
| A．The spiders didn’t need half-length legs to make better webs. |
| B．The spiders’ brains has a relatively small role to play in their web designing. |
| C．The spiders’ brains didn’t know what legs were doing down there. |
| D．The spiders with broken-off legs were seen obvious delays in action. |
| A．Study Shows Spiders Could Make Webs with Half Legs |
| B．Researchers Are Trying to Make Semi-independent “Computer” |
| C．Morphological Computation Draws the Attention of Researchers |
| D．Researchers Study the Secret to Spiders’ Ability to Stick |
7 . Despite the fact that parrots are well known for their long lives and complex cognition (认知), it remains unknown whether the two traits (特征) have influenced each other.
“The problem has been sourcing good quality data,” said Simeon Smeele, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) and lead author of a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B that tried to solve this question.
Scientists from the MPI-AB and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EvA) teamed up with Species360 to compile data from over 130,000 individual parrots sourced from over 1,000 zoos to find the average life span of 217 parrot species.
The analysis revealed an astonishing diversity in life expectancy, ranging from an average of two years for the fig parrot up to an average of 30 years for the scarlet macaw.
Next, the team tried to determine whether or not parrots’ renowned cognitive abilities had any influence on their longevity. Their results support the theory that increased brain size has enabled longer lifespans. Because brain size relative to body size can be an indicator of intelligence, the findings suggested that the parrots with larger brains were able to survive for longer in the wild.
The scientists were surprised that factors such as diet, or the greater developmental time required to develop larger brains, did not lead to longer average lifespans. “We would have expected the developmental path to play a more important role because in primates it is this developmental cost that explains the link between brain size and longevity,” said Smeele.
In the future, the team plan to explore if sociality and cultural learning in parrots might have also contributed to long lifespans. Smeele said: “Large-brained birds might spend more time socially learning foraging (觅食) techniques that have been around for multiple generations. This increased learning period could potentially also explain the longer life spans, as it takes more time but also makes the foraging repertoire (全部技能) more adaptive.”
1. What did the study aim to find out about parrots?| A．The diversity in their life expectancies. |
| B．The factors that influence their intelligence. |
| C．The traits that help them survive in the wild. |
| D．The link between their cognition and life spans. |
| A．By surveying over 1,000 zoos. | B．By examining parrots’ brains. |
| C．By analyzing the collected data. | D．By observing parrots’ behavior. |
| A．Their diet. | B．Their body size. |
| C．Their larger brains. | D．Their brains development time. |
| A．Supporting evidence for the research results. |
| B．Potential applications of the research findings. |
| C．A further explanation of the research methods. |
| D．Further research based on current findings. |
Foster homes play
9 . The giant panda’s special black-and-white fur makes it one of the most recognizable animals on the planet. But why does it have this unique coloring? To hide from natural enemies, both in the snow and in the shadows, study lead author Tim Caro, a professor in the Department of Wildlife, Fish & Conservation Biology at the University of California, Davis, said in a new statement. Moreover, the large black circles around a panda’s eyes may help other pandas recognize it, the researchers said.
Understanding why the giant panda has such noticeable color has been a long-term problem to solve. To find out the answer, Caro and his colleagues looked at photos of pandas and 195 other carnivore(食肉动物) species, including 39 subspecies of bear. Then, they recorded the coloring on each area of those animals’ bodies, and compared them with areas of the panda’s body. “Compared with the previous studies, the breakthrough in this study was treating each part of the body as an independent area,” Caro said.
The research team tried to figure out the purpose of the dark-colored furry areas. After going through many comparisons, the researchers determined that the white parts of the giant panda help it hide in the snow. In contrast, its black arms and legs help it hide in the shadows, they said. The panda’s white-and-black coloring didn’t appear to be related to temperature regulation. Nor did they find evidence that the dark circles around a panda’s eyes helped to make them look cuter.
“This really was a great effort by our team, finding and scoring thousands of images and scoring more than 10 areas per picture from over 20 possible colors,” study co-author Ted Stankowich, an assistant professor of biology at California State University, Long Beach, said in the statement. “Sometimes it takes hundreds of hours of hard work to answer the simplest question: Why is the panda black and white?”
1. What does the new study focus on?| A．How pandas hide from natural enemies successfully. |
| B．Why pandas have unique black-and-white coloring. |
| C．Whether the black circles around a panda’s eyes are useful. ” |
| D．What makes pandas so cute and eye-catching. |
| A．Researching more carnivore species. | B．Using the method of comparison. |
| C．Treating each part of the body separately. | D．Recording the number of photos. |
| A．The giant panda gets used to living in the snow. |
| B．The white-and-black fur can help pandas hide. |
| C．The coloring of pandas is related to temperature. |
| D．The function of the dark-colored areas is unknown. |
| A．Keeping your curiosity can make a difference. |
| B．Hundreds of hours of hard work is annoying. |
| C．Scientists dislike doing research on simple issues. |
| D．It needs efforts to find the why behind what you see. |
10 . Wood stork, which was on the brink of extinction in 1984, has recovered enough in Florida and other Southern states. The American wildlife officials proposed removing the waterfowl (水禽) from the endangered species list.
This symbolic species, which is the only stork native to North America, has rebounded (反弹) because dedicated partners in the southeast have worked tirelessly to restore ecosystems that support it. In addition, the wood stork has increased its range in coastal areas. The birds have adapted to new nesting areas, tripling the number of colonies across their range from 29 to 99 in recent years.
Credit goes mainly to the wildlife protections provided by the Endangered Species Act(ESA), which can impose restrictions on a variety of activities in areas where such species are, located, such as development, mining and oil drilling. The act saved the wood stork and it helped; preserve and rebuild vital habitats throughout the southeast, which has improved water quality and benefited countless other species who call the area home. The Endangered Species Act has saved 99% of the species that have been on the list since 1973, with 100 types of plants and animals delisted because they have recovered or are at least stable.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said that restoration of the wood stork’s habitat, especially in the Florida Everglades and adjacent Big Cypress National Preserve, led to a, sharp increase in breeding pairs. Those numbers had shrunk to just 5,000 pairs in 1984, whereas there are more than 10,000 pairs today.
“The proposed delisting of the wood stork is a significant milestone and a remarkable, achievement of the hard work by federal agencies, state and local governments, tribes, conservation organizations, and private citizens in protecting and restoring our most at-risk species,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said.
If the wood stork is delisted, officials said it would remain protected by other laws including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Clean Water Act. A monitoring plan, would be put in place for at least five years to ensure the stork population remains stable.
1. What can be inferred about the wood stork from the text?| A．Its population is increasing. | B．It has already died out. |
| C．It is widely distributed worldwide. | D．It is the most endangered species. |
| A．Charity organizations. | B．Federal agencies. |
| C．Protections of the ESA. | D．Local companies. |
| A．Negative. | B．Doubtful. | C．Indifferent. | D．Positive. |
| A．Effect of the Big Cypress National Preserve Counts |
| B．Saving of the Endangered Wood Stork Progresses |
| C．Efforts to Restore the Wildlife Habitat Pay Off |
| D．Protection of American Native Species Works |
