Lily was the only child in her home. She had just had a quarrel with her mother that afternoon and had run angrily out of the house. She couldn’t help crying when she thought of the scolding from her mother. Having wandered aimlessly in the street for hours, she felt a hungry and wished for something to eat. However, this was not possible for her, since she had no money. She stood beside a stand for a while, watching the middle-aged seller busy doing his business. With no money in hand, she sighed and decided to leave. The seller behind the stand noticed the young girl and asked, “Hey, girl, do you want to have some noodles?” “Oh, yes…but I don’t have money on me ...” she replied.

“That’s nothing. I’ll treat you today,” said the man. “Come in.” The seller brought her a bowl of noodles, whose smell was so appetizing. Lily thanked the man and started to gobble up(狼吞虎咽)the delicious food with silent tears running down her cheeks. “What is it?” asked the man kindly. “Nothing. I was just moved by your kindness!” said Lily as she wiped away her tears. “Even a stranger on the street will give me a bowl of noodles, while my mother drove me out of the house. She showed no care for me. She is so mean cruel!” Lily added.

Hearing the words, the seller smiled kindly and whispered, “Girl, do you really thinks so? I only gave you a bowl of noodles and you thanked me a lot. But it is your mother who has raised you since you were a baby. Can you count the number of times that she has cooked for you? Have you expressed your thanks to her?”

Lily sat there, speechless and numb with shock, remembering her mother’s familiar face and weathered hands. “Why did I not think of that?” she thought to herself. “A bowl of noodles from a stranger made me feel grateful, but I have never thanked my mum for what she has done for me.”

At that moment, Lily knew that as soon as she arrived home, she would give her mother an apology for her terrible rudeness.

Approaching the doorway, Lily took a deep breath._

Her mother came back home, which called her mind back.

Climate change, not human hunting, may have destroyed the thylacine （袋狼），according to a new study based on DNA from thylacine bones.

The meat-eating marsupials （有袋动物）died out on mainland Australia a few thousand years ago, but survived in Tasmania, an island of southeast Australia separated from the mainland, until the 1930s. Until now, scientists have believed the cause of this mainland extinction （灭绝）was increased activity from native Australians and dingoes （Australian wild dogs）.

Scientists behind the University of Adelaide study, which was published in the Journal of Biogeography on Thursday, collected 51 new thylacine DNA samples from fossil （化石）bones and museum skins. The paper concluded that climate change starting about 4,000 years ago was likely the main cause of the mainland extinction.

The ancient DNA showed that the mainland extinction of thylacines was rapid, and not the result of loss of genetic diversity （基因多样性）.There was also evidence of a population crash （大跌）in thylacines in Tasmania at the same period of time, reducing their numbers and genetic diversity.

Professor Jeremy Austin said Tasmania would have been protected from mainland Australia's warmer, drier climate due to its higher rainfall. He argued that climate change was "the only thing that could have caused, or at least started, an extinction on the mainland and caused a population crash in Tasmania.”

"They both occurred at about the same time, and the other two things that have been talked about in the past that may have driven thylacines to extinction on the mainland were dingoes and humans. So the only explanation that's left is climate change. And because that population crash happened at the same time that the species （物种）went extinct on the mainland, our argument is there's a common theme there and the only common theme is that there is this change in climate."

We have a pit bull(比特犬). We found him a few weeks ago, walking along the road in a rural area. He tried jumping on cars, and we thought maybe his family was camping somewhere nearby, so we passed him by. A few hours later, on our return trip, he was still in the same place, again, trying to get folks to stop for him. When he saw us, he lay down in the middle of the road, so we were unable to get around him.

We stopped the car and looked around for a few minutes, trying to figure out if anyone was around from whom he was separated. It didn’t appear so. Then, we took a good look at the dog. He had no collar and he was really thin. We decided he was deserted.

My husband sad, “If he doesn’t bite me when I try to pick him up to put him in the car, then we have a new dog.” The dog happily joined us with no fight at all. The only thing we were in danger of was getting licked to death. He kept sticking his head between the two front seats and thanking us for picking him up.

The dog was clearly on the road for some time, He was extremely under weight. He was covered in scars and new wounds. We have guessed that some of the scars were from when he was on the road. We thought of possible fights with coyotes(土狼), but he also looked as though he was used to fighting other dogs. We figured his incredibly sweet personality was the reason why he was deserted. He can’t have been a good fighting dog.

Therefore, we fed him a lot over the course of the next two weeks and he gained over twenty pounds.

We took him to the vet.

Now we all love the dog very much. He once happened to save me from trouble.

One spring morning many years ago, I had been searching for gold along Coho Creek on southeastern Alaska’s Kuprean of Island, and as I emerged from a forest of spruce(云杉) and hemlock tree, I froze in my tracks. No more than 20 paces in the bog(沼泽) was a huge Alaskan timber wolf - caught in one of Trapper George’s traps.

Old George had died the previous week of a heart attack, so the wolf was lucky. Confused and frightened at my approach, the wolf backed away. Then I noticed something else: It was a female, and her teats were full of milk. Somewhere there was a den of hungry pups (小狼) waiting for their mother.

From her appearance, I guessed that she had been trapped only a few days. That meant her pups were probably still alive. But I suspected that if I tried to release the wolf, she would turn aggressive and try to tear me to pieces.

So I decided to search for her pups instead and began to look for tracks that might lead me to her den. Fortunately, there were still a few remaining of snow. After several moments, I spotted pups’ marks on a trail.

The tracks led a half mile through the forest, then up a slope covered with many rocks. I finally spotted the den at the base of an enormous spruce, There wasn’t a sound inside. Wolf pups are shy and cautious, and I didn’t have much hope of inviting them outside, But I had to try. So I began imitating the high-pitched(声音很尖锐的) sound of a mother wolf calling her young. No response. A few moments later, after I tried another call, four tiny pups appeared. They couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old.

I extended my hands.

With her young to protect, she was becoming aggressive.

Imagine trying to test the memory of the blue whale—the biggest animal that exists or has ever existed, a 190-ton behemoth that dwarfs (使相形见绌) even the largest dinosaur, a leviathan that is rarely seen except when it comes up for air. How would you subject such a creature to a psychological test?

You can’t, exactly. But there is another way to get a sense of how their minds work. For years, scientists have been fitting radio tags to these giants to track their whereabouts (下落). By analyzing a decade’s worth of that data, Briana Abrahms from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has shown that these animals fine-tune the paths of their migrations to track the historical abundances of krill—the tiny crustaceans that they eat. Rather than finding where their prey (捕获物) currently is, they go after the places where their prey was in years past. Their migrations, in other words, are guided by memory. So what happens in a world where memory might lead them away from the right path?

Countless species of animals migrate over long distances to exploit far-flung sources of food, but these voyages aren’t just about getting to the final destination. The journey itself can be a sort of food tour, too. Migrating animals often adjust the pace and timing of their movements to hit pulses of seasonal food that spring up along their path. The ecologist Sandra van der Graaf described this as “surfing the green wave” after first observing it among barnacle geese. Others have found the same pattern among wasps, elk, mule deer, and brown bears.”

The blue whales of the North Pacific spend their winters in their breeding grounds off California and Costa Rica. Come spring, they swim up the coast of North America toward the food-rich summer waters of the Pacific Northwest. They could make the journey in two months (and they do, on the reverse trip back south). Instead, they take twice that time, pausing to gorge (狼吞虎咽) themselves on blooms of krill that appear along the way. It’s a leisurely season-long tour of a continent-wide buffet line.

Scientists can get a good sense of this changing buffet by measuring the concentrations of chlorophyll in different patches of ocean. This green pigment (色素) reflects the amount of plankton, which in turn is eaten by krill. The more chlorophyll there is, the more food a blue whale might find.

By comparing chlorophyll counts to whale movements, Abrahms and her team expected to see that “they follow the timing of their prey, as it becomes available,” she says. But they were surprised to learn that the animals very rarely tracked contemporary waves of krill. Instead, their movements were strongly correlated (相关联) with 10-year historical averages of chlorophyll. Put it this way: You could predict a blue whale’s movements with far more accuracy by looking at where their food has been than where their food currently is.

A Bowl of Noodles

Jenny was the only child in her home. She had a quarrel with her mother that afternoon and she ran out of the house angrily. She couldn’t help crying sadly when she thought of he scolding from her mother. Having wandered aimlessly in the street for hours, she felt a little hungry and wished for something to eat, but it was not even possible for her, since she had nothing with her. She stood beside a stand for a while, watching the middle-aged seller busy doing his business. However, with no money in hand, she sighed and had to leave.

The seller behind the stand noticed the young girl and asked, “Hey, girl, you want to have the noodles?”

“Oh, yes... but I don’t have money on me...” she replied.

“That’s nothing. I’ll treat you today,” said the man,

“Come in.”

The seller brought her a bowl of noodles, whose smell was so attractive. Jenny thanked the man and started to gobblle (狼吞虎咽) up the delicious food...then cried silently.

“What is it?” asked the man kindly.

“Nothing, actually I was moved by your kindness!” said Jenny as she wiped her tears, “Even a stranger on the street will give me a bowl of noodles, while my mother drove me out of the house. She showed no care for me. She is so mean and cruel!”

Hearing the words, the seller smiled “Girl, do you really think so? I only gave you a bowl of noodles and you thanked me a lot. But it is your mother who has raised you since you were a baby. Can you number the times that she has cooked for you? Have you expressed your thanks to her?”

Jenny sat there, speechless and numb with shock; she remembered her mother’s familiar face and weathered hands. “Why did I not think of that? A bowl of noodles from a stranger made me feel grateful, but I have never thanked my mum for what she has done for me.”

On the way home, Jenny made up her mind to make an apology to her mother for her rudeness as soon as she arrived home.

Approaching the doorway, Jenny took a deep breath.

Her mother came back home, which called her mind back.