【北语留学】【英国留学】《剑桥雅思7》Test 2Reading passage 3 解析
(2013-04-10 09:21:09)
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READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes
on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1
below.
When we think of intelligent
members of the animal kingdom, the creatures that
spring immediately to mind are
apes and monkeys. But in fact the social lives of some members of
the insect kingdom are sufficiently complex to suggest more than a
hint of intelligence. Among these, the world of the ant has come in
for considerable scrutiny仔细检查lately, and the idea that ants demonstrate sparks
of cognition认识力has
certainly not been rejected by those involved in these
investigations.
【重要词组】spring to (sb's) mind
if someone or something springs to mind, you
immediately think of them
Two questions
spring to mind.
Ants store food, repel attackers and use chemical signals to
contact one another in case of attack. Such chemical communication
can be compared to the human use of visual and
auditory听觉的channels (as in
religious chants圣歌,赞美诗, advertising images and
jingles叮当声, political
slogans and martial music军乐) to arouse and propagate传播moods and attitudes. The biologist Lewis Thomas
wrote, Ants are so much like human beings as to be an
embarrassment. They farm fungi菌类, raise aphids蚜虫 as livestock, launch armies to war, use chemical
sprays to alarm and confuse使糊涂enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour,
exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch
television.
However, in ants there is no cultural transmission — everything
must be encoded in the genes — whereas in humans the opposite is
true. Only basic instincts are carried in the genes of a newborn
baby, other skills being learned from others in the community as
the child grows up. It may seem that this cultural
continuity连续性gives us a
huge advantage over ants. They have never mastered fire nor
progressed. Their fungus farming and aphid herding crafts are
sophisticated when compared to the agricultural skills of humans
five thousand years ago but have been totally overtaken by modern
human agribusiness农业综合企业.
Or have they? The farming methods of ants are at least sustainable.
They do not ruin environments or use enormous amounts of energy.
Moreover, recent evidence suggests that the crop farming of ants
may be more sophisticated and adaptable than was thought.
Ants were farmers fifty million years before humans were. Ants
can't digest the cellulose纤维素in leaves — but some fungi can. The ants therefore
cultivate these fungi in their nests, bringing them leaves to feed
on, and then use them as a source of food. Farmer ants
secrete 分泌
antibiotics抗菌素 to control
other fungi that might act as 'weeds', and spread waste to
fertilise the crop.
It was once
thought that the fungus that ants cultivate was a single type that
they had propagated, essentially unchanged from the distant past.
Not so. Ulrich Mueller of Maryland and his colleagues genetically
screened 862 different types of fungi taken from ants' nests. These
turned out to be highly diverse: it seems that ants are continually
domesticating
驯养 new species. Even more impressively, DNA
analysis of the fungi suggests that the ants improve or modify the
fungi by regularly swapping and sharing strains
with neighbouring ant colonies.
【重要词组】swap
(also
swop) / swɔp; swɑp/ v (-pp-)
(infml 口)
~ (sth) (with sb);~ (sb) sth for
sth; ~ sth (over/round) give sth in
exchange for sth else; substitute sth for sth else 以某物交换他物;
以此物代替彼物:
Your book looks more interesting than mine:
do you want to swap (with me)? 你的书好像比我的有意思, 你愿意(和我)交换吗? * They swapped
(ie told each other) stories about their army days. 他们互相讲述了他们在军队中的经历.
* I'll swap (you) my Michael Jackson
tape for your Bruce Springsteen album.
我想用迈克尔?杰克逊的录音带交换你的布鲁斯.斯普林斯廷唱片集. * She
swapped our chairs (round), so I had hers and she had
mine. 她把我们俩的椅子对调了, 因此我坐的是她的, 她坐的是我的. * I wouldn't swap places
with him for anything, ie would
not wish to be in his situation. 我说什麽也不愿意处於他的地位.
Whereas prehistoric man had no exposure to
urban lifestyles — the forcing house of intelligence — the evidence
suggests that ants have lived in urban settings for close on a
hundred million years, developing and maintaining underground
cities of specialised专门的,特定职能的chambers and tunnels.
When we survey Mexico City, Tokyo, Los
Angeles, we are amazed at what has been accomplished by humans. Yet
Hoelldobler and Wilson's magnificent work for ant lovers, The
Ants, describes a supercolony of the ant Formica
yessensis石狩红蚁on the Ishikari Coast
of Hokkaido. This 'megalopolis'巨大都市was reported to be composed of 360 million workers
and a million queens living in 4,500 interconnected nests across a
territory of 2.7 square kilometres.
Such enduring and
intricately复杂地meshed levels
of technical achievement outstrip胜过by far anything achieved by our distant ancestors. We
hail as masterpieces the cave paintings in
southern France and elsewhere, dating back some 20,000 years. Ant
societies existed in something like their present form more than
seventy million years ago. Beside this, prehistoric man looks
technologically primitive. Is this then some kind of intelligence,
albeit虽然(即使) of a different kind?
【重要词组】Hail ~ sb/sth as sth
enthusiastically acknowledge sb/sth as
sth 热情地承认某人[某事物]为...: crowds hailing him as
king, as a hero 拥他为王﹑
赞他为英雄的群众 * (fig 比喻) The book was hailed as a
masterpiece/as masterly. 这本书被誉为杰作
【重点词汇】albeit
/
ˏɔːlˈbiːɪt; ɔlˋbiɪt/ conj
(dated or
fml 旧或文) although 虽然; 尽管:
I tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to contact
him. 尽管并未与他联系上, 可是我已经尽力而为了.
He
accepted the job, albeit with some hesitation.
Chris went with her, albeit reluctantly.
Research conducted at Oxford, Sussex and
ZOrich Universities has shown that when desert ants return from a
foraging 搜寻粮草trip, they
navigate by integrating bearings 方位and distances, which they continuously update in
their heads. They combine the evidence of visual landmarks with a
mental library of local directions, all within a framework which is
consulted and updated. So ants can learn too.
And in a twelve-year programme of work,
Ryabko and Reznikova have found evidence that ants can transmit
very complex messages. Scouts侦查兵 who had
located food in a maze returned to
mobilise动员 their foraging teams. They
engaged in contact sessions, at the end of which the scout was
removed in order to observe what her team might do. Often the
foragers proceeded to the exact spot in the maze where the food had
been. Elaborate精细的,
精心的precautions预防措施 were taken to prevent the foraging team using
odour clues. Discussion now centres on whether the route through
the maze is communicated as a 'left- right'
sequence序列, 顺序of turns or as a
'compass bearing and distance' message.
During the course of this
exhaustive详尽的; 彻底的study, Reznikova has
grown so attached to her laboratory ants that she feels she knows
them as individuals — even without the paint spots used to mark
them. It's no surprise that Edward Wilson, in his essay, 'In the
company of ants', advises readers who ask what to do with the ants
in their kitchen to: 'Watch where you step. Be careful of little
lives’
Questions
1-6
Do the
following statements agree with the information given in Reading
Passage 1? In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet,
write
TRUE
if the statement agrees with the
information
FALSE
if the statement contradicts the
information
NOT GIVEN
if there is no information on this
1 Ants use the same channels of
communication as humans do. FALSE
2 City life is one factor that
encourages the development of intelligence. TRUE
3 Ants can build large cities more
quickly than humans do. NOT
GIVEN
4 Some ants can find their way by
making calculations based on distance and position.
TRUE
5 In one
experiment, foraging teams were able to use their sense of smell to
find food. FALSE
6 The essay, 'In the company of
ants', explores ant communication. NOT
GIVEN
Questions 7-13
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-0,
below.
Write the correct letter, A-0, in boxes 7-13 on your answer
sheet.
Ants as
farmers
Ants have sophisticated methods of farming,
including herding livestock and growing crops, which are in many
ways similar to those used in human agriculture. The ants
cultivate a large number of different
species of edible fungi which convert 7 Cinto a form which they can digest. They use their
own natural
8
M
as weed-killers and also use unwanted
materials as 9 F
Genetic analysis
shows they constantly upgrade these fungi by developing new species
and by 10 D
species with neighbouring ant colonies. In fact, the farming
methods of ants could be said to be more advanced than human
agribusiness, since they use 11 N methods, they do
not affect the 12 O and do notwaste 13
E.
A aphids
B agricultural
C cellulose
D exchanging
E energy
F fertilizers
G food
H fungi
I growing
J interbreeding
K natural
L other species
M secretions
N
sustainable
0
environment