剑桥雅思7 Test 3 阅读解析
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are bad on Reading Passage 1 below.
Ant Intelligence
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 inct kingdom are sufficiently complex to suggest more than a hint of intelligence. Among the, 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 tho involved in the 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 u chemical signals to contact one another in ca of attack. Such chemical communication can be compared to the human u of visual and 怎样让头发柔顺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 arou 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, rai such asaphids蚜虫 as livestock, launch armies to war, u chemical sprays to alarm and confu使糊涂enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information cealessly. 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 g
enes of a newborn baby, other skills being learned from others in the community as the child grows up. It may em that this cultural continuity连续性gives us a huge advantage over ants. They have never mastered fire nor progresd. 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 u 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 cellulo纤维素in leaves — but some fungi can. The ants therefore cultivate the fungi in their nests, bringing them leaves to feed on, and then u them as a source of food. Farmer ants crete 分泌 antibiotics抗菌素 to control other fungi that might act as 'weeds', and
spread waste to fertili the crop.
It was once thought that the fungus that ants cultivate was a single type that they had propagated, esntially 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. The turned out to be highly diver: it ems 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 swapppzping 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 el; substitute sth for sth el 以某物交换他物; 以此物代替彼物: Your book looks more interes
ting 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, 她坐的是我的模拟试题. * 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 hou of intelligence — the evidence suggests that ants have lived in urban ttings for clo on a hundred million years, developing and maintaining underground cities of specialid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, T
he Ants, describes a supercolony of the ant Formica yesnsis石狩红蚁on the Ishikari Coast of Hokkaido. This 'megalopolis'巨大都市was reported to be compod 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 elwhere, dating back some 20,000 years. Ant societies existed in something like their prent form more than venty 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.
Rearch conducted at Oxford, Susx and ZOrich Universities has shown that when dert 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 mobili动员 their foraging teams. They engaged in contact ssions, at the end of which the scout was removed in order to obrve 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' quence序列, 顺序of turns or as a 'compass bearing and distance' message.
During the cour 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 ud to mark them. It's no surpri that Edward Wilson, in his essay, 'In the company of ants', advis 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 b
oxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE
if the statement contradicts the information
少儿读物推荐NOT GIVEN
if there is no information on this
1 Ants u 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 bad on distance and position. TRUE
5 In one experiment, foraging teams were able to u their n of smell to find food. FALSE
6 The essay, 'In the company of ants', explores ant communication. NOT GIVEN
dunhill
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 tho ud 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 u their own natural
8 M
在线英汉互译as weed-killers and also u unwanted materials as 9 F
Genetic analysis shows they constantly upgrade the 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 u 11 N methods, they do no
t affect the 12 O空中英语 and do notwaste 13 E.
A aphids
B agricultural
C cellulo
D exchanging
tray是什么意思E energy
F fertilizers
G food
H fungi
I growing
J sfdinterbreeding
K natural
L other species
M cretions
N sustainable
0 environment
