上海教育剑桥雅思7 Test 3 阅读解析2012年考研英语一真题
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 immediatelycivil rights>法制伴我成长 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 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 aphids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.
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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 em that this cultural continuity连续性gives us a huge advantag
e 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.
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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 Maryla
nd 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 swap视听英语ping and sharing strains with neighbouring ant colonies.
重要词组swap
also pyramidsswop / sw p; 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 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 othercruicontrol 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 sit down
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 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; The 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
