-
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
based 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
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
< br>chant
s
圣歌
,
赞美诗
, advertising
images and
jingle
s
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
aphid
s
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
antibiotic
s
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
domesticat
ing
驯养
new species. Even more impressively,
DNA analysis of the fungi suggests that
the ants improve or modify the fungi by
regularly
swap
ping and
sharing strains with
neighbouring ant
colonies.
【重要词组】
swap
(also
swop
) /
sw?p; sw
ɑp
/
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