Question

When Joe Ward went fishing in Florida one day last September, he didn’t need a weather report to tell him that big trouble was on the way. All he had to do was observe the behavior of the area’s wildlife. “The fish were just biting like crazy, like they were storing up,” says Ward. “There wasn’t a bird anywhere, not even a gull, which is very unusual down here. And on the banks, the insects—the ants, everything—were climbing high.” The next day Hurricane Frances hit. Was this an isolated incident? Hardly. “Some people say that animals have a sixth sense. I don’t know if I’d go that far,” says Wildlife Conservation Society research scientist Diana Reiss. “There’s a lot we still have to learn about their behavior. But I don’t think there’s any question that animals can hear, feel and notice things that we can’t.”

　 When Sri Lanka Wildlife Department deputy director, H. D．Ratnayake, surveyed the destruction left by last December’s tsunami, he was shocked by what he had not seen before. Tens of thousands of humans were killed. But there was very little mortality(死亡率) among wildlife. At Yala National Park, the phenomenon was especially noticeable. Though the human death number nearby was more than 200, officials found no wildlife dead bodies. After the tsunami, wild tales keep surfacing. Residents have reported seeing herds of antelope thundering from a coastal area to the hills before the giant wall of water hit. And nesting flamingos（紅鸛）left low-lying areas, heading for the safety of higher ground. How did they know trouble was on the way？Scientists credit a well-tuned sensory (感覺的,感官的) system. “Animals have to adapt to their environment to survive,” Reiss says. Changes in atmospheric conditions also may have played a part, some scientists say.

　 Wildlife photographer Mike Blair remembers the day he witnessed how waterfowl (水鳥) can sense change in the weather. That morning the weather was mild, with a few snow geese on the marshes (濕地) at the wildlife protecting place. But as the day progressed, flight after flight of geese crossed the sky and settled on the wetlands. The next day temperatures decreased widely and a snowstorm hit. “The refuge staff said there were 20,000 geese there at the start of the day,” says Blair. “By the end of the day, they were estimating there were 300,000 or more.” Wildlife biologists believe migrating waterfowl have a built-in sense to predict the approach of large storms and are particularly responsive to changes of pressure in the air.

1．What will the antelope do before a storm?

　 A．They will rush to the top of the hills.

　 B．They will go to the coastal land to store some food.

　 C．They will leave their home and move to another place forever.

　 D．They will move to the wetlands to avoid the storm．

2．In Reiss’s opinion, why can animals survive some disasters while humans cannot?

　 A．Because they have a sixth sense.

　 B．Because they can feel the changes in atmospheric conditions.

　 C．Because they can feel and notice something we human beings can’t.

　 D．Because human beings are well-developed and don’t need to adapt to the environment.

3．What’s the main idea of the passage?

　 A．The migration of the wildlife animals.

　 B．What will the waterfowl do when there is a disaster.

　 C．Animals have a six sense to predict the coming natural disaster.

　 D．The number of human beings’ destruction is larger than the wild animals’

 

Answer 1

ACC