Most animals have little connection with animals o... - 搜题云问答

第1题

Since 1975 advocates of humane treatment of animals have broadened their goals to oppose t

he use of animals for fur, leather, wool, and food. They have mounted protests against all forms of hunting and the trapping of animals in the wild. And they have joined environmentalists in urging protection of natural habitats from commercial or residential development. The occasion for these added emphases was the publication in 1975 of "Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals" by Peter Singer, formerly a professor of philosophy at Oxford University in England. This book gave a new impetus to the animal rights movement. The post-1975 animal rights activists are far more vocal than their predecessors, and the organizations to which they belong are generally more radical. Many new organizations are formed. The tactics of the activists are designed to catch the attention of the public.

Since the mid-1980s there have been frequent news reports about animal right organizations picketing stores that sell furs, harassing hunters in the wild, or breaking into laboratories to free animals. Some of the extreme organizations advocate the use of assault, armed terrorism, and death threats to make their point. Aside from making isolated attacks on people who wear fur coats or trying to prevent hunters from killing animals, most of the organizations have directed their tactics at institutions.

The results of the protests and other tactics have been mixed. Companies are reducing reliance on animal testing. Medical research has been somewhat curtailed by legal restrictions and the reluctance of younger workers to use animals in research. New tests have been developed to replace the use of animals. Some well-known designers have stopped using fur. While the public tends to agree that animals should be treated humanely, most people are unlikely to give up eating meat or wearing goods made from leather and wool.

Giving up genuine fur has become less of a problem, since fibers used to make fake fur such as the Japanese invention Kane car on can look almost identical to real fur. Some of the strongest opposition to the animal rights movement has come from hunters and their organizations. But animal rights activists have succeeded in marshaling public opinion to press for state restrictions on hunting in several parts of the nation.

1975 was an important year in the history of animal treatment because______.

A．many people began to call for humane treatment of animals that year

B．a new book was published that broadened the animal rights movement

C．the environmentalists began to show interest in animal protection

D．the trapping of animals began to go wild all through the world

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第2题

Part CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segm

Part C

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly on ANSWER SHEET II. (10 points)

Do animals have rights.'？ This is how the question is usually put. It sounds like a useful, ground clearing way to start. 46) Actually, it isn't, because it assumes that there is an agreed account of human rights, which is something the world does not have.

On one view of rights, to be sure, it necessarily follows that animals have none. 47) Some philosophers argue that rights exist only within a social contract, as part of an exchange of duties and entitlements. Therefore, animals cannot have rights. The idea of punishing a tiger that kills somebody is absurd, for exactly the same reason, so is the idea that tigers have rights. However, this is only one account, and by no means an uncontested one. It denies rights not only to animals but also to some people—4or instance to infants, the mentally incapable and future generations.

In addition, it is unclear what force a contract can have for people who never consented to it, how do you reply to somebody who says "I don' t like this contract" ？

The point is this: without agreement on the rights of people, arguing about the rights of animals is fruitless. 48 ) It leads the discussion to extremes at the outset: it invites you to think that animals should be treated either with the consider- ation humans extend to other humans, or with no consideration at all. This is a false choice. Better to start with another, more fundamental, question: is the way we treat animals a moral issue at all？

Many deny it. 49) Arguing from the view that humans are different from animals in every relevant respect, extremists of this kind think that animals lie outside the area of moral choice.

Any regard for the suffering of animals is seen as a mistake—a sentimental displacement of feeling that should properly be directed to other humans.

This view which holds that torturing a monkey is morally equivalent to chopping wood, may seem bravely "logical". In fact it is simply shallow: the confused center is right to reject it. The most elementary form. of moral reasoning—the ethical equivalent of learning to crawl—is to weigh others' interests against one's own. This in turn requires sympathy and imagination: without there is no capacity for moral thought. To see an animal in pain is enough, for most, to engage sympathy. 50)When that happens, it is not a mistake: it is mankind' s instinct for moral reasoning in action, an instinct that should be encouraged rather than laughed at.

46.____________________

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第3题

In almost all cases the soft parts of fossils are gone for ever but they were fitted aroun

d or within the hard parts. Many of them also were attached to the hard parts and usually such attachments are visible as depressed or elevated areas, ridges or grooves, smooth or rough patches on the hard parts. The muscles most important for the activities of the animal and most evident in the appearance of the living animal are those attached to the hard parts and possible to reconstruct from their attachments. Much can be learned about a vanished brain from the inside of the skull in which it was lodged.

Restoration of the external appearance of an extinct animal has little or no scientific value. It does not even help in inferring what the activities of the living animal were, how fast it could run, what its food was, or such other conclusions as are important for the history of life. However, what most people want to know about extinct animals is what they looked like when they were alive. Scientists also would like to know. Things like fossil shells present no great problem as a rule, because the hard parts are external when the animal is alive and the outer appearance is actually preserved in the fossils.

Animals in which the skeleton is internal present great problems of restoration, and honest restorers admit that they often have to use considerable guessing. The general shape and contours of the body are fixed by the skeleton and by muscles attached to the skeleton, but surface features, which may give the animal its really characteristic look, are seldom restorable with any real probability of accuracy. The present often helps to interpret the past. An extinct animal presumably looked more or less like its living relatives, if it has any. This, however, may be quite equivocal. For example, extinct members of the horse family are usually restored to look somewhat like the most familiar living horses — domestic horses and their closest wild relatives. It is, however, possible and even probable that many extinct horses were striped like zebras. If lions and tigers were extinct they would be restored to look exactly alike. No living elephants have much hair and mammoths, which are extinct elephants, would doubtless be restored as hairless if we did not happen to know that they had thick, woolly coats. We know this only because mammoths are so recently extinct that prehistoric men drew pictures of them and that the hide and hair have actually been found in a few specimens. For older extinct animals we have no such clues.

According to the passage, the soft part of fossilized animals

A．can always be accurately identified.

B．have usually left some traces.

C．can usually be reconstructed.

D．have always vanished without any trace.

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第4题

Most people have no idea of the hard work and worry that go into the collecting of those f

ascinating birds and animals that they pay to see in the zoo. One of the questions that is always asked of me is【56】I became an animal collector in the first【57】. The answer is that I have always been interested in animals and zoos. According to my parents, the first word I was able to say with any【58】was not the conventional" mamma" or "daddy" ,【59】the word "zoo" , which I would【60】over and over again with a shrill【61】until someone, in group to【62】me up, would take me to the zoo. When I【63】a little older, we lived in Greece and I had a great【64】of pets, ranging from owls to seahorses, and I spent all my spare time【65】the countryside in search of fresh specimens to【66】to my collection of pets【67】on I went for a year to the City Zoo, as a student【68】, to get experience of the large animals, such as lions, bears, bison and ostriches,【69】were not easy to keep at home. When I left, I【70】had enough money of my own to be able to【71】my first trip and I have been going【72】ever since then. Though a collector's job is not an easy one and is full of【73】, it is certainly a job which will appeal【74】all those who love animals and【75】.

(56)

A．how

B．where

C．when

D．whether

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第5题

听力原文：W: Hi, Tom.M: Kate, I haven't seen you for weeks. Where have you been？W: In Flori

听力原文：W: Hi, Tom.

M: Kate, I haven't seen you for weeks. Where have you been？

W: In Florida.

M: What？ Vacationing while the rest of us have been studying on the campus in the February cold？

W: Not exactly. I spent most of my time underwater.

M: I don't understand.

W: I was on a special field trip. I went with my marine biology class.

M: So you went scuba diving. What were you looking for, sunken treasure？

W: You might say so. The sea is full of treasures. All kinds of strange, fascinating organisms. Our class concentrated on studying plankton.

M: I thought they were too small to be seen.

W: That's a common misconception. The plankton covers a wide variety of freely floating plants and animals. From one-celled organisms to large ones, such as the common jelly fish.

M: Jelly-fish may be large enough to be seen. But they are transparent, aren't they？

W: Yes, most floating plants and animals have transparent tissues. It makes them practically invisible to their enemies.

M: But not invisible to your biology class, I hope.

W: By concentrating, I was able to see the outlines of lots of different plants and animals, In fact, our professor even took photo of some small oceanic snails.

M: How would the snails show up in the photo if they are transparent？

W: We painted them with a harmless green dye. Since particles of the dye stuck to the tissues, the snails appeared in a green outline in the photos.

M: That sounds like an interesting trip.

W: It really was.

M: But I think if I had been there, I'd much rather have spent my time just swimming and lying in the sun.

(20)

A．Sightseeing.

B．Lying on the beach.

C．Taking photos of the beaches.

D．Scuba diving.

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第6题

When prehistoric man arrived in new parts of the world, something strange happened to the

large animals: they suddenly became extinct. Smaller species survived. The large, slow-growing animals were easy game, and were quickly hunted to extinction. Now something similar could be happening in the oceans.

That the seas are being overfished has been known for years. What researchers such as Ransom Myers and Boris Worm have shown is just how fast things are changing. They have looked at half a century of data from fisheries around the world. Their methods do not attempt to estimate the actual biomass (the amount of living biological matter) of fish species in particular parts of the ocean, but rather changes in that biomass over time. According to their latest paper published in Nature, the biomass of large predators (animals that kill and eat other animals) in a new fishery is reduced on average by 80% within 15 years of the start of exploitation. In some long-fished areas, it has halved again since then.

Dr. Worm acknowledges that these figures are conservative. One mason for this is that fishing technology has improved. Today's vessels can find their prey using satellites and sonar, which were not available 50 years ago. That means a higher proportion of what is in the sea is being caught, so the real difference between present and past is likely to be worse than the one recorded by changes in catch sizes. In the early days, too, longlines would have been more saturated with fish. Some individuals would therefore not have been caught, since no baited hooks would have been available to trap them, leading to an underestimate of fish stocks in the past. Furthermore, in the early days of longline fishing, a lot of fish were lost to sharks after they had been hooked. That is no longer a problem, because there are fewer sharks around now.

Dr. Myers and Dr. Worm argue that their work gives a correct baseline, which future management efforts must take into account. They believe the data support an idea current among marine biologists, that of the "shifting baseline". The notion is that people have failed to detect the massive changes which have happened in the ocean because they have been looking back only a relatively short time into the past. That matters because theory suggests that the maximum sustainable yield that can be cropped from a fishery comes when the biomass of a target species is about 50% of its original levels. Most fisheries are well below that, which is a bad way to do business.

The extinction of large prehistoric animals is noted to suggest that ______.

A．large animals were vulnerable to the changing environment

B．small species survived as large animals disappeared

C．large sea animals may face the same threat today

D．slow-growing fish outlive fast-growing ones

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第7题

Most people do not think of fishes and other sea animals as having voices, and of those wh

o are aware of the fact that many of them can "speak", few understand that these "conversations" have significance. Actually, their talk may be as meaningful as much of our own. For example, some sea animals use their "voices" to locate their food in the ocean expanses (广阔的区域); others use their "voices" to let their fellows know of their locations; and still others, as a means of obtaining mates. Sometimes, "speaking" may even mean the difference between life and death to a sea animal. It appears in some cases that when a predator (食肉动物) approaches, the prey (被捕的动物) depends on no more than the sounds it makes to escape.

Fish sounds are important to man, also. By listening to them, he can learn a great deal about the habits of creatures that make them, the size of the School they form, the patterns of their migrations, and the nature of the environments in which they live. He can also apply this information to the more effective utilization of the listening spots he has set up to detect enemy submarines (潜水艇). A knowledge of fish sounds can avoid confusion and unneeded effort when a "new" sound is picked up and the sound sentry (哨兵) must decide whether or not to call an alarm.

Among the people who know that many sea animals have voices, few ______.

A．know the meaning of their conversations

B．realize that they can communicate with each other

C．realize that they can make speeches

D．could understand their conversations

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第8题

The first two stages in the development of civilized man were probably the invention of pr

imitive weapons and the discovery of fire, al though nobody knows exactly when acquired the use of (1)_____.

The (2)_____ of language is also obscure. No doubt it began very gradually. Animals have a few cries that serve (3)_____ signals, (4)_____ even the highest apes have not been found able to pronounce words (5)_____ with the most intensive professional instruction. The superior brain of man is apparently (6)_____ for the mastering of speech. When man became sufficiently intelligent, we must suppose that he (7)_____ the number of cries for different purposes. It was a great day (8)_____ he discovered that speed could be used for narrative. There are those who think that (9)_____ picture language preceded oral language. A man (10)_____ a picture on the wall of his cave to show (11)_____ direction he had gone, or (12)_____ prey he hoped to catch. Probably-picture language and oral language developed side by side. I am inclined to think that language (13)_____ the most important single factor in the development of man. Two important stages came not (14)_____ before the dawn of written history. The first was the domestication of animals; the second was agriculture. Agriculture was (15)_____ in human progress to which subsequently there was nothing comparable (16)_____ our own machine age. Agriculture made possible (17)_____ immense increase in the number of the human species in the regions where it could be successfully practiced. (18)_____ were, at first, only those in which nature fertilized the soil (19)_____ each harvest. Agriculture met with violent resistance from the pastoral nomads, but the agricultural way of life prevailed in the end (20)_____ the physical comforts it provided.

A．the latter

B．the later

C．the second

D．the latest

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第9题

Foxes and farmers have never got on well. These small dog-like animals have long been accu

sed of killing farm animals. They are officially classified as harmful and farmers try to keep their numbers down by shooting or poisoning them.

Farmers can also call on the services of their local hunt to control the fox population. Hunting consists of pursuing a fox across the countryside, with a group of specially trained dogs, followed by men and women riding horses. When the dogs finally catch the fox they kill it or a hunter shoots it.

People who take part in hunting think of it as a sport; they wear a special uniform. of red coats and white trousers, and follow strict codes of behavior. But owning a horse and hunting regularly is expensive, so most hunters are wealthy.

It is estimated that up to 100, 000 people watch or take part in fox hunting. But over the last couple of decades the number of people opposed to fox hunting, because they think it is brutal (残酷的).

Nowadays it is rare for a hunt to pass off without some kind of confrontation (冲突) between hunters and hunt saboteurs (阻拦者). Sometimes these incidents lead to violence, but mostly saboteurs interfere with the hunt by misleading riders and disturbing the trail of the fox's smell, which the dogs follow.

Noisy confrontations between hunters and saboteurs have become so common that they are almost as much a part of hunting as the pursuit of foxes itself. But this year supporters of fox hunting face a much bigger threat to their sport. A Labour Party Member of the Parliament, Mike Foster, is trying to get Parliament to approve a new law which will make the hunting of wild animals with dogs illegal. If the law is passed, wild animals like foxes will be protected under the ban in Britain.

Rich people in Britain have been hunting foxes______.

A．for recreation

B．to limit the fox population

C．in the interests of the farmers

D．to show off their wealth

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第10题

The first two stages in the development of civilized man were probably the invention of pr

imitive weapons and the discovery of fire, although nobody knows exactly when people acquired the use of (1)_____.

The (2)_____ of language is also obscure. No doubt it began very gradually. Animals have a few cries that serve (3)_____ signals, (4)_____ even the highest apes have not been found able to pronounce words (5)_____ with the most intensive professional instruction. The superior brain of man is apparently (6)_____ for the mastering of speech. When man became sufficiently intelligent, we must suppose that he (7)_____ the number of cries for different purposes. It was a great clay (8)_____ he discovered that speed could be used for narrative. There are those who think that (9)_____ picture language preceded oral language. A man (10)_____ a picture on the wall of his cave to show (11)_____ direction he had gone, or (12)_____ prey he hoped to catch. Probably picture language and oral language developed side by side. I am inclined to think that language (13)_____ the most important single factor in the development of man.

Two important stages came not (14)_____ before the dawn of written history. The first was the domestication of animals; the second was agriculture. Agriculture was (15)_____ in human progress to which subsequently there was nothing comparable (16)_____ our own machine age. Agriculture made possible (17)_____ immense increase in the number of the human species in the regions where it could be successfully practised. (18)_____ were, at first, only those in which nature fertilized the soil (19)_____ each harvest. Agriculture met with violent resistance from the pastoral nomads, but the agricultural way of life prevailed in the end (20)_____ the physical comforts it provided.

A．the latter

B．the later

C．the second

D．the latest

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Most animals have little connection with animals of a different kind, unless they hunt the