首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Elephant Communication O’ Connell-Rodwell, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, has travelled to Namibia’s first-ev
Elephant Communication O’ Connell-Rodwell, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, has travelled to Namibia’s first-ev
admin
2022-01-29
52
问题
Elephant Communication
O’ Connell-Rodwell, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, has travelled to Namibia’s first-ever wildlife reserve to explore the mystical and complicated realm of elephant communication. She, along with her colleagues, is part of a scientific revolution that started almost 20 years ago. This revolution has made a stunning revelation: elephants are capable of communicating with each other over long distances with low-frequency sounds, also known as infrasounds, which are too deep for humans to hear.
As might be expected, African elephants able to detect seismic sound may have something to do with their ears. The hammer bone in an elephant’s inner ear is proportionally huge for a mammal, but it is rather normal for animals that use vibrational signals. Thus, it may be a sign that suggests elephants can use seismic sounds to communicate.
Other aspects of elephant anatomy also support that ability. First, their massive bodies, which enable them to give out low-frequency sounds almost as powerful as the sound a jet makes during takeoff, serve as ideal frames for receiving ground vibrations and transmitting them to the inner ear. Second, the elephant’s toe bones are set on a fatty pad, which might be of help when focusing vibrations from the ground into the bone. Finally, the elephant has an enormous brain that sits in the cranial cavity behind the eyes in line with the auditory canal. The front of the skull is riddled with sinus cavities, which might function as resonating chambers for ground vibrations.
It remains unclear how the elephants detect such vibrations, but O’ Connell-Rodwell raises a point that the pachyderms are ’listening’ with their trunks and feet instead of their ears. The elephant trunk may just be the most versatile appendage in nature. Its utilisation encompasses drinking, bathing, smelling, feeding and scratching. Both trunk and feet contain two types of nerve endings that are sensitive to pressure—one detects infrasonic vibration, and another responds to vibrations higher in frequencies. As O’ Connell-Rodwell sees, this research has a boundless and unpredictable future. ’Our work is really interfaced of geophysics, neurophysiology and ecology,’ she says. ’We’re raising questions that have never even been considered before.’
It has been well-known to scientists that seismic communication is widely observed among small animals, such as spiders, scorpions, insects and quite a lot of vertebrate species like white-lipped frogs, blind mole rats, kangaroo rats and golden moles. Nevertheless, O’Connell-Rodwell first argued that a giant land animal is also sending and receiving seismic signals. ’I used to lay a male planthopper on a stem and replay the calling sound of a female, and then the male one would exhibit the same kind of behaviour that happens in elephants—he would freeze, then press down on his legs, move forward a little, then stay still again. I find it so fascinating, and it got me thinking that perhaps auditory communication is not the only thing that is going on.’
Scientists have confirmed that an elephant’s capacity to communicate over long distance is essential for survival, especially in places like Etosha, where more than 2,400 savanna elephants range over a land bigger than New Jersey. It is already difficult for an elephant to find a mate in such a vast wild land, and the elephant reproductive biology only complicates it. Breeding herds also adopt low-frequency sounds to send alerts regarding predators. Even though grown-up elephants have no enemies else than human beings, baby elephants are vulnerable and are susceptible to lions and hyenas attack. At the sight of a predator, older ones in the herd will clump together to form protection before running away.
We now know that elephants can respond to warning calls in the air, but can they detect signals transmitted solely through the ground? To look into that matter, the research team designed an experiment in 2002, which used electronic devices that enabled them to give out signals through the ground at Mushara. ’The outcomes of our 2002 study revealed that elephants could indeed sense warning signals through the ground,’ O’Connell-Rodwell observes.
Last year, an experiment was set up in the hope of solving that problem. It used three different recordings—the 1994 warning call from Mushara, an anti-predator call recorded by scientist Joyce Poole in Kenya and a made-up warble tone. ’The data I’ve observed to this point implies that the elephants were responding the way I always expected. However, the fascinating finding is that the anti-predator call from Kenya, which is unfamiliar to them, caused them to gather around, tense up and rumble aggressively as well—but they didn’t always flee. I didn’t expect the results to be that clear-cut.’
Label the diagram below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes on your answer sheet.
选项
答案
sinus cavities
解析
题干让我们寻找大尺寸的脑骨中有很多什么。空白处应该填名词复数。通过题干关键词brain skull定位到第3段倒数两句话,这两句是在描述大象的大脑及其他构造,难点在于出现了多个专有名词短语,比如cranial cavity(颅腔)、auditory canal(听道)、sinus cavities(鼻窦)。在不认识这几个词的情况下,可通过排除来确定答案。题干many一词已提示要填写的这个名词是复数形式,且存在于brain skull中;原文be riddled with意为“充满”,对应题干with many。因此,本题的答案为sinus cavities。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/3IAO777K
本试题收录于:
雅思阅读题库雅思(IELTS)分类
0
雅思阅读
雅思(IELTS)
相关试题推荐
Auniversitytrainingenablesagraduatetoseethingsastheyare,togorighttothepoint,todisentanglea______ofthought
InRembrandt’sday,manyofhisfellowpaintersportrayedtheircharactersmuchliketheidealizedgodsofGreekandRomanmytho
Studentsalreadyconfusedbydifficultcollege-admissionprocedureswillbefurther______bytheuniversity’scomplexnewonline
Namedinhonoroftheschool’sfounder,theRichardBrownstoneCommunityServiceFellowshipisoneofthehighestawards______Br
Tompkinson’spriordonationstotheuniversity,whileverygenerous,failedto_________themagnitudeofherlatestgift.A.co
Withoutthepsychiatrist’spromiseofconfidentiality,trustis(i)____andthepatient’scommunicationlimited;eventhoughcon
Theacademiceducationofferedtouniversitystudentsisessentialandmustnotbe(i)______,butthatdoesnotmeanuniversitie
随机试题
简述我国公文整理(立卷)范围指导性文件的名称。
A.银翘散B.清金化痰汤C.桑杏汤D.桑菊饮E.麻杏石甘汤被称为“辛凉重剂”的是
李女士,28岁,平常月经规律,停经40天,阴道出血3天,突发腹痛伴恶心、呕吐,晕厥就诊。检查:体温:36.4℃,脉搏120次/分,血压80/50mmHg,面色苍白,表情痛苦。双合诊:后穹隆饱满,宫颈举痛明显,子宫未查清,右侧宫旁可触及痛性包块。
按建标[2003]206号文的规定,下列各项中属于建筑安装工程施工机械使用费的有 ( )。
下列各项因素中,能够影响公司资本成本水平的有()。
居民消费的基础和前提是()。
简述教育研究的基本原则。
Doanimalshaverights?Thisishowthequestionisusuallyput.Itseemsauseful,ground-clearingwaytostart.【61】Actual
Whendoesthisconversationtakeplace?
A、Neitherofthemlikethewriter.B、BothofthemlikeEllaFitzgerald.C、Oneofthemiscrazyaboutwriting.D、ThemanlikesFi
最新回复
(
0
)