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
It is hard to love ants. Spiders and scorpions excepted, they are probably our least favorite insect. They give no honey; they d
It is hard to love ants. Spiders and scorpions excepted, they are probably our least favorite insect. They give no honey; they d
admin
2013-05-20
48
问题
It is hard to love ants. Spiders and scorpions excepted, they are probably our least favorite insect. They give no honey; they do not brighten the air or chirp in hedgerows. Ants are small and dark and silent and live underground where they cannot be seen. They arc venomous and they bite. They teem and swarm, moving en masse, like robots, in cryptic legions. And they are ugly; their huge heads and tiny waists make their bodies seem like grotesque, anorexic versions of our own. The industry of ants is a constant reproach to us; their most surprising feature, their social organization, seems sinister and totalitarian. Only our luck in being several thousand times as big keeps us safe from them.
And ants, needless to say, do not love us. They hardly even notice us. This is hard to take. They challenge our anthropocentrism. For them, it seems we are not very important. And that is the truth of the matter. Ants arc the most successful organisms in evolutionary history: there are over 8,000 species, distributed everywhere on Earth except the polar regions. In Peru, 43 different kinds of ant have been recorded in a single tree. Compared with this, primates are just a flash in the pan. Ants antedate us and will undoubtedly outlast us. There are a million times more of them:10 million billion, it has been estimated, alive at any one time—a quarter of a million for every acre of land on the Earth’s surface.
The greatest number of ant species, and the most spectacular, are to be found in tropical rainforests and savannahs. It is a common but disconcerting experience in such places to witness an invasion of driver ants, a predatory tribe that hunts at night as well as in the day. Driver ants move in columns a foot or so in width and a hundred yards in length, each composed of millions of individual ants. Waking up in the darkness with a marauding column in your tent, it seems as though a thick black oiled rope is running over your bed, over you, across the wall and out again: an endless skein of insects, running along each other’s backs, antennae and mandibles threateningly erect. A column of driver ants will attack lizards, snakes, rodents, anything in its path. If you happen to be dead, the ants will eat you, too; if you are not, they will just bite you. With their preposterously over-developed jaws, individuals of the soldier castes that form the flank of the column can scissor human flesh with ease. These are the rottweilers of the myrmecological world.
Ants can eat us, but we cannot eat them with any pleasure. Unlike termites (which have a rich oily taste something like pork scratchings), ants, with a tough outer layer of chitin and a nasty whiff of formic acid in their body tissues, are generally indigestible, except by other ants. Even anteaters prefer termites. Ants, furthermore, are resistant to hard radiation and, in the case of some species, industrial pollution; some can live in deserts; some can float; some can slow their metabolism down and survive under water for days on end.
Apart from their great numbers, why does the writer call ants "the most successful organisms"?
选项
A、They do not need to take account of human beings.
B、They challenge mankind’s view that humans are the most important life form.
C、There are thousands of them in every land on Earth.
D、They existed before humans and will exist after we have gone.
答案
D
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/qX4O777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
WithallthefussoverObamaandRomney’sduellingspeechesabouttheeconomyinOhioyesterday,anintriguingpoliticalyarnha
TheEuropeanCentralBankleftitsmaininterestrateunchangedWednesday,choosingtoputtheonusonpoliticalleaderstoaddr
Whileearlyliteracyskillsareimportantforachild’sgrowth,therearesomewhoquestionwhetherweareforcingourkidstor
______doesNOTbelongtoPercyByssheShelley’spoliticallyrics.
Howwelookandhowweappeartoothersprobablyworriesusmorewhenweareinourteensorearlytwentiesthanatanytime
Howwelookandhowweappeartoothersprobablyworriesusmorewhenweareinourteensorearlytwentiesthanatanytime
Howwelookandhowweappeartoothersprobablyworriesusmorewhenweareinourteensorearlytwentiesthanatanytime
Howwelookandhowweappeartoothersprobablyworriesusmorewhenweareinourteensorearlytwentiesthanatanytime
Vibrationsinthegroundareapoorlyunderstoodbutprobablywidespreadmeansofcommunicationbetweenanimals.Itseemsu
Why,youmaywonder,shouldspidersbeourfriends?Becausetheyprotectsomanyinsects,andinsectsinclude【M1】______someof
随机试题
焊缝金属常用的脱氧方法有哪些?
下列作家中属于少数民族的有【】
血细胞比容测定增加的原因有
曲面体层片和根尖片均能显示的解剖结构是
高血压肝风上扰证的主方是
A、麦味地黄丸B、人参归脾丸C、参苓白术散D、香砂六君丸E、七宝美髯丸某男,45岁,肝肾不足,症见须发早白、遗精早泄、头眩耳鸣、腰酸背痛。宜选用的成药是()。
A.终身禁止从事药品生产经营活动B.处10万元以上50万元以下的罚款C.警告,责令改正,可以并处2万元以下罚款D.吊销药品批准证明文件、生产许可证、经营许可证,对相关责任人员处2万元以上20万元以下的罚款根据《药品管理法》药品上市许可持有人被责
要实现我国基本经济制度中公有制的主体地位必须()。
已知二次型f(x1,x2,x3)=x12+4x22+4x32+2λx1x2-2x1x3+4x2x3.当λ满足什么条件时f(x1,x2,x3)正定?
lookafter
最新回复
(
0
)