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  3. For centuries, people have described unusual animal behavior just ahead of seismic events: dogs barking incessantly, cows haltin

For centuries, people have described unusual animal behavior just ahead of seismic events: dogs barking incessantly, cows haltin

admin2021-09-25  20
问题     For centuries, people have described unusual animal behavior just ahead of seismic events: dogs barking incessantly, cows halting their milk, toads leaping from ponds. A few researchers have tried to substantiate a link. In a 2013 study, Germany scientists videotaped red wood ants that nested along a fault line and found they changed their usual routine before a quake, becoming more active at night and less active during the day. But such attempts have relied largely on anecdotal evidence and single observation.
    Now researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz, say they have managed to precisely measure increased activity in a group of farm animals prior to seismic activity. Though a definitive link has still not been proved, the scientists say their findings are a significant step forward in the search for one.
    The researchers used highly sensitive instruments that record accelerated movements—up to 48 each second—in any direction. During separate periods totaling about four months in 2016 and 2017, they attached these biologgers and GPS sensors to six cows, five sheep and two dogs living on a farm in an earthquake-prone area of northern Italy. A total of more than 18,000 tremors occurred during the study periods, with more seismic activity during the first one—when a magnitude 6. 6 quake and its aftershocks struck the region. The paper’s statistical analysis took the animals’ normal daily movements and interactions into account. It showed their activity significantly increased before magnitude 3. 8 or greater earthquakes when they were housed together in a stable—but not when they were out to pasture. Martin Wikelski, the study co-author and managing director of Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, says this difference could be linked to the increased stress some animals feel in confined spaces.
    Wendy Bohon, a geologist at the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology in Washington, D. C., who was not involved with the new study, is skeptical of the idea. Numerous geologists have unsuccessfully tried to find such a precursory signal of impending earthquakes, she notes. Bohon does allow that Wikelski and his co-authors did some "cool things" to explore the possibility of animals predicting earthquakes. But she wonders whether there were instances in which the creatures showed unusual activity and there was no earthquake or did not react before one did occur. "My cat could act crazy before an earthquake," she says. "But my cat also acts crazy if somebody uses the can opener. " " In order to use the animals as prognosticators, it would be imperative to establish that they exhibited unusual behavior only in reaction to upcoming seismic events”, Bohon says. "Otherwise," she adds, "it becomes the ’ Boy Who Cried Wolf problem. "
    Heiko Woith, a geologist at GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences, praised the authors of the new study for measuring more than a single occasion of abnormal behavior. But he says the time frame was still too short. Woith also points out that many studies claiming to show precursory earthquake signals often rely on too little data collection over time, making it impossible to determine whether a measured signal was related to a quake or was simply noise.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz found that ________.
选项 A、highly sensitive instruments were not useful to detect accelerated movements of animals
B、the unusual behavior of insects proved to be a dependable indicator of potential earthquakes
C、increased activity of farm animals before an earthquake demanded further research
D、farm animals’ normal daily movements can be severely disrupted in a confined space
答案C
解析 推断题。根据关键词the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz定位到第二段和第三段，第二段主要介绍了科学家发现地震活动前一组农场动物活动的增加情况，但是还没给出确凿的依据，第三段主要介绍了实验的过程。与文意相符合的是选项[C]。[A]“高灵敏度的仪器对于探测动物的加速运动是没有用的”不符合文意；[B]与原文内容无关，昆虫不是该研究的研究对象；[D]不是研究的成果。
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