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
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. Why are so
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. Why are so
admin
2014-12-30
33
问题
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
Why are so few tigers man-eaters?
A As you leave the Bandhavgarh National Park in central India, there is a notice which shows a huge, placid tiger. The notice says, ’You may not have seen me, but I have seen you.’ There are more than a billion people in India and Indian tigers probably see humans every single day of their lives. Tigers can and do kill almost anything they meet in the jungle — they will even attack elephants and rhino. Surely, then, it is a little strange that attacks on humans are not more frequent.
B Some people might argue that these attacks were in fact common in the past. British writers of adventure stories, such as Jim Corbett, gave the impression that village life in India in the early years of the twentieth century involved a state of constant siege by man-eating tigers. But they may have overstated the terror spread by tigers. There were also far more tigers around in those days(probably 60,000 in the subcontinent, compared to just 3,000 today). So in proportion, attacks appear to have been as rare then as they are today.
C It is widely assumed that the constraint is fear; but what exactly are tigers afraid of? Can they really know that we may be even better armed than they are? Surely not. Has the species programmed the experiences of all tigers with humans into its genes to be inherited as instinct? Perhaps. But I think the explanation may be more simple and, in a way, more intriguing.
D Since the growth of ethology1 in the 1950s, we have tried to understand animal behaviour from the animal’s point of view. Until the first elegant experiments by pioneers in the field, such as Konrad Lorenz, naturalists wrote about animals as if they were slightly less intelligent humans. Jim Corbett’s breathless accounts of his duels with man-eaters in truth tell us more about Jim Corbett than they do about the animals. The principle of ethology, on the other hand, requires us to attempt to think in the same way as the animal we are studying thinks, and to observe every tiny detail of its behaviour without imposing our own human significances on its actions.
E I suspect that a tiger’s fear of humans lies not in some preprogrammed ancestral logic but in the way he actually perceives us visually. If you try to think like a tiger, a human in a car might appear just to be part of the car, and because tigers don’t eat cars the human is safe — unless the car is menacing the tiger or its cubs, in which case a brave or enraged tiger may charge. A human on foot is a different sort of puzzle. Imagine a tiger sees a man who is 1.8m tall. A tiger is less than lm tall but he may be up to 3m long from head to tail. So when a tiger sees the man face on, it might not be unreasonable for him to assume that the man is 6m long. If he met a deer of this size, he might attack the animal by leaping on its back, but when he looks behind the man, he can’t see a back. From the front the man is huge, but looked at from the side he all but disappears. This must be very disconcerting. A hunter has to be confident that it can tackle its prey, and no one is confident when they are disconcerted. This is especially true of a solitary hunter such as the tiger and may explain why lions — particularly young lionesses who tend to encourage one another to take risks — are more dangerous than tigers.
F If the theory that a tiger is disconcerted to find that a standing human is both very big and yet somehow invisible is correct, the opposite should be true of a squatting human. A squatting human is half the size and presents twice the spread of back, and more closely resembles a medium-sized deer. If tigers were simply frightened of all humans, then a squatting person would be no more attractive as a target than a standing one. This, however, appears not to be the case. Many incidents of attacks on people involve villagers squatting or bending over to cut grass for fodder or building material.
G The fact that humans stand upright may therefore not just be something that distinguishes them from nearly all other species, but also a factor that helped them to survive in a dangerous and unpredictable environment.
Questions 14-18
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs labelled A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.
a claim about the relative frequency of tiger attacks on humans
选项
答案
B
解析
Some people might argue that these attacks were in fact common in the past...
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/yRNO777K
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
A、possible,butnotveryimportantB、interesting,buttoocostlytobepracticalC、promising,butmanyyearsoffD、extremelyunl
A、Theinfluenceofvolcaniceruptionsonglobalweatherpatternsisalmostcompletelyunderstoodatpresent.B、Scientistshaveo
Althoughhumanshavemuchbiggerbrainsrelativetobodyweightthandootherprimates,thetotalrestingenergyrequire
African-Americanfilmmakersshouldbeinanenviableposition,forsincetheearly1990stherehasbeenasteadywaveof
These______overdetailsareanindicationofmoreseriousbattlestocome,betweenthosewhowantastrongcentreatthehearto
Leavingasidethequestionofhowblackholesgeneratetheenergyingamma-raybursts-cosmicexplosionscalledGRBs-their
(Thispassagewaswrittenpriorto1950)Wenowknowthatwhatconstitutespracticallyallofmatterisemptyspa
These______overdetailsareanindicationofmoreseriousbattlestocome,betweenthosewhowantastrongcentreattheheart
IenjoyedADreamofLight&Shadow:PortraitsofLatinAmericanWomenWritersforthesamereasonsthat,asachild,Iavidlyc
In1995theGalileospacecraftcaptureddataaboutJupiter’satmosphere---namely,theabsenceofmostofthepredictedatmosphe
随机试题
A.肠鸣音亢进B.肠鸣音消失C.金属音D.震水音E.肠鸣音减弱麻痹性肠梗阻可有
也许在很多人看来,有时诚信似乎很傻,很没有意义,因为诚信往往会伴随自身利益的失去。可是,也许下一个因丧失诚信而受害的人,就会是你或你身边的人。或许违约失信可以获得一些蝇头小利,可是当花失去香味时,再美丽的花朵也难逃凋亡的命运。诚信正是如此。诚信是中华民族的
A.theyspentontheirweddingB.ItcanbesmallC.ItreallywasD.Yes,that’strueE.Iwouldn’twantasmallweddingF.Il
下列关于初级卵母细胞描述正确的是哪项
A.公正B.权利C.廉洁奉公D.医德评价E.医患关系属于医学伦理学基本原则的是
下述黏膜组织中,何处无黏膜下层
甲公司委托乙公司购买1台机器,双方约定:乙公司以自己的名义购买机器:机器购买价格为20万元;乙公司的报酬为8000元。双方未约定其他事项。乙公司接受委托后,积极与丙公司交涉协商,最终乙公司以自己的名义从丙公司处购得该种机器1台,价款为19.5万元.乙公司
[2012年第48题]近期国际金融危机对于毕业生的就业影响非常大,某高校就业中心的陈老师希望广大同学能够调整自己的心态和预期。他在一次就业指导会上提出,有些同学对自己的职业定位还不够准确。如果陈老师的陈述为真,则以下哪项不一定为真?Ⅰ.不是所有的人对自
二次型f(x1,x2,x3)=x12+4x22+3x32-4x1x2+2x1x3+8x2x3的秩等于()。
Accordingtothepassage,themassmediapresentuswith______.Whatistheauthor’sfinaljudgmentonhowmasscommunications
最新回复
(
0
)