墨尔本PTE素材库——City Birds Outwit Country Counterparts

墨尔本PTE素材库——City Birds Outwit Country Counterparts

中文批注

什么？！生活在城市里的鸟竟然比生活在郊区的鸟更加聪明，并且强壮？真是前所未闻。这篇文章词汇量不大，内容也不是很复杂，非常适合同学们做初步练习，进行retell the lecture和dictation的training哦！

澳大利亚语言学院会定期整理墨尔本PTE素材库，供各位PTE的考生练习。何为墨尔本PTE素材库？AIL会定期整理一些话题内容和PTE 官方所给出的Questions Criteria相吻合的素材，这些素材在PTE考试材料不多的如今，可谓是非常的有用！大家完全可以先听一遍视频/音频，看自己能听懂多少，有多少是无法理解的。然后再模拟PTE考试的题型re-tell lecture/summarize spoken text来做练习。比如说，这篇关于鸟儿的文章，大家能re-tell多少呢？

【Key vocabulary】

Brash adj. 傲慢的

Prowl v 徘徊

Bullfinch n 红腹灰雀

Bold adj. 大胆的

Trait n. 特性

Immune system 免疫系统

Scavenge v 打扫

Avian adj. 鸟类的

Full Transcript

Birds that live in urban environments are brasher than rural birds, solve problems better and even have more robust immune systems. Christopher Intagliata reports. 

City dwellers can attest that the animals they share the city with—the pigeons, rats, roaches—can be pretty brazen when they’re prowling for a bite. While visiting Barbados, McGill University neurobiologist Jean-Nicolas Audet, noticed that local bullfinches were accomplished thieves.

“They were always trying to steal our food. And we can see those birds entering in supermarkets, trying to steal food there.” And that gave him an idea. “Since this bird species is able to solve amazing problems in cities, and they’re also present in rural areas, we were wondering” are the rural birds also good problem-solvers, and they just don’t take advantage of their abilities? Or are they fundamentally different?

So Audet and his McGill colleagues captured Barbados bullfinches, both in the island’s towns and out in the countryside. They then administered the bird equivalent of personality and IQ tests: assessing traits like boldness and fear, or timing how quickly the finches could open a puzzle box full of seeds. And it turns out the city birds really could solve puzzles faster. They were bolder, too, except when it came to dealing with new objects—perhaps assuming, unlike their more naive country cousins, that new things can either mean reward…or danger. The study is in the journal Behavioral Ecology. [Jean-Nicolas Audet et al, The town bird and the country bird: problem solving and immunocompetence vary with urbanization]

The city birds bested their country counterparts in another trait: they have more robust immune systems, possibly from scavenging food and water in dirty places. Which suggests that sometimes, a city’s dirt and grit could be the very thing that gives avian residents a wing up.

—Christopher Intagliata

(source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/city-birds-outwit-country-counterparts/)