Question

【題目】In the hills outside Missoula, Montana, wildlife biologists are looking at how climate change affects something very small: the snowshoe hare.

Life for snowshoe hares is pretty stressful 一 almost everything in the forest wants to eat them.

Alex Kumar, a graduate student at the University of Montana, lists the animals that are hungry for hares. “Lynx, foxes, coyotes, […. even] red squirrels.”

Kumar and field technician Tucker Seitz spend months searching these woods for hares, often listening for signals from hares they've already put radio collars on.

They catch other hares with wire traps about the size of a breadbox, with some apple as bait (誘餌). Most of the hares they track live less than a year — a hazard (風(fēng)險）of being what Kumar calls “the cheeseburger of the ecosystem”.

But snowshoe hares have a special skill: camouflage. They're brown during the summer, but turn white for the snowy winter months.

“There’s times when you’re tracking them and you know they’re really, really dose, and you just can’t find them,” he says.

Hares switch color in the spring and fall in response to light, when the days get longer or shorter. But if the snow comes late, you get a white hare on brown ground.

“And they really think that they’re camouflaged,” Kumar says. “They act like we can’t see them.”

Kumar calls this “mismatching,” and it's becoming more of a concern with climate change.

“If the hares are consistently molting (脫毛) at the same time, year after year, and the snowfall comes later and melts earlier, there’s going to be more and more times when hares are mismatched,” he says.

Scott Mills of North Carolina State University leads the research. He says they're finding that mismatched hares die at higher rates. That’s a concern for the threatened Canada lynx, which mainly eats these hares.

“It’s a very clear connection to a single climate change stressor,” Mills says.

Hares might be able to adapt over time. Some snowshoe hares in Washington State don't turn white at all. Mills is trying to figure out whether hares and other wildlife can adapt as fast as the climate is changing.

“But how fast is too fast?” he asks.

【1】The word “camouflage”（Paragraph 6) is closest in meaning to .

A. escaping B. hiding

C. fighting D. scaring

【2】According to the passage, snowshoe hares can now be easily discovered by their enemies because they .

A. change their fur color to white too late

B. haven’t adapted to climate change

C. can no longer adapt to the change of light in spring and fall

D. find it more and more difficult to molt at the same time each year

【3】Which best describes Mills' tone in the passage?

A. Approving. B. Enthusiastic.

C. Concerned. D. Doubtful.

Answer 1

【答案】

【1】B

【2】B

【3】C

【解析】本文介紹雪鞋兔的生活習(xí)性以及它們所面對的生存危機(jī)。

【1】 B

詞義猜測題。根據(jù)第六段They're brown during the summer, but turn white for the snowy winter months.在夏天他們是棕色的，但是有雪的冬天數(shù)月里變成白色�？芍�他們有一個特殊的技能“偽裝”，劃線詞最接近的詞義是B. hiding

【2】B

推理判斷題。由倒數(shù)第三、四、五段可知，雪鞋兔目前面對的最大的生存危機(jī)是它們變色的時間與季節(jié)變化不同步，說明它們還未能適應(yīng)氣候變化。故選B。

【3】C

推理判斷題。倒數(shù)第三段中Mills描述了現(xiàn)狀，并提出了擔(dān)憂“He says they’re finding that mismatched hares…which mainly eats these hares.”，再結(jié)合最后一段他的疑問可以推出他的語氣是“擔(dān)心的”，故選C。