B
Beforebirth,babies can tell the difference between loud sounds and voices.They caneven distinguish their mother’s voice from that of a female stranger.But whenit comes to embryonic learning（胎教），birds could rule the roost.As recently reported in TheAuk:Ornithological Adrances,some mother birds may teach their young to singeven before they hatch(孵化)。New-born chicks can then imitate their mom’s call within a few days ofenering the world.
This educational method was first observed in2012 by Sonia Kieindorfer,a biologist at Flinders University in SouthAustralia,and her collcagues.Femake Australian superb fairy wrens were found torepeat one sound over and over again while hatching their errs,When the errswere hatched,the baby birds made the similar chirp to their mothers—asound thatserved as their regular “feed me!”call.
Tofind out if the special quality was more widespread in birds,the researcherssought the red-backed fairy wren,another species of Australian songbird.Firstthey collected sound datd from 67 nests in four sites in Queenslang before andafter hatching,Then they identified begging calls by analyzing the order and numberof notes.A computer analysis blindly compared calls produced by mothers andchicks,ranking them by similarity.
It turns out that baby red-backed fairy wrensalso emerge chirping like their moms. And the more frequently mothers hadcalled to their errs,the more similar were the babies’ begging calls. Inaddition,the team set up a separate experiment that suggested that the babybirds that most closely imitated their mom’s voice were rewarded with the mostfood.
Thisobservation hints that effective embryonic learning could signal neurological(神经系统的)strengths of children toparents.An evolutionary inference can then be drawn.”As a parent,do you investin quality children,or do you invest in children that are in need?”Kleindorferasks.”Our results suggest that they might be going for quality.”
The underlined phrase in Paragraph 1 means“ ”？
词义猜测题。准确理解上下文，利用but来猜测词义。由前面胎儿出生前就可以辨别声音结合but可知随后说在胎教方面鸟儿做的更好或者最好。故而选B。
What are Kleindorfer’s findings basedon?
细节理解题。由第二段第三行对Femake Australian superb fairy wrens were found...和第三段第二行the red-backed fairy wren...进行记录，而非整个澳大利亚，排除B；由文章第三段第二三行First they collected sound datd from 67 nests in four sites in Queenslang ...并未提到当地人，信息不准确，故排除C；D项中并未提到其他鸟类，排除。基于文章意思，所有发现都是基于最后一段母鸡和雌鸡的相似性而进行的。所以选A。
Embryonic learning helps mother birds to identify the baby birdswhich
推理判断题。文章倒数第二段最后一句提到“......单独的实验表明模仿母鸟的声音最接近的雌鸟会得到更多的食物。”和最后一段最后一句“作为父母，你是想要质量优良的孩子还是想要需要帮助的孩子，我们的结果表明它们想要质量优良的孩子”，由此推断母鸟通过胎教来确定最会模仿它们声音质量优良的雏鸟无需过多帮助就能更好的适应环境。所以答案选C。