单选题
Longer Lives for Wild Elephants

Most people think of zoos as safe places for animals, where struggles such as having difficulty finding food and avoiding predators(猛兽) don"t exist. Without such problems, animals in zoos should live to a ripe(成熟的) old age.
But that may not be true for the largest land animals on Earth. Scientists have known that elephants in zoos often suffer from poor health. Sometimes, they even become unable to have babies.
To learn more about how captivity(圈养) affects elephants, a team of international scientists compared the life spans of female elephants born in zoos with female elephants living outdoors in their native lands. Zoos keep detailed records of all the animals in their care, documenting factors such as birth dates, illnesses, weight and death. These records made it possible for the researchers to analyze 40 years of data on 800 African and Asian elephants in zoos across Europe. The scientists compared the life spans of the zoo-born female elephants with the life spans of thousands of wild female elephants in Africa and Asian elephants that work in logging camps(伐木场), over approximately the same time period.
The team found that female African elephants born in zoos lived an average of 16.9 years. Their wild counterparts who died of natural causes lived an average of 56 years—more than three times as long. Female Asian elephants followed a similar pattern. In zoos, they lived 18.9 years, while those in the logging camps lived 41.7 years.
Scientists don"t yet know why wild elephants seem to get on much better than their zoo-raised counterparts. Georgia Mason, a biologist at the University of Guelph in Canada who led the study, thinks stress and obesity(肥胖症) may be to blame. Zoo elephants don"t get the same kind of exercise they would in the wild, and most are very fat. Social lives of elephants are also much different in zoos than in the wild, where they live in large herds and family groups.
The study raises some questions about acquiring more elephants to keep in zoos. While some threatened and endangered species living in zoos reproduce(生殖) successfully and maintain healthy populations, that doesn"t appear to be the case with elephants.
单选题 Unlike other animals in zoos, zoo-raised elephants ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 细节题,由第二段第二句可知“生活在动物园的大象经常有不良的健康状态”。
单选题 Which of the following about scientists" study is NOT true?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 细节题。由第三段中的第二句可知,动物园详细记录了大象的出生日期、疾病、体重和死亡等数据,而并非是科学家做的,故选D项。其他三项的内容在文中都出现了。
单选题 It was found that, compared with female wild elephants, female zoo-born elephants ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 推理题。第四段讲述了野生雌大象存活的时间是生活在动物园的雌大象存活时间的三倍,所以可推断出雌大象生活在动物园里死得比较早。
单选题 One of the possible reasons for the zoo-raised elephants" problems is that ______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 细节题。由第五段的最后一句可知“野生雌大象是成群或以家庭为单位集体生活”,这就是动物园和野生的不同之处,故选D项。
单选题 It can be inferred from the last paragraph that ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 推理题。最后一段主要说明了大象不适合在动物园生活,特别是最后一句话“that doesn"t appear to be the case with elephants”,可推出选C项。