2014年職稱英語(綜合類)教材閱讀判斷文章及譯文13

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摘要為了方便廣大考生備考，環(huán)球網(wǎng)校特地整理了教材上的素材，供大家練習/選讀，希望對大家復習有所幫助。

　　點擊進入：2014年職稱英語(綜合類)教材閱讀判斷文章匯總

　　綜合類-閱讀判斷　　

　　A Dog’s Dilemma

　　Finding a babysitter while you go out to work is, for example, an inconvenience. For the African wild dog, one of the continents’s most endangered carnivores, it’s a matter of life and death. New research shows that once packs fall below a certain size, they are not enough animals to both hunt food and stay at home protecting the young.

　　The African wild dog has declined drastically over the past century. Habitual loss, persecution and unexplained outbreaks of disease have all been blamed. Only 3,000 to 5,000 animals remain, and the species is expected to go extinct within decades if the trend continues.

　　Other large carnivores such as the spotted hyena face similar pressures, yet are not declining. Now Franck Courchamp of Cambridge University has found a reason why. The dog’s weakness lies in its social organization.

　　Within each pack of up to 20 adults and pups, only he dominant male and female bread. The remaining animals help raise the pups, cooperating to hunt prey and defend the kill from other carnivores.

　　Because pups can’t keep up on a hunt, large packs leave an adult behind to protect them from predators, which include lions and hyenas. But leaving a babysitter also carries costs. A smaller hunting party is less able to tackle large prey and to defend the kill. There is also one less stomach in which to carry food back to the den, and one more mouth to feed when they get there.

　　Courchamp investigated this awkward trade-off by modeling how the costs of a babysitter change with decreasing pack size. This showed that packs of more than five adults should be able to feed all the pups and still spare a babysitter. But with smaller packs, either the hunting or the babysitting suffers, or the animals have to compensate by increasing he number of hunting excursions―which itself carries a cost to the pack.

　　Field observations in Zimbabwe supported the model. Packs of five animals or fewer left pups unguarded more frequently than larger packs did. There was also evidence that when they did leave a babysitter, they were forced to hunt more often.

　　A pack which drops below a critical size becomes caught in a vicious circle, says Courchamp, who is now at Paris-Sud University. “Poor reproduction and low survival further reduces pack size, culminating in failure of the whole pack.” And deaths caused by human activity, says Courchamp, may be what reduces pack numbers to below the sustainable threshold. Mammal ecologist Chris Carbone at London’s Institute of Zoology agrees. Maintaining the integrity of wild dog packs will be vital in preserving the species, he says.

　　詞匯：

　　carnivore 食肉動物 hyena 鬣狗

　　pup 小狗 prey 被捕食的動物

　　predator 捕食者 culminate 告終，達到頂點

　　integrity 完整 Zimbabwe 津巴布韋

　　注釋：

　　1.A smaller hunting party is less able to tackle large prey and to defend the kill.：一個較小的捕獵群體不太容易捕捉大動物，也不太容易保衛(wèi)獵獲物。

　　2. A pack which drops below a critical size becomes caught in a vicious circle, says Courchamp：Courchamp說，“一個群體的規(guī)模降到警戒線以下時就會陷入惡性循環(huán)?！?/P>

　　練習

　　1.The African wild dog has been endangered.