Question

【题目】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 (诱饵). Most of the hares they track live less than a year — a hazard (风险）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 (脱毛) 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】本文介绍雪鞋兔的生活习性以及它们所面对的生存危机。

【1】 B

词义猜测题。根据第六段They're brown during the summer, but turn white for the snowy winter months.在夏天他们是棕色的，但是有雪的冬天数月里变成白色。可知他们有一个特殊的技能“伪装”，划线词最接近的词义是B. hiding

【2】B

推理判断题。由倒数第三、四、五段可知，雪鞋兔目前面对的最大的生存危机是它们变色的时间与季节变化不同步，说明它们还未能适应气候变化。故选B。

【3】C

推理判断题。倒数第三段中Mills描述了现状，并提出了担忧“He says they’re finding that mismatched hares…which mainly eats these hares.”，再结合最后一段他的疑问可以推出他的语气是“担心的”，故选C。