职称英语理工类阅读理解复习必备训练题(4)

　　Night1 of the Living Ants 　　Dong-Hwan Choe, a scientist at the University of California2 found that Argentine3 ants have a chemical on the outside of their bodies that signals to other ants, m dead - take me away. 　　What keeps ants from hauling away the living dead? Choe found that Argentine ants have two additional chemicals on their bodies, and these tell nearby ants something like, wait -Im not dead yet. So Choes research turned up6 two sets of chemical signals in ants: one says, m dead, the other set says, m not dead yet. 　　Choe suspects that when an Argentine ant dies, the chemical that says Wait- Im not dead yet quickly goes away. Once that chemical is gone, only the one that says m dead is left. Its because the dead ant no longer smells like a living ant that it gets carded to the graveyard, not because its body releases new unique chemicals after death, said Choe. When other ants detect the dead chemical without the not dead yet chemical, they haul away the body. This was Choes hypothesis. 　　词汇： 　　Graveyard n.墓地 　　override v.优先于，比更重要 　　1. night：night 是个多义词，其比喻意义是死亡，即本篇短文标题中该词的意思。标 题是用了逆喻的修辞手法。 　　3. Argentine：阿根廷，位于南美洲的国家。 　　5. 本句 its telling other ants that its dead 中两个 it 指代前面爬行中的蚂蚁，也 就是下段第一句中的 the living dead。 　　7. treated pupae：经过处理的蛹，即被科学家涂抹上化学药剂的蛹。 　　1. What is meant by death chemical mentioned in paragraph 3? 　　C A chemical that announces death. D A chemical that prevents death.