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  3. Fighting in Nature In nature, fighting is such an ever-present process that its behavior mechanisms and weapons are highly devel

Fighting in Nature In nature, fighting is such an ever-present process that its behavior mechanisms and weapons are highly devel

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问题                         Fighting in Nature
In nature, fighting is such an ever-present process that its behavior mechanisms and weapons are highly developed. Almost every animal capable of self-defense from the smallest upwards fights furiously when it is cornered and has no means of escape.
    However, in another respect the fight between hunter and hunted is not a fight in the real sense of the word: the stroke of the paw with which a lion kills his prey may resemble the movements that he makes when he strikes his rival, but the inner motives of the hunter are basically different from those of the fighter. The buffalo which the lion fells provokes his aggression as little as the appetizing turkey which I have just seen hanging in the larder provokes mine. The difference in these inner drives can clearly be seen in the expression movements of the animal: a dog about to catch a hunted rabbit has the same kind of excited happy expression as he has when he greets his master or awaits some longed-for treat. Growling, laying the ears back, and other well-known expression movements of fighting behavior occur when predatory animals are afraid of a wildly resisting prey, and even then the expressions are only suggested.
    The opposite process, the counter-offensive, of the prey against the predator, is more nearly related to genuine aggression. Social animals in particular take every possible chance to attack the eating enemy that threatens their safety. This process is called "mobbing". The survival value of this attack on the hunter is self-evident. Even if the attacker is small and defenseless, he may do his enemy considerable harm. For example, if a sparrow hawk is pursued by a flock of warning wagtails, his hunting is spoiled for the time being. And many birds will mob an owl if they find one in the day-time, and drive it so far away that it will hunt somewhere else the next night.
    In some social animals such as jackdaws and many kinds of geese, the function of mobbing is particularly interesting. In jackdaws, its most important survival value is to teach the young inexperienced birds what a dangerous eating-enemy looks like, which they do not know instinctively. For just such educational reasons, geese and ducks may gather together in intense excitement to learn that a fox—anything furry, red-brown, long-shaped and slinking—is extremely dangerous.
    Besides this didactic function, mobbing of predators by jackdaws and geese still has the basic, original one of making the enemy’s life a burden. Jackdaws actively attack their enemy, and geese apparently intimidate it with their cries, their thronging and their fearless advance. The great Canada Geese will even follow a fox overland in a close phalanx, and I have never known a fox in this situation will try to catch one of his tormentors. With ears laid back and a disgusted expression on his face, he glances back over his shoulder at the trumpeting flock and trots slowly—so as not to lose face—away from them.
    Among the larger, more defense-minded grazing animals which en masse are a match for even the biggest predators, mobbing is particularly effective;(A)According to reliable reports, zebras will molest even a leopard if they catch him on plain where cover is sparse.(B)Once, when I was out with my dog, I was obliged to jump into a lake and swim for safety when a herd of young cattle half encircled us and advanced threateningly;(C)And when he was in Southern Hungary during the First World War, my brother spent a pleasant afternoon up a tree with his Scotch terrier under his arm, because a herd of half-wild Hungarian swine, disturbed while grazing in the wood, encircled him.(D)Fortunately, the swine dispersed after they confirmed that my brother and his dog were not offensive.
The word provoke in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to______.
选项 A、cause
B、intensify
C、stop
D、relieve
答案A
解析 本题是词汇题，考查考生通过上下文对provoke一词的理解。provoke有较多的意思，但在第二段涂黑的句子“The buffalo which the lion fells provokes his aggression…”中，provoke的主语是狮子追捕的牛，宾语是“侵犯”，能联系两者的最恰当的词应该是“促使，引起，导致”。因此只有选项A中的cause意思最贴切，故应该选A。选项B(加强，强化)、选项C(停止)和选项D(减轻，解除)都不符合题意。
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