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  3. When we think of animals and plants, we have a pretty good way of dividing them into two distinct groups: one converts sunlight

When we think of animals and plants, we have a pretty good way of dividing them into two distinct groups: one converts sunlight

admin2021-01-06  26
问题    When we think of animals and plants, we have a pretty good way of dividing them into two distinct groups: one converts sunlight into energy and the other has to eat food to make its energy. Well, those dividing lines come crashing down with the discovery of a sea slug (嗨蛞蝓) that’s truly half animal and half plant. It’s pretty incredible how it has managed to hijack the genes of the algae (藻类) on which it feeds.
   The slugs can manufacture chlorophyll, the green pigment (色素) in plants that captures energy from sunlight, and hold these genes within their body. The term kleptoplasty is used to describe the practice of using hijacked genes to create nutrients from sunlight. And so far, this green sea slug is the only known animal that can be truly considered solar-powered, although some animals do exhibit some plant-like behaviors. Many scientists have studied the green sea slugs to confirm that they are actually able to create energy from sunlight.
   In fact, the slugs use the genetic material so well that they pass it on to their future generations. Their babies retain the ability to produce their own chlorophyll, though they can’t generate energy from sunlight until they’ve eaten enough algae to steal the necessary genes, which they can’t yet produce on their own.
   "There’s no way on earth that genes from an alga should work inside an animal will," says Sidney Pierce from the University of South Florida. "And yet here, they do. They allow the animal to rely on sunshine for its nutrition. So if something happens to their food source, they have a way of not starving to death until they find more algae to eat."
   The sea slugs are so good at gathering energy from the sun that they can live up to nine months without having to eat any food. They get all their nutritional needs met by the genes that they’ve hijacked from the algae.
What is the distinctive feature of a sea slug?
选项 A、It looks like both a plant and an animal.
B、It converts some sea animals into plants.
C、It lives half on animals and half on plants.
D、It gets energy from both food and sunlight.
答案D
解析 推理判断题。定位段指出，动物和植物可以分为两组：一组将阳光转化为能量，另一组通过摄入食物来制造能量，而半动物半植物的海蛞蝓打破了这一分界线。由此可见，海蛞蝓既可以通过食物也可以通过阳光来获取能量，故答案为D)。
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