托福英語 學英語,練聽力,上聽力課堂! 注冊 登錄
> 托福 > 托福閱讀 >  內(nèi)容

托福閱讀資料之Food Caching

所屬教程:托福閱讀

瀏覽:

2015年01月03日

手機版
掃描二維碼方便學習和分享
  Humans may be one of the smartest animals on the planet, but when it comes to remembering where things are, Clark’s nutcrackers have us beat.

  A relative of jays and crows, nutcrackers hide pine seeds in the ground each autumn so they have a source of food during the Colorado Rocky Mountain winter. They cache as many as 30,000 seeds in 5,000 different locations over a fifteen square mile area. Since they cannot smell the seeds buried in the soil very well, they must use their remarkable spatial memory to find them.

  Nutcrackers are not the only animals that cache food. Caching behavior is seen in birds, mammals and even insects. Chickadees store collections of seeds, insects and spiders in the bark of trees or under leaves. Red squirrels cut conifer cones from trees and bury them in plant litter on the forest floor. Harvester ants bring seeds back to their nests and store them in chambers, while honey bees save nectar and pollen in their hive.

  Because nutcrackers are one of the best at remembering cache locations, researchers are studying them to find out why they have such great memories. Scientists know that the nutcracker’s abilities evolved because of environmental pressure. Nutcrackers with poor memories did not likely survive the harsh mountain winters. Now researchers want to find out how the brains of nutcrackers are different from other brains. They are particularly interested in the hippocampus, a small area of the brain that helps form memories. Finding out how the nutcracker’s brain is different from other species may give us clues to why humans have memory problems. It may even lead to a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

  人類也許是世界上最聰明的動物之一,但說到記憶,克拉克(新澤西州)的星鳥比我們?nèi)祟悘姸嗔恕?/p>

  星鳥屬于松鳥和烏鴉的近親,它在秋天的時候把松子藏在地底下,這樣寒冷冬天的就有食物吃了。它們會儲存多達30000顆種子,而且是在十五平方公里內(nèi)的5000個不同位置。因為不能通過氣味辨別埋在土里種子的位置,它們就必須依靠驚人的空間記憶力來找到這些種子。


用戶搜索

瘋狂英語 英語語法 新概念英語 走遍美國 四級聽力 英語音標 英語入門 發(fā)音 美語 四級 新東方 七年級 賴世雄 zero是什么意思北京市彩虹嘉園(北區(qū))英語學習交流群

  • 頻道推薦
  • |
  • 全站推薦
  • 推薦下載
  • 網(wǎng)站推薦