手机APP下载

您现在的位置: 首页 > 在线广播 > NEWS Plus慢速英语 > 正文

NEWS Plus慢速英语:家猫起源研究 古代野猫与家猫关系成焦点

来源:可可英语 编辑:Aimee   可可英语APP下载 |  可可官方微信:ikekenet
 下载MP3到电脑  批量下载MP3和LRC到手机
加载中..
90st;p8*i(

uMUR(JfZD82=MsGI.

You're listening to NEWS Plus Special English, I'm Paul James in Beijing.
A cat-and-mouse game played out in a Chinese village some 5,300 years ago is helping scientists understand how wild felines transformed into the tame pets we know today.
Scientists believe that, in fact, it was the cat's appetite that started it down the path to domestication.
The grain stored by ancient farmers was a magnet for rodents. And that drew wild cats into villages to hunt the little critters. Over time, wild cats adapted to village life and became tamer around their human hosts.
That's the leading theory, anyway, for how wild cats long ago were transformed and became ancestors of today's house cats. That happened in the Middle East, rather than China. But bones from the Chinese village back up the idea that felines took on the pest-control job in ancient times.
Researcher Fiona Marshall of Washington University in St. Louis is an author of a report on the fossil research, published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US.
The study, focused on an agricultural village in northern China, comes from a poorly understood time in the history of cats. The first evidence of domesticated cats comes much later, in Egyptian artwork from about 4,000 years ago.

IHy1F!HvDXzl

#0q[67ADyAvw&!LM;_

So what went on in that village?
Researchers found signs that rodents were threatening the village grain supply. Storage vessels were designed to keep them out, and rodents had burrowed into a grain-storage pit.
In the ancient feline bones, chemical signatures indicated that the cats had eaten animals that in turn had fed on millet, a grain crop known to be harvested by the villagers. So apparently, the cats were indeed going after the rodents.
Marshall says it's not yet clear whether the cats were from a local wild population, or were already domesticated and had been brought in from elsewhere. Either way, she says, it shows that ancient cats filled the niche at the heart of the hypothesis about how domestication began.
Greger Larson of Durham University in England called the new work "an important step forward." He says few studies have focused on how cats became domesticated, in contrast to dogs, pigs and sheep.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.

@OeOKu9Y3|4#5D1

4n~dDB(O.%Bai

T.Zr@]iPRhjZ([oCChJHqNXktsVxq&poL^;l%F49@

重点单词   查看全部解释    
galaxy ['gæləksi]

想一想再看

n. 银河,一群显赫之人

联想记忆
evidence ['evidəns]

想一想再看

n. 根据,证据
v. 证实,证明

联想记忆
contrast ['kɔntræst,kən'træst]

想一想再看

n. 差别,对比,对照物
v. 对比,成对照<

 
qualified ['kwɔlifaid]

想一想再看

adj. 有资格的,有限制的

联想记忆
supreme [sju:'pri:m]

想一想再看

adj. 最高的,至上的,极度的

 
communication [kə.mju:ni'keiʃn]

想一想再看

n. 沟通,交流,通讯,传达,通信

 
magnet ['mægnit]

想一想再看

n. 磁体,磁铁,有强大吸引力的人或物

 
academy [ə'kædəmi]

想一想再看

n. 学院,学术,学会

 
adapt [ə'dæpt]

想一想再看

vt. 使适应,改编
vi. 适应,适合

联想记忆
prisoner ['prizənə]

想一想再看

n. 囚犯

 

发布评论我来说2句

    最新文章

    可可英语官方微信(微信号:ikekenet)

    每天向大家推送短小精悍的英语学习资料.

    添加方式1.扫描上方可可官方微信二维码。
    添加方式2.搜索微信号ikekenet添加即可。