Question

How do ants know when another ant is dead? Ed Wilson, now the most famous ant scholar in the world, wanted to know.

When Ed Wilson was a young assitant professor at Harvard in 1950s , he found that when ants die, they just lie there, sometimes upside down, feet in the air, while their sister ants- almost all ants in a colony are ladies—walk right by without a look. Unitl about two days later, the dead body starts to send out a chemical signal that changes the living ants’ behaviour greatly.

All of a sudden what was once a pile of gunk(黏糊糊的東西) on the floor becomes a “Problem to Be solved”. Once the signal is in the air, any ant that happens to pass by picks up the dead body and carries it through her colony to a refuse pile and puts it on a pile of also dead ants.

Ed, who would continue the study of ants by studying their ability to communicate with smell, decided to find out what things equal “I am dead.” to an ant. Finally, after much checking and mixing, Ed discovered that a kind of acid was all the ants have to think “DEAD!” One day he took a drop of the acid and put it on an ant that had the bad luck of walking by. Then the next ant that came near grabbed it, put it on its back and put it into the refuse pile though the ant was still alive.

Though it tried to clean itself over and over, the minute it returned to the colony, it was caught and carried back on the pile. At last, it took the ant about an hour or two to get clean enough to return to regular business.

1.The author says the question was no one on everybody’s lips because ____.

A. it is easy to answer B. it is a foolish and difficult question

C. it is less talked about D. only scientists ask such a question

2.The underlined word “a refuse pile” probably means the place where _____.

A. injured ants were treated B. other ants lived

C. food was stored D. dead ants were buried

3.What caught Ed Wilson’s attention when he was at Harvard in the 1950s?

A. An ant wasn’t carried away immediately when it died.

B. Ant died with feet in the air.

C. Sister ants didn’t look after each other at all.

D. Ant’s dead bodies didn’t catch others’ attention.

4.The ant with acid tries to clean itself over and over ____.

A. to avoid being killed by the acid

B. to avoid being treated as the dead ant

C. to find out more food than anyone else

D. to find out where it got the acid

5.Which of the following can be the best title for the passage?

A. Dead is what you smell, not what you see

B. It’s funny to carry a living ant.

C. The secret in an ant colony

D. Study ants’ ability to communicate

Answer 1