节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2014-04-15
难易度:High
关键字:approximately, habitat, starvation, debris, raptor, predator
Hello, and welcome back.
Today we are learning all about the different shapes and sizes of these rules of
the sky.
There are tiny falcons, massive condors and many others in between.
These birds also live in a wide variety of habitats around the world.
They play an important role in the balance of nature and are at the top of the
food chain.
Let's continue learning about these magnificent birds in the next part of our
lesson.
Rulers of the Sky.
Many raptors also help humans by eating the pests that destroy crops.
The predators also eliminate sick animals that can spread disease.
Birds of prey are excellent parents.
Eagles carry egg shells and other debris away from their nests, so other
predators cannot find their chicks.
Eagles often return to the same nest year after year and just add a little more
nesting material to it.
The largest eagle nest found was about three meters wide, six meters tall and
weighed more than 1,814 kilograms!
(Music).
(Chinese).
And now let's go to our teachers.
Thank you, Michelle.
Well, these predators are very impressive.
In this section we learn that not only are they important to the balance of
nature but they are also helpful to humans.
You're right, Gabe.
They are good because they help eat pests that destroy crops.
Now what could these pests be?
Let's take a look at that word.
A pest is something that is annoying or a plant or animal that can cause injury.
Yeah. For example, mosquitoes are pests.
They're very annoying.
They can also spread disease and cause scars with their itchy bites.
They are definitely pests.
But those probably aren't the pests our lesson is talking about.
Here, pests would be things like mice, rats, groundhogs and rabbits.
It's also important to have these predators because they eat the sick animals
and prevent them from spreading disease.
Earlier I mentioned that mosquitoes spread disease.
But many other creatures can do that, too.
These diseases spread by rats and mice can cause fevers and many other
unfortunate symptoms that sometimes result in a person needing to go to the
hospital for treatment.
I would much rather have an eagle than a rat, that's for sure.
And speaking of eagles, we learn that they are very good parents.
They like to keep their nests nice and clean.
And safe. They remove things from the nest to prevent other animals from
attacking their chicks.
Now that word "chick" is something that Steve and Ken want to tell us more about
in the Information Cloud.
Let's learn about baby animal names.
One unique feature of English is that it has a special term for almost every
kind of baby animal.
The word "chick" is used in today's lesson to describe a baby eagle.
But there's actually an even more precise term for a baby eagle: eaglet.
But let's face it, eaglet is not exactly part of everyday English.
I doubt a lot of native English speakers know it, so.
While it may be interesting to find out the name of, say, baby eel, which is
elver, by the way, we don't really need to memorize all the baby animal names.
But we should know some of the more popular and basic ones.
As mentioned, chick can refer to a baby eagle, but it can also refer to any
young bird or chicken.
The word calf is used in that it can refer to a young antelope, cow, elephant,
hippo, rhino or even whale.
Another useful baby animal term is cub, which can be applied to a young bear,
panda, lion, tiger, even a baby shark.
And since so many people have dogs and cats for pets, we should know the name of
a baby dog - puppy, and a baby cat - kitten.
A few more popular ones:
A baby pig is a piglet.
A baby duck is a duckling.
And a baby rabbit is a bunny.
If you know all the ones we just mentioned, great!
But don't worry if you can't remember a particular baby animal name.
You can always put the word "baby" in front of any animal name to describe its
young.
(Chinese).
Thank you, gentlemen.
There are so many different names used for baby animals in English.
It can be a bit difficult to remember them all.
But those names are very cute, like pig and piglet.
Pig doesn't sound very cute, but piglet sounds adorable.
Yes. And of course there's puppy and kitten and chick.
And we were just talking about eagle chicks.
These could also be called eaglets.
So eaglets stay safe in their nests, and the parents take care of them.
However, many types of eagles will lay two eggs but only one eaglet will
survive.
This happens for many different reasons.
Right.
Some eagle parents ignore the second egg after the first egg hatches.
Other times both eggs will hatch, but the bigger or stronger eaglet will kill
the smaller one.
Well, this means that most eagle parents raise only one chick at a time.
Something else that is interesting about eagles is that they have the same mate
every year.
It's almost like the eagles are... husband and wife.
So if you see a pair of eagles, they will stay together to raise their chicks
year after year.
They won't try to find a new partner each year.
And that's great.
And there's a great phrase that you use from our lesson: year after year.
If you do something year after year, that means it happens annually or every
year.
You could say that Tommy asked for a smartphone for his birthday year after year
until his parents finally bought him one.
So each year he asked for a smartphone for his birthday.
You could also replace "year" with another measure of time like month, week or
day.
Well, right now it's time for us to go and join Linda for the Editor's Summary.
Today we find out that birds of prey can weigh as little as 28 grams or as much
as 13 kilograms.
That 13-kilogram bird, the Andean condor, can spread its wings three meters.
That is wide.
These raptors live on every continent and in every kind of habitat you can think
of.
They play an important part in keeping the balance of nature.
Because without them, animals would run out of food as there would be too many
of them, and they would die of starvation.
And did you know that they are wonderful parents?
They protect their babies by keeping the nest very clean of egg shells and other
debris that would attract predators.
They also return year after year to use the same nests.
They just keep adding to their nest to make them comfortable.
The largest eagle nest ever found weighed around 1,814 kilograms.
That is a big nest!
Thank you, Linda.
Well, today we've learned all about the shapes and sizes of these raptors.
We've also learned about how eagles care for their young and some interesting
information about their nests.
So be sure to join us tomorrow as we continue our lesson on Rulers of the Sky
right here on Studio Classroom.
See you then.
(Music).