英语听力精选进阶版 7188（在线收听）

Background: 生物学家多年来一直通过给企鹅做标记的方法来监视企鹅的行踪。法国科学家近日指出，此举动不仅会给企鹅的健康带来危害，而且还对已收集到的有关气候变化的数据产生质疑。

For decades scientists have been following penguins by putting bands around their flippers.

This allows individual birds to be identified at a distance.

But there have been concerns that flipper bands might harm the birds by slowing them down as they swim.

The latest study, reported in the journal Nature, confirms it. Scientists from Strasbourg University followed a colony of king penguins for ten years.

Birds fitted with bands died younger, started breeding later in the year, took longer to forage for food and over all raised about 40 per cent fewer chicks.

The researchers suggest that using flipper bands would now be unethical in most situations.

Scientists in the field would now have to find other tagging methods but in the meantime there are also concerns that some data gathered on penguins down the years, in this ecological crucial part of the planet, may now be worthless.

Glossary 词汇表

band （用来做标记的）细带子 

flipper 鳍状肢 

concerns 担忧，担心 

to harm 危害，伤害 

colony 群体 

to breed 生育，繁殖 

chick 小企鹅 

unethical 不道德的 

tagging 标记 

worthless 无价值的

Questions and Answers

1. Why do scientists put bands on penguins’ flippers? 

Because they want to identify the birds even from far away.

2. What sort of problems were observed in birds with bands? 

They died younger, bred later, took longer to forage for food and had fewer chicks.

3. True or false? According to the report, it is of no value to use penguins to gather data. 

False. It says that it might be worthless if the penguin was suffering the effects of tagging.

4. True or false? The scientists want biologists to stop using rubber bands as a method to identify penguins. 

True. They think that it is unethical to cause harm to the birds.