英语听力：自然百科 A Cat Has Nine Lives 猫有九条命

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

 

Despite its agility⁵, the cat faces particular dangers in today's modern cities. Here although hundreds of feet above the ground, the indoor cat is just as attracted by moving prey⁶ as is any other cat. If any thing, it may be a stir-crazy bundle of energy. So many cats actually careen through unscreened windows that the phenomenon now has a name, high-rise syndrome⁷. At the Animal Medical Center in New York City, doctors were perplexed⁸ when they found that victims of higher falls often had less severe injuries than those that fell a shorter distance.

 

It's been about a month since you were here, lad. We'd been puzzled by the high-rise syndrome for a long time, the name that we give for cats falling out of windows. A clinical impression is that cats that fall from medium-level stories are hurt much worse than cats that fell from even greater distances. That seemed to defy our logic⁹ that cats that would fall farther would be hurt less. So we undertook a study to examine the records on cats that had been admitted here for falling out of windows. And it actually confirmed that our clinical impression was correct. It seems that cats that fall from higher stories have enough time to reach free fall like a parachutist and are relaxed when you experience trauma¹⁰ when you are relaxed, you'll probably avoid injury; when you experience trauma when you are very rigid¹¹ and very tight, you will attain¹² a maximized injury.

分享到：