B

Before birth, babies can tell the difference between loud sounds and voices. They can even distinguish their mother’s voice from that of a female stranger. But when it comes to embryonic learning (胎教), birds could rule the roost. As recently reported in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, some mother birds may teach their young to sing even before they hatch (孵化). New-born chicks can then imitate their mom’s call within a few days of entering the world.

This educational method was first observed in 2012 by Sonia Kleindorfer, a biologist at Flinders University in South Australia, and her colleagues. Female Australian superb fairy wrens were found to repeat one sound over and over again while hatching their errs, When the errs were hatched, the baby birds made the similar chirp to their mothers—a sound that served as their regular “feed me!” call.

To find out if the special quality was more widespread in birds, the researchers sought the red-backed fairy wren, another species of Australian songbird. First they collected sound date from 67 nests in four sites in Queenslang before and after hatching, Then they identified begging calls by analyzing the order and number of notes. A computer analysis blindly compared calls produced by mothers and chicks, ranking them by similarity.

It turns out that baby red-backed fairy wrens also emerge chirping like their moms. And the more frequently mothers had called to their errs, the more similar were the babies’ begging calls. In addition, the team set up a separate experiment that suggested that the baby birds that most closely imitated their mom’s voice were rewarded with the most food.

This observation hints that effective embryonic learning could signal neurological (神經系統的) strengths of children to parents. An evolutionary inference can then be drawn.” As a parent, do you invest in quality children, or do you invest in children that are in need? ” Kleindorfer asks. “Our results suggest that they might be going for quality.”

58. The underlined phrase in Paragraph 1 means “______”.

A. be the worst    B. be the best

C. be the as bad D. be just as good

59. What are Kleindorfer’s findings based on?

A. Similarities between the calls moms and chicks.

B. The observation of fairy wrens across Australia.

C. The data collected from Queensland’s locals.

D. Controlled experiments on wrens and other birds.

60. Embryonic learning helps mother birds to identify the baby birds which ______.

A. can receive quality signals         

B. are in need of training

C. fit the environment better           

D. make the loudest call

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