公共英语四级

单选题根据下面资料,回答题
Being a man has always been dangerous. There are about 105 males born for every 100 fe-males, but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity, and among 70-year-olds there are twice as many women as men. But the great universal of male mortality is being changed. Now,boy babies survive almost as well as girls do. This means that, for the first time, there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when they are searching for a mate. More important, another chance for natural selection has been removed. Fifty years ago, the chance of a baby (particularly a boy baby) surviving depended on its weight. A kilogram too light or too heavy meant almost cer-tain death. Today it makes almost no difference. Since much of the variation is due to genes, one more agent of evolution has gone.
There is another way to commit evolutionary suicide: stay alive, but have fewer children.
Few people are as fertile as in the past. Except in some religious communities, very few women have 15 children. Nowadays the number of births, like the age of death, has become average.
Most of us have roughly the same number of offspring. Again, differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take advan.tage of it have diminished. India shows what is hap-pening. The country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for the remaining tribal peoples. The grand mediocrity of today--everyone being the same in survival and number of off-spring--means that natural selection has lost 80% of its power in upper-middle-class India com-pared to the tribes.
For us, this means that evolution is over; the biological Utopia has arrived. Strangely, it has involved little physical change. No other species fills so many places in nature. But in the past100,000 years--even the past 100 years--our lives have been transformed but our bodies have not.
We did not evolve, because machines and society did it for us. Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution: they "look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at some-thing wholly beyond his comprehension". No doubt we will remember a 20th century way of life beyond comprehension for its ugliness. But however amazed our descendants may be at how far from Utopia we were, they will look just like us.
What used to be the danger in being a mall according to the first paragraph?

A.A lack of mates.
B.A fierce competition.
C.A lower survival rate.
D.A defective gene.

参考答案:C进入在线模考
参考译文
作为男人总是充满危险的。出生时男女比例大约为105:100,但是到了成熟期,这种比例的下降几乎达到了平衡,在七十岁的老年人中,女性比男性多了一倍。但是男性的死亡率高这一特点正在明显地改变。现在,男婴的存活率同女婴的一样高。这意味着在男孩到了寻找伴侣的关键年月,将第一次出现男孩过剩现象。更重要的是,又一个自然选择的机会被取消了。五十年前,婴儿(特别是男婴)生存下来的机会取决于其自身的重量。轻一公斤或重一公斤几乎就意味着其必死无疑。今天,重量几乎没有任何影响。因为许多差别是由基因引起的,所以又一个进化因素消失了。
消除进化因素还有另一种方法,那就是保持存活,少生孩子。现在,几乎没有几个人像过去那样生殖力旺盛。除了一些宗教社区外,没有几个妇女能生15个孩子。现在,所生孩子的数目如同死亡年龄一样,人人相差无几。我们大多数人的子女几乎一样多。人与人之间的差别以及利用差别进行自然选择的机会越来越小。印度则能说明正在发生的一切。
这个国家(印度)给大城市的一部分人提供财富,而给其余各部落民族以贫困。当今众多的普通人,每个人的生存机会和子女数量都相同。这意味着:与部落相比,自然选择在印度的中上阶层已失去80%的作用。
对我们来说,这意味着进化已经结束;已经达到了生物的理想境界。令人奇怪的是,这种进化几乎没有涉及到身体的变化。没有别的物种占据大自然中如此多的地方。在过去的十万年中,甚至一百年中,我们的生活发生了巨大的变化,但我们的身体却没改变。我们没有进化,因为机器和社会替我们改变了生活。达尔文有一句话描述了那些对进化无知的人:那些无知的人“看有机的生命如同野人看一条船,看某种完全无法理解的东西”。毫无疑问,我们会记住20世纪的生活方式,虽然其丑态万千,难以让人理解。但是,不论我们的后代多么惊讶于我们距离理想状态的遥远,但他们的长相将和我们一样。
答案及解析
文章第一段开头是答题的关键:Being a man has always been dangerous...But the great universal of male mortality is being changed.可见,男性的出生率高于女性,但是随着年龄增加,男女比例呈明显下降趋势。作者试图用这些数据表明,生为男人的危险并不是在于寻找配偶的困难,而是男性的死亡率远远高于女性。

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1What does the example of India illustrate?

A.Wealthy people tend to have fewer children than poor people.
B.Natural selection hardly works among the rich and the poor.
C.The middle class population is 80%smaller than that of the tribes.
D.India is one of the countries with a very high birth rate.

2The author argues that our bodies have stopped evolving because__________.

A.life has been improved by technological advance
B.the number of female babies has been declining
C.our species has reached the highest stage of evolution
D.me difference between wealth and poverty is disappearing

3What does“fertile”in the second paragraph mean?

A.Female.
B.Able to produce much.
C.Religious celebration.
D.Quick.