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Listen to an Academic Talk Test #017
Listen to an Academic Talk
1. What is the lecture mainly about?
A) The nesting habits of warblers
B) The evolution of parental care in birds
C) A strategy for raising young without parental care
D) The reasons for the decline of cuckoo populations
2. According to the professor, what does a cuckoo chick often do after it hatches?
A) It imitates the sounds of the host birds.
B) It helps the host parents find food.
C) It forces the other eggs out of the nest.
D) It leaves the nest to find its own parents.
3. What can be inferred about the host birds, such as warblers?
A) They eventually abandon the cuckoo chick.
B) They are not able to recognize their own young.
C) They lay their eggs after the cuckoo does.
D) They are larger than the adult cuckoo.
4. Why does the professor state that the cuckoo chick grows much larger than the host parents?
A) To explain why the host parents are afraid of it
B) To show that the cuckoo is a type of predator
C) To emphasize how strange the situation is
D) To give a reason why the nest is destroyed
Professor: We're going to discuss a fascinating and rather ruthless survival strategy in the animal kingdom known as brood parasitism.
This is when an animal tricks another animal into raising its young. The classic example is the common cuckoo bird. The female cuckoo doesn't build her own nest. Instead, she finds the nest of a smaller bird species, like a warbler, and lays one of her eggs in it.
The cuckoo egg often hatches before the host's eggs. The newborn cuckoo chick then instinctively pushes the other eggs or chicks out of the nest.
The host parents, the warblers, are left to feed and care for only the cuckoo chick, which quickly grows much larger than them. This strategy allows the cuckoo to reproduce without spending any energy on parental care.
This is when an animal tricks another animal into raising its young. The classic example is the common cuckoo bird. The female cuckoo doesn't build her own nest. Instead, she finds the nest of a smaller bird species, like a warbler, and lays one of her eggs in it.
The cuckoo egg often hatches before the host's eggs. The newborn cuckoo chick then instinctively pushes the other eggs or chicks out of the nest.
The host parents, the warblers, are left to feed and care for only the cuckoo chick, which quickly grows much larger than them. This strategy allows the cuckoo to reproduce without spending any energy on parental care.
Highlights
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