广东省广州六中2013-2014学年高一英语上学期期中(8)

C. who stay up late D. who eat before sleep

45. Which of the following statements is true?

A. Skipping breakfast can help you lose weight.

B. The author always has leftovers for breakfast.

C. Not eating breakfast can save you 300 to 400 calories.

D. Some women believe that they can save calories by skipping breakfast.

C

You know that pearls grow inside oysters(牡蛎), but would you ever think to look for diamonds inside an ostrich(鸵鸟)? Well, a hunter once shot an ostrich and discovered, to his great surprise, that the big bird had swallowed(吞) a bunch of diamonds(钻石). How could such a strange thing happen?

Like many other birds, the ostrich swallows small stones that stay inside its “gizzard”. The gizzard is a bird’s second stomach. It is where the food is ground up（磨碎）. The small stones help to grind up the food so it can be digested(消化). The small stones do the chewing because birds don’t have teeth. In that case of the ostrich with the diamonds, the bird simply had expensive taste in rocks. It used the diamonds to digest its dinner.

Diamonds and stones aren’t all that an ostrich will swallow. If there are no stones around, it will eat just about anything. Sadly for ostriches in zoos, this can be a fatal habit. The tendency to swallow anything it sees has caused the death of many an ostrich. Cruel or careless people often throw things into the bird’s living space. They throw keys, coins, and even large objects such as horseshoes. The ostrich swallows them without hesitation(犹豫). Coins can be the worst. Inside the ostrich they wear down(磨损) to a razor-sharp edge. They will cut open the bird’s gizzard from the inside. When one young zoo ostrich died, 484 coins weighing more than eight pounds were found in its gizzard.

46. According to the passage, what is the function of “gizzard”?

A. It can help an ostrich to store water.

B. It can help an ostrich to kill its enemies.

C. It can help an ostrich to digest food.

D. It can help an ostrich to find food.

47. What does the underlined part mean in Paragraph 2?

A. The diamonds were expensive food for the ostrich.

B. The ostrich preferred the taste of the diamonds.

C. The ostrich just took the diamonds for ordinary stones.

D. The ostrich liked to use the diamonds to digest food.

48. What may lead to the death of the ostrich?

A. Coins. B. Rocks. C. Diamonds. D. Small stones.

49. The last paragraph is mainly to _____________.

A. introduce an interesting habit of the ostrich

B. call on the public to care more about the food given to the ostrich in the zoo

C. give a brief introduction to a kind of bird

D. inform the readers of the eating habit of the ostrich

50. Why can coins be worse than other things that are swallowed by an ostrich?