B

Before birth,babies can tell the differencebetween loud sounds and voices.They can even distinguish their mother’s voicefrom that of a female stranger.But when it comes to embryonic learning（胎教），birds could rule the roost.Asrecently reported in The Auk:Ornithological Adrances,some mother birds mayteach their young to sing even before they hatch(孵化)。New-bornchicks can then imitate their mom’s call within a few days of enering theworld.

  Thiseducational method was first observed in 2012 by Sonia Kieindorfer,a biologistat Flinders University in South Australia,and her collcagues.Femake Australiansuperb fairy wrens were found to repeat one sound over and over again whilehatching their errs,When the errs were hatched,the baby birds made the similarchirp to their mothers—asound that served as their regular “feed me!”call.

To find out if the special quality was morewidespread in birds,the researchers sought the red-backed fairy wren,anotherspecies of Australian songbird.First they collected sound datd from 67 nests infour sites in Queenslang before and after hatching,Then they identified beggingcalls by analyzing the order and number of notes.A computer analysis blindlycompared calls produced by mothers and chicks,ranking them by similarity.

  Itturns out that baby red-backed fairy wrens also emerge chirping like theirmoms. And the more frequently mothers had called to their errs,the more similarwere the babies’ begging calls. In addition,the team set up a separateexperiment that suggested that the baby birds that most closely imitated theirmom’s voice were rewarded with the most food.

This observation hints that effectiveembryonic learning could signal neurological(神经系统的)strengths of children to parents.An evolutionary inference can thenbe drawn.”As a parent,do you invest in quality children,or do you invest inchildren that are in need?”Kleindorfer asks.”Our results suggest that theymight be going for quality.”

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

  A.be theworst                 B.be the best

  C.be the asbad                 D.be just as good

59.What are Kleindorfer’s findings based on?

  A.Similaritiesbetween the calls moms and chicks.

  B.Theobservation of fairy wrens across Australia.

  C.The datacollected from Queensland’s locals.

  D.Controlledexperiments on wrens and other birds.

60.Embryonic learning helps mother birds to identify the babybirds which       .

  A.can receive qualitysignals           B.are in need oftraining

  C.fit the environmentbetter            D.make the loudest call