Wanderlust rules the wolverine heart

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Glacier National Park , Montana — Four biologists wear­ing headlamps surround an unconscious wolverine that lies flat on its back. They check a transmitter in its belly and fit another larger one around its neck. Then they inject the animal with the antidote to the drug that knocked it out, and place it in a box trap. An hour later, when the lid of the trap is opened, the animal runs into the forest. Every two hours the position of the wolverine is fixed by a geo-positioning satellite and recorded in the collar.

A few weeks later the wolverine is recaptured, and a record of its travels is downloaded into a laptop. The result confirms data that the researchers have accumulated over three years. Wolverines are wildly peripatetic.

The wolverine, a creature of the northern forests that resembles a small bear, is legendary for its strength and ferocity. Its hallmark is its insatiable need to keep moving. There is no other animal that moves like this every day.

An Austrian biologist named Peter Knott, who raised wolverines and wrote about them in his book "Demon of the North", said one of his animals got caught in a leg hold trap and traveled home on three legs for weeks carrying the trap in its jaws, before collapsing on his doorstep.

The new research shows a wolverine keeps on moving at about 8 kilometers per hour. With broad feet that serve as snowshoes, it easily scrambles over 3,000 meter snow-covered mountains, and travels through forests, sometimes covering 40 kilometers back the next. A male's home range is about 1,300 square kilometers, about the same as that of a grizzly bear, which is ten times its size.

A male covers that territory both to mate with three or four females and to look for the carcasses of moose or moun­tain goats that have perished, to hunt squirrels and insects or scrounge for berries.

Wolverines are also proving to have a family life unusual for carnivores. Males have been known to wait outside a trap for a captured mate. And no other young adult carnivores are known to maintain companionship with their caring fathers. But wolverine fathers stay in touch.

Fragmentation of habitat is also a concern. No one knows how the widely scattered wolverines stay in touch with one another, and there is worry that logging, roads, homes and other development may cut them off from the rest of the population. While the wolverine's range has shrunk consider­ably in the last half century, some biologists argue that at this point there's not enough data to show that the wolverine needs government protection. They need information before they understand the needs of the animal.

II. Translate into English:

1.Многие обладатели животных считают, что домашние питомцы понимают их.

2.Очень часто кошки и собаки помогают нам расслабляться, когда слова других людей уже не помогают.

3.Иногда у собак такой взгляд, что возникает чувство, что хозяин очень важен и нужен своему питомцу.

4.Животные всегда были рядом с человеком.

5.Собака с давних пор служила для человека не только в качестве охраны.

6.Кошки обладают особой силой чувствительности.

7.Лондонский зоопарк – один из самых старых зоопарк в мире, который внес

огромный вклад в сохранении редких видов животных.

8.Лондонский зоопарк является научным центром изучения жизни животных.

9.Технический прогресс нанес огромный ущерб природе, многие виды животных исчезли, реки, моря, воздух загрязнены.

III. PROJECT WORK

1.Collect as much information as possible about the re­cent ecological problems in your area and prepare a press-conference on how these problems are being decided by your local and central authorities. You can use following table:

 

	Air pollution	Water pollution	Woods pollution
District of your are а
How decided/not decided

 

 

2. In groups of 3-4, make up a list of endangered species in your country, using the latest information from newspa­pers, magazines and TV programmes. Discuss the results in class and work out possible measures to prevent these ani­mals from total extinction.

-Use following vocabulary:

to pollute, enviromental protection, technological progress, to be exhausted, , a movement, to campaign, to keep clean, strict pollution control, wildlife, purifying systems, acid rains, to solve problems

 

 

UNIT II

ANIMALS ARROUND US

 

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