大学体验英语视听说教程 第三册.ppt

Two decades later, Smits, 51, has saved more than 1,600 orangutans, gentle and highly intelligent great apes14 now classified as an endangered15 species. They’re threatened by smugglers16 who capture them for the black market pet trade in Indonesia and abroad, by diners who consider orangutan meat a delicacy17, by shopkeepers who sell the animals’ skulls18 as souvenirs19, and by loggers20 who are decimating21 their jungle habitat. Smits’ organization, the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) , takes in orphaned22 or displaced23 animals and resettles them in protected rain forests. One thing Smits’ work has taught him is that our fate is inextricably24 tied to the orangutans’. Certain varieties of wood sold at American lumberyards25 are illegally harvested from the animals’ home turf26; the vegetable oil in many processed foods comes from palm27 trees planted where jungle once grew. The razing28 of the forests, in turn, contributes to global warming and thus to droughts, floods, and other disasters from Alaska to Australia. “Protecting orangutans,” Smits tells anyone who will listen, “is the same as protecting people.” 4. commodity n. 商品 5. Borneo n. 婆罗洲 6. vendor n. 小贩 7. thrust n. 猛推8. slat n. 板条9. orangutan n. 猩猩 10. emaciated adj. 瘦弱的，憔悴的11. features n. 面貌 12. forestry n. 林学13. dehydration n. 脱水14. ape n. 类人猿 15. endangered adj. 濒临绝种的 Orangutans are our closest evolutionary cousins after bonobos29, chimpanzees30, and gorillas31, sharing 97 percent of their DNA with humans, and they’re like us in many other ways. They make tools, using sticks to crack open fruits. They can be taught to understand hundreds of human words. Children live with their mothers for eight years, learning to navigate32 the jungle and distinguish between harmful and useful plants. Babies like to be tickled33, reacting with silent laughter. But orangutans are far less adaptable than humans. They need vast, unbroken stretches of forest to survive in the wild. When the tr