英语听力：Wild China 美丽中国 -11

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

 

Zhe Shuzheng and her son live nearby. Zhe has been caring for her local alligators² for over 20 years, so she had a fair idea when the eggs were likely to hatch³. Back home, she's built a pond, surrounded by netting to keep out predators⁴ where her charges will spend the next 6 months until they are big enough to fend⁵ for themselves.

 

 

For the past 20 years, small-scale conservation projects like this are all that have kept China's 150 wild alligators from extinction⁶.

 

Just south of the alligator¹ country, dawn breaks over a very different landscape -- the 1800-meter-high granite⁷ peaks of the Huangshan or Yellow Mountain. To the Chinese, Huangshan's pines epitomize the strength and resilience of nature. Some of these trees are thought to be over a thousand years old.

 

Below the granite peaks, steep forested valleys shelter surprising inhabitants, Huangshan macaques, rare descendants⁸ of  the Tibetan macaques of western China are unique to these mountain valleys where they enjoy strict official protection.

 

After a morning spent in the treetops, the troop is heading for the shade of the valley, a chance for the grownups to escape the heat and maybe pick up a lunch snack from the stream.

 

As in most monkey societies, social contact involves a lot of grooming⁹. Grooming is all very well for grownups. But young macaques have energy to burn.

 

 

Like so much monkey business, what starts off as a bit of playful rough-and-tumble soon begins to get out of hand.

 

The alpha male has seen it all before. He's not in the least bothered. But someone or something is watching, with a less-than-friendly interest.

分享到：