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jasonlulu_2000
Joined: 19 Mar 2006
Posts: 879
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 Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 12:25 am Post subject: a sentence |
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Three years ago, five parrots were set free in a wild place of Arizona, thousands of miles from the Channel Islands in Jersey where they had been looked after by zookeepers. No evolutionary strategies informed them how to behave in this new landscape of mountainous pine forest unoccupied by their kind for 50 years. To the researchers� surprise, they failed to make contact with a group of wild parrots imported from Mexico and set free at the same time. Within 24 hours the reintroducing ended in failure, and the poor birds were back in cages, on their way to the safety of the Arizona reintroduction programme.
Ever since then, the programme has enjoyed great success, mainly because the birds now being set free are Mexican birds illegally caught in the wild, confiscated on arrival north of the border, and raised by their parents in the safety of the programme. The experience shows how little we know about the behaviour and psychology of parrots, as Peter Bennett, a bird researcher, points out: � Reintroducing species of high intelligence like parrots is a lot more difficult. People like parrots, always treating them as nothing more than pets or valuable �collectables�.�
what does the underlined sentence mean? Could you paraphrase it?
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dragn
Joined: 17 Feb 2009
Posts: 450
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| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 8:38 am Post subject: |
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Three years ago, five parrots were set free in a wild place of Arizona, thousands of miles from the Channel Islands in Jersey where they had been looked after by zookeepers. No evolutionary strategies informed them how to behave in this new landscape of mountainous pine forest unoccupied by their kind for 50 years. To the researchers� surprise, they failed to make contact with a group of wild parrots imported from Mexico and set free at the same time. Within 24 hours the reintroducing ended in failure, and the poor birds were back in cages, on their way to the safety of the Arizona reintroduction programme.
Ever since then, the programme has enjoyed great success, mainly because the birds now being set free are Mexican birds illegally caught in the wild, confiscated on arrival north of the border, and raised by their parents in the safety of the programme. The experience shows how little we know about the behaviour and psychology of parrots, as Peter Bennett, a bird researcher, points out: � Reintroducing species of high intelligence like parrots is a lot more difficult. People like parrots, always treating them as nothing more than pets or valuable �collectables�.�
what does the underlined sentence mean? Could you paraphrase it? |
Ever since then, the programme has enjoyed great success, mainly because the birds they are setting free now are not birds that have grown up in captivity, like the first ones. The birds they are using now are birds that were originally captured in the wild in Mexico. They were born and lived in the wild in Mexico and then were captured (along with the birds' parents) by people who tried to take them into the United States. However, this is illegal and the birds were confiscated by authorities at the U.S.-Mexico border. The confiscated birds were then raised in the safety of the programme, and subsequently proved to be more adept at making contact with other birds in the wild since they had actually been born and had live in the wild for a time.
Hope this is clear.
Greg |
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jasonlulu_2000
Joined: 19 Mar 2006
Posts: 879
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| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:40 pm Post subject: thanks |
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The only puzzling point for me is "their parents".
OK. Now, I got it. |
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