Magy's English Edu. Club
Cambridge 17 Academic Reading Test 3 Passage One
The Thylacine
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Appearances and behavior
1. ate an entirely ……… diet
The answer is CARNIVOROUS.
In paragraph two, in terms of feeding, it was exclusively carnivorous, and its stomach was muscular with an ability to distend so that it could eat large amounts of food at one time, probably an adaptation to compensate for long periods when hunting was unsuccessful and food scarce.
2. probably depended mainly on …… when hunting
The answer is SCENT.
In paragraph two, during long-distance chases, thylacines were likely to have relied more on scent than any other sense.
3. young spent first months of life inside its mother’s ….
The answer is POUCH.
In paragraph three, newborns crawled into the pouch on the belly of their mother, and attached themselves to one of the four teats, remaining there for up to three months.
4. last evidence in mainland Australia is a 3100-year-old …….
The answer is FOSSIL.
In paragraph three, the most recent, well-dated occurrence of a thylacine on the mainland is a carbon-dated fossil from Murray Cave in Western Australia, which is around 3,100 years old.
5. reduction in ……. and available sources of food were partly responsible for decline in Tasmania
The answer is HABITAT
In paragraph five, these include competition with wild dogs introduced by European settlers, loss of habitat along with the disappearance of prey species, and a distemper-like disease which may also have affected the thylacine.
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
Write TRUE, FALSE, or NOT GIVEN.
6. Significant numbers of thylacines were killed by humans from the 1830s onwards.
The answer is TRUE.
In paragraph five, the dramatic decline of thylacine in Tasmania, which began in the 1930s and continued for a century, is generally attributed to the relentless efforts of sheep farmers and bounty hunters with shotguns.
7. Several thylacines were born in zoos during the late 1800s.
The answer is FALSE.
In paragraph six, there was only one successful attempt to breed a thylacine in captivity, at Melbourne Zoo in 1899.
8. John Gould’s prediction about the thylacine surprised some biologists.
The answer is NOT GIVEN.
In paragraph seven, the famous naturalist John Gould foresaw the thylacine’s demise when he published his Mammals of Australia between 1848 and 1863, writing, ‘The numbers of this singular animal will speedily diminish, extermination will have its full sway, and it will then, like the wolf of England and Scotland, be recorded as an animal of the past.’
9. In the early 1900s, many scientists became worried about the possible extinction of the thylacine.
The answer is FALSE.
In paragraph eight, however, there seems to have been little public pressure to preserve the thylacine, nor was much concern expressed by scientists at the decline of this species in the decades that followed.
10. T.T. Flynn’s proposal to rehome captive thylacines on an island proved to be impractical.
The answer is NOT GIVEN.
In paragraph eight, however, there seems to have been little public pressure to preserve the
11. There were still reasonable numbers of thylacines in existence when a piece of legislation protecting the species during their breeding season was passed.
The answer is FALSE.
In paragraph eight, official protection of the species by the Tasmanian government was introduced in July 1936, 59 days before the last known individual died in Hobart Zoo on 7th September, 1936.
12. From 1930 to 1936, the only known living thylacines were all in captivity.
The answer is TRUE.
In paragraph eight, the last known wild thylacine to be killed was shot by a farmer in the north-east of Tasmania in 1930, leaving just captive specimens.
13. Attempts to find living thylacines are now rarely made.
The answer is NOT GIVEN.
In paragraph nine, there have been numerous expeditions and searches for the thylacine over the years, none of which has produced definitive evidence that thylacines still exist.