Since water is the basis of life, composing the greater part of the tissues of all living things, the crucial problem of desert animals is to survive in a world where sources of flowing water are rare. And since man’s inexorable necessity is to absorb large quantities of water at frequent intervals, he can scarcely comprehend that many creatures of the desert pass their entire lives without a single drop.

   Uncompromising as it is, the desert has not eliminated life but only those forms unable to withstand its desiccating effects. No moist- skinned, water-loving animals can exist there. Few large animals are found. The giants of the North American desert are the deer, the coyote, and the bobcat. Since desert country is open, it holds more swift-footed running and leaping creatures than the tangled forest. Its population is largely nocturnal, silent, filled with reticence, and ruled by stealth. Yet they are not emaciated.

   Having adapted to their austere environment, they are as healthy as animals anywhere else in the word. The secret of their adjustment lies in the combination of behavior and physiology. None could survive if, like mad dogs and Englishmen, they went out in the midday sun; many would die in a matter of minutes. So most of them pass the burning hours asleep in cool, humid burrows underneath the ground, emerging to hunt only by night. The surface of the sun-baked desert averages around 150 degrees, but 18 inches down the temperature is only 60 degrees.

The word “emaciated” in the passage mostly means .......

Câu hỏi liên quan

• What is probably the writer’s attitude in the passage?

• When the concept of universal primary education was introduced, education _______.

• The word it refers to _________.

ZUNIA12

• What is the purpose of the passage?

• The word “imprisonment” in paragraph 2 is closet in meaning to _________.

• The “labellum” (line 7) is most comparable to ........

• During the procedure described in paragraph 3, when clay particles are placed into water they ______.

• In the passage, the expression "children interrupt their education to go to school" mostly implies that ..........

• The series was designed _____________

• Which of the following best describes the organization of the passage?

• What does the passage mainly discuss?

• The word "essential" in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to .......

• The word “bore” in line 3 is closest in meaning to ..............

• All of the following are defined in the passage EXCEPT ............

• The word "odd" is closest in meaning to ........

• The word “odd” refers to which of the following?

• The word “tolerate” in paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to ............

• The phrase “those forms” in the passage refers to all of the following EXCEPT ..........

• What use was made of the nineteenth-century women's history materials in the Schlesinger Library and the Sophia Smith Collection?

• In the author’s judgment, ...............