雅思阅读－－关于蝙蝠，你了解多少？

《圣经》中所讲到的：上帝按照自己的模样创造了人类，而为了让人类和自己一样，便又创造了天地，创造了飞禽走兽，来陪伴人类。为了更好地和动物们共同生活，它们也成为了热门的研究话题。下面我就以雅思阅读中曾经出现过的一篇论及蝙蝠的文章。(内容经过适当重组)

　　Bats have a problem: how to find their way around in the dark. You might sat that this is a problem of their own making, one that they could avoid simply by changing their habits and hunting by day. But the daytime economy is already heavily exploited(thoroughly occupied) by other creatures such as birds. Given that there is a living to be made at night, natural selection had favoured bats that make a go of the night-hunting trade(nocturnal trade). It is probable that the nocturnal trades go way back in the ancestry of all mammals. In the time when the dinosaurs dominated the daytime economy, our mammalian ancestors probably only managed to survive at night.

　　Deep-

sea fish and whales have little or no light by day or by night. Fish and dolphins that live in extremely muddy water cannot see because, although there is light, it is obstructed and scattered by the dirt in the water.

　　Since using own energy as a headlight to illuminate the path requires much energy for animals, they may not use this method. Instead, they use “facial vision”. The sensation of facial vision means actually these animals are using echoes of their own and other sounds, to sense the presence of obstacles. It is technically incorrect to talk about bat “radar”, since they do not use radio waves. It is sonar. But the underlying mathematical theories of radar and sonar are very similar; and much of our scientific understanding of the details of what bats are doing has come from applying radar theory to them. The American zoologist Donald Griffin, who was largely responsible for the discovery of sonar in bats, coined the term “echolocation” to cover both sonar and radar, whether used by animals or by human.

　　如上的内容，让我们了解到我们的祖先可能曾经也是在黑夜里寻找食物的。同时，海里的鱼也看不清东西。看不清的时候，都是通过面部感觉来定位的。这段内容经过适当的整合之后，可以用于口语第二部分的“见过的有趣动物”的话题。我们可以讲这个有趣的动物是蝙蝠，也可以讲这个有趣的动物是鱼类。

　　Describe an animal that you have ever seen

　　You should say:

　　What it is

　　Where you saw it

　　What happened

　　And explain how you felt about it

　　最后，给大家奉上几个关于bat的习语，不妨在生活中多用几次!

　　1. Off the bat

　　这个短语是什么意思?干掉蝙蝠?NO，事实上，bat是一个多义词。除了指“蝙蝠”的意思外，还可以表示“球棒”。当我们看到这个短语时，有没有一种马上把撂下球棒的感觉。这个短语的意思就是“立刻，马上”。

　　2. Do sth. off one’s own bat

　　通过上面的off the bat我们知道是“立刻，马上”的意思，那么这个短语就挺好理解。某人立马做自己的事情，所以这个短语的意思是“某人自觉做某事”。

　　3. Go to bat for sb.

　　Bat表示“球棒”的意思，那么这个短语的意思是“走过去把球棒给某人”吗?不!它的实际含义是：支持某人。

　　这是几个简单又使用的习语，希望大家可以学会活学活用!