肩上有“神器”，家鸡更健康

河南新乡县第一中学 戚绍领

Jntroduction

背上了“神器”的家鸡不但状态好，还能让主人时时刻刻跟踪并掌握它们的行踪，这种“神器”究竟是什么？为什么会有这种魔力呢？

体裁 说明文 文章词数 2 2 5 难度指数 ★★★题材 科技 建议用时 5′

Chickens are getting backpacks tokeepthemin good shape.The tiny wearable electronic packs analyse the birds'behaviour,which could reveal if something is up.

The devices contain some parts thatare used torecord the chickens'movement.A calculating program uses data from the sensors to identify when and for how long the chickens perform various activities.Itgives clues abouthealth.

This could help show whether farm birds are being disturbed by parasites（寄生生物）,whichfeed onchicken's blood,says Amy Murillo at the University of California,Riverside,one of the team that developed the wearable tech.

The mite（螨）mainly affects egg-laying hens,which arekept alivemuch longer than those bred for meat.At the moment,farmershaveto carefully check chickensby handand one by one for signs of mites.The technology could make monitoring the birds far less labourintensive.

To train the system to analyse chicken movements,Murillo and her colleagues filmed hens wearing the backpacks,which they called“Fitbits for chickens”.

They then labelled the birds'behaviour accordingly,so that the system couldassociatevarious activitieswithmovement data.Their calculating program can now automatically classify pecking（啄）,preening（整理羽毛）and dust-bathing with over 85 per cent accuracy.

——FromNew Scientist

Reading Check

1.What does the underlined word “This” in paragraph 3 refer to？ （no more than 5 words）

2.What can have an effect on chickens'laying eggs？ （2 words）

3.What is the advantage of the device according to the text？ （no more than 12 words）

4.How could the team associate various activities with movement data？（no more than 8 words）

Language Study

I.Important vocabulary

1.keep sb in good shape 使某人保持良好的状态

2.be used to do 被用于……

3.give clues about 提供关于……的线索

4.feed on 以……为食

5.keep alive 使继续下去；使活着

6.by hand 用手的；手工的

7.associate...with... 把……与……联系起来

Ⅱ.Fill in the passage below with the vocabulary given above.

My cousin Mark is a clever boy.Recently he invented a fitbit which can 1.________keep record of his cows.The invention can keep track of the cows，which 2.________their health and 3_______._the cows 4.________.Amazingly enough，the new invention makes monitoring the cows far less labour-intensive， which used to be done 5_______._.What's more，the invention is able to find out a kind of parasites which mainly 6._______the cow's blood.