Passage 2
How much pain do animals feel? This is a question which has caused endless controversy.
Opponents of big game shooting, for example, arouse our pity by describing tile agonies of a
badlywounded beast that has crawled into a comer to die. In countries where the fox, the hare
and the deer are hunted, animallovers paint harrowing pictures of the pursued animal suffering
not only the physical distress of the chase but the mental anguish of anticipated death.
The usual answer to these criticisms is that animals do not suffer in the
same way, or to the same extent, as we de. Man was created with a delicate nervous system
and has never lost his acute sensitiveness to pain; animals, on the other hand, had less sensitive
systems to begin with and in the course of millions of years, have developed a capacity of ignoring
injuries and disorders which human beings would find intolerable. For example, a dog will continue
to play with a ball even after a serious injury to his foot; he may be unable to run without limping,
but he will go on trying long after a human child would have had to stop because of the pain. We
are told, moreover, that even when animals appear to us to be suffering acutely, this is not so;
what seems to us to be agonized contortions caused by pain are in fact no more than muscular
contractions over which they have no control. These arguments are unsatisfactory because
something about which we know a great deal is being compared with something we can only
conjecture. We know what we feel; we have no means of knowing what animals feet. Some
creatures with a less delicate nervous system than ours may be incapable of feeling pain to the
same extent as we do: that as far as we are entitled to do, the most humane attitude, surely, is to
assume that no animals are entirely exempt from physical pain and that we ought, therefore,
wherever possible, to avoid causing suffering even to the least of them.
6. Animal-lovers assume that animals, being hunted, would suffer from ____.
A) a great deal of agony both in body and in spirit
B) mental distress once they are wounded
C) only body pains without feeling sad
D) crawling into the comer to die
7. Supporters of game shooting may argue that animals ______.
A) cannot control their muscular contractions
B) have developed a capacity of feeling no pain
C) are not as acutely sensitive as human beings to injuries
D) can endure all kinds of disorders
8. The author feels sure that _____.
A) animals don’t show suffering to us
B) dogs are more endurable than human children
C) we cannot know what animals feel
D) comparing animals with human beings is not appropriate
9. What is the author’s opinion about animal hunting?
A) We should feel the same as the hunted animals do.
B) We should protect and save all the animals.
C) We shouldn’t cause suffering to them.
D) We should take care of them if we can.
10. This passage seems to ____.
A) argue for something
B) explain something
C) tell a story
D) describe an object
答案详解
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