The emperor penguin is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and lives in Antarctica. The male and female are similar in size, reaching 122 cm in heig
ht and weighing anywhere from 22 to 45 kg. The back and head are black, contrasting sharply with the pale-yellow breast and bright-yellow ears. Like all penguins, it is flightless, with a streamlined body and their wings stiffen and flatten into flippers(鳍状肢) for a marine habitat.
Its diet consists primarily of fish, but can also include animals with hard shells. In hunting, the species can remain underwater up to 18 minutes, diving to a depth of 535 m. Its unusually structured hemoglobin(血红蛋白)a
llows it to function at low oxygen levels.
The emperor penguin is perhaps best known for the journeys adults make each year in order to mate and to feed their babies. The only penguin species that breeds(繁殖) during the Antarctic winter, it goes on a long journey of 50-120 km over the ice to breeding areas which may include thousands of individuals. The female lays a single egg, which is incubated(孵化)by the male while the female returns to the sea to feed; parents take turns searching for food at sea and caring for their chick. They both care for the chick until it is able to enter the water to find food on its own. During the process of incubation, the male can lose up to 1/3 to 1/2 of his body weight. One of the coolest things about the male is that if the chick comes out its egg before the female returns, the male can actually produce a special liquid to feed the chick. He can only do this for a short time. If the female doesn’t return, he must leave the chick to go on with his own life. The emperor penguin can typically live for 20 years in the wild, although observat
ions suggest that some individual may live to 50 years of age.
小题1:We can learn from paragraph 1 that ____.
A．the emperor penguin is the world’s largest kind of penguin
B．the emperor penguin has pale-yellow ears
C．the male and female emperor penguins are of different sizes
D．the emperor penguin lives in the most northern area on the Earth小题2:The emperor penguin can stay underwater for a long time mainly because of its ____.
A．strong wings
B．streamlined body
C．structured hemoglobin
D．special diet小题3:The emperor penguin differs fr
om other penguin species in that ____.
A．it gives birth in the Antarctic winter
B．it feeds mainly on fish
C．the male won’t search for food on his own
D．it can only live for a short time小题4:According to the passage, ____.
A．the egg of the emperor penguin is mainly incubated by the female
B．many emperor penguins will stay together to breed
C．the male emperor penguin will give up his own life to feed the chick
D．the female emperor penguin will leave the chick forever once it lays an egg
