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Reading Tests
Reading Test 1 SECTION 1 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Shading
Passage 1 below.
Ants Could Teach Ants A The ants are tiny and usually nest between rocks in the south coast of England.
Transformed into research subjects at the University of Bristol, they raced along a
tabletop foraging for food - and then, remarkably, returned to guide others. Time and
again, followers trailed behind leaders, darting this way and that along the route,
presumably to memorise landmarks. Once a follower got its bearings, it tapped the leader
with its antennae, prompting the lesson to literally proceed to the next step. The ants were
only looking for food, but the researchers said the careful way the leaders led followers,
thereby turning them into leaders in their own right, marked the Temnothorax albipennis
ant as the very first example of a non-human animal exhibiting teaching behaviour.
B "Tandem running is an example of teaching, to our knowledge the first in a non-human
animal, that involves bidirectional feedback between teacher and pupil” remarks Nigel
Franks, professor of animal behaviour and ecology, whose paper on the ant educators
was published last week in the journal Nature.
C No sooner was the paper published, of course, than another educator questioned it.
Marc Hauser, a psychologist and biologist and one of the scientists who came up with the
definition of teaching, said it was unclear whether the ants had learned a new skill or
merely acquired new information.
D Later, Franks took a further study and found that there were even races between
leaders. With the guidance of leaders, ants could find food faster. But the help comes at
