SET C
SECTION - A: READING (10 marks)
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the mean
2. (a)
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11
1
tained
I Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow
Australia's platypus is one of the world's most baffling creatures. It swim like a
ver. Lays eggs like a lizard but suckles its young, and uses electricity to find its food
brown guard hairs protecting a fine silvery-soft undercoat. Fler bill looks like a duck
even produces venom. The fur of female platypus is luxuriously thick with dense,
but there the resemblance stops. It is soft as chamois leather and covered with rows
tiny pores that extend to her forehead -- more like an overgrown muzzle than a book
beyond the claw tips. A platypus swims with these paddle-like front legs and steers
Stout claws arm all four webbed feet, and on her front feet the webbing extends
with its hind legs and tail. When it digs a burrow, its webbing folds underneath towards
the wrist, exposing the foreclaws.
Even today, there are mysteries surrounding the platypus. Naturally secretive, the ani-
mals sleep during the day in narrow, inaccessible tunnels up to 30 metres long in the
river bank. Because their nesting habits are so difficult to study, no one knows how
take to hatch, how often the young suickle, how fast they
grow or their age at weaning. Studying the ones in captivity is no solution, as their
survival record is woeful.
3.
4
Scientists have discovered that the platypus 's bill is covered with rows of
electroreceptors - specialized nerve endings extremely sensitive to miniscule amounts
of electricity. “A typical freshwater stream contains many electrical fields." explains
Physiologist Uwe Proske of Monash University in Melbourne. The nerve ending in the
bill can detect these fields. Providing the platypus with information about the presence
of obstacles in their underwater world. The receptors are particularly sensitive to rap-
idly changing fields.
1.1
Answer the following questions:
a) Why has Australia's platypus baffled many people?
b) Why do platypus swim easily?
c) How does the platypus know about the obstacles on its way?
1.2
Choose the most suitable synonym from the options given
2x1=2
a) LUXURIOUS
i) poor
ii) austere
iii) expensive iv) spartan
b)OBSTACLES
i) advantage ii)benefit iii)assistance iv)hardship
1.3Find one word in the passage which mean
a)The state or fact of cintinuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident,or deal,or difficult circumstances.(para3)
b)Quick to dect or respond to slight changes, signals, or influences.(para4).
Answers
Answer:
1.1
1a Australia's platypus is one of the world's most baffling creatures. It swim like a
ver. Lays eggs like a lizard but suckles its young, and uses electricity to find its food
brown guard hairs protecting a fine silvery-soft undercoat. Fler bill looks like a duck
even produces venom.
1b A platypus swims with these paddle-like front legs and steers
Stout claws arm all four webbed feet, and on her front feet the webbing extends
with its hind legs and tail. When it digs a burrow, its webbing folds underneath towards
the wrist, exposing the foreclaws.
1 c is Scientists have discovered that the platypus 's bill is covered with rows of
electroreceptors - specialized nerve endings extremely sensitive to miniscule amounts
of electricity. “A typical freshwater stream contains many electrical fields." explains
Physiologist Uwe Proske of Monash University in Melbourne. The nerve ending in the
bill can detect these fields. Providing the platypus with information about the presence
of obstacles in their underwater world
1.2
1 iii expensive
2 iv hardship
muzzle
sensitive