Group 2

Passage 11

北京卷 C

Life in the Clear

Transparent animals let light pass through their bodies the same way light passes through a window. These animals typically live between the surface of the ocean and a depth of about 3,300 feet—as far as most light can reach. Most of them are extremely delicate and can be damaged by a simple touch. Sonke Johnson, a scientist in biology, says, “These animals live through their life alone. They never touch anything unless they’re eating it, or unless something is eating them.”

And they are as clear as glass. How does an animal become see-through? It’s trickier than you might think.

The objects around you are visible because they interact with light. Light typically travels in a straight line. But some materials slow and scatter （散射） light, bouncing it away from its original path. Others absorb light, stopping it dead in its tracks. Both scattering and absorption make an object look different from other objects around it, so you can see it easily.

But a transparent object doesn’t absorb or scatter light, at least not very much. Light can pass through it without bending or stopping. That means a transparent object doesn’t look very different from the surrounding air or water. You don’t see it—you see the things behind it.

To become transparent, an animal needs to keep its body from absorbing or scattering light. Living materials can stop light because they contain pigments （色素） that absorb specific colors of light. But a transparent animal doesn’t have pigments, so its tissues won’t absorb light. According to Johnson, avoiding absorption is actually easy. The real challenge is preventing light from scattering.

Animals are built of many different materials—skin, fat, and more—and light moves through each at a different speed. Every time light moves into a material with a new speed, it bends and scatters. Transparent animals use different tricks to fight scattering. Some animals are simply very small or extremely flat. Without much tissue to scatter light, it is easier to be see-through. Others build a large, clear mass of non-living jelly-like （果冻状的） material and spread themselves over it.

Larger transparent animals have the biggest challenge, because they have to make all the different tissues in their bodies slow down light exactly as much as water does. They need to look uniform. But how they’re doing it is still unknown. One thing is clear: for these larger animals, staying transparent is an active process. When they die, they turn a non-transparent milky white.

1. According to Paragraph 1, transparent animals______.

A. stay in groups

B. can be easily damaged

C. appear only in deep ocean

D. are beautiful creatures

2. The underlined word “dead” in Paragraph 3 means______.

A. silently

B. gradually

C. regularly

D. completely

3. One way for an animal to become transparent is to______.

A. change the direction of light travel

B. gather materials to scatter light

C. avoid the absorption of light

D. grow bigger to stop light

4. The last paragraph tells us that larger transparent animals______.

A. move more slowly in deep water

B. stay see-through even after death

C. produce more tissues for their survival

D. take effective action to reduce light spreading