There are world records at the Olympic Games. But what are the word records in animal kingdom?

    The largest and heaviest animal on earth is the blue whale. It weighs between 110 and 120 tons. Its heart is the size of a Mini Cooper, It's got the biggest mouth in the world as well. About 100 people can fit inside it. But it doesn't eat people! In fact, the biggest thing it can eat is the size of an apple.

The giraffe is smaller than the blue whale but it is also a record breaker. It's the tallest living land animal. It's got the longest neck-about 2 metres long, and it's got the longest legs-about 1.8 metres long. Drinking is difficult, but eating from the top of trees is easy! And its tongue is 50 c m long!

    The most dangerous animal in the world isn't a lion or a bear. It's an insect! The mosquitoes (蚊子) that carry malaria kill over 1 million people a year. After that, the most dangerous animal is the venomous snake. They kill 50,000 to 125,000 people a year.

     A. the mosquito           B. the giraffe                C. the blue whale

B

    According to the World Health Organization (WHO), environmental pollution kills 1.7 million children under the age of five every year worldwide. The WHO warns that child deaths will increase greatly if pollution continues to worsen. Of all the environmental problems, air pollution is being called the most dangerous.

    Most of these deaths take place in developing countries. However, WHO environment and health chief Maria Neira tells that air pollution is a leveler between rich and poor. Everybody, she says, needs to breathe.

    “You can be a very rich child, your parents very rich, but living in a place, in a city, which is very polluted. Then there is very little you can do because we all need to breathe. Air pollution is everywhere.”

    Maria Neira says one of the most important ways to reduce air pollution is to produce cleaner fuels for cooking and heating.

    “Almost half of the world population is using dirty fuels for cooking, heating, and lighting at home. And, this is affecting very much mothers who are staying and cooking at home, but the children who are around mothers—they are exposed as well.”

    Cleaning up how the world cooks, heats and lights homes and other buildings is a big-picture goal.

    But what can every one of us do to limit our family to air pollution?

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has the following suggestions:

    ● Avoid walking where there is a high volume of vehicle traffic.

    ● Equip homes with air filters and air conditioning units.

    ● Limit your time outside if you live in an area that issues warnings about air quality.

    ● Wear high-grade, rated face masks tightly to the face when air quality is poor.

    ● If you live or commute in a very polluted area, remove your clothes and wash immediately after entering your house.

    However, the WHO stresses that governments around the world need to take the lead on ensuring that children grow up in a clean environment.

    There is a popular belief that goldfish only have a three-second memory. But a 15-year-old schoolboy from Adelaide has just finished an experiment（实验）to tell us that it is not true. He shows everybody that the goldfish is smarter than we think.

    “I don't believe that they had a three-second memory because animals need their memory, so they build up over time a knowledge of where the food is,” said Roy Stokes, a student at the Australian Science and Mathematics School.

    He did the experiment in small tank（鱼缸）of goldfish. “I decided to get a bit of red Logo and just feed them next to that. Every day I'd put it in and spread food around it.” He said.

    “At first they were a bit scared of it, but by the end of the three weeks, they were actually almost coming before I put the food in.”

    After leaving the fish alone for a week, Rory placed the red Logo block in the tank again.

    “They remembered perfectly well,” he said.

    “They actually had a time faster than the average of the three feeds before I left.”

    The goldfish showed that not only could they store information, they also had the ability to get it back as a later date.

    Culum Brown, a research fellow at Sydney's Macquarie University, has studied fish behavior for more than ten years.

    He says his studies of Australian native fish show fish were intelligent creatures that know how to avoid enemies and catch food like any other animal.

    “The thing that I really liked about Rory's experiment is he not only got that classical conditioning going but the fact that he could get them next just to that specific coloured market. I thought it was really good.” He said.

    Smog(雾霾) is a big problem in many Chinese cities. But it seems that besides wearing a mask, few of us know what has caused the smog and what to do to beat it. Chai Jing, a former news hostess with China Central Television, discussed the questions in her documentary Under the Dome.

    The 103 - minute film was published on major Chinese video - sharing websites on Feb 28. In the film, Chai visits polluted places and talks to officials and scientists. She comes to the conclusion that burning too much coal and oil are the main causes of PM2.5 and smog.

    To make things worse, according to Chai, the coal and oil we are burning is of poor quality and don't meet the standards for environmental protection. Therefore they have produced more harmful gas to pollute the air.

    To solve the problem, Chai suggests that we should clean our coal and oil or replace them with cleaner energy such as natural gas. In her film, Chai also pointed out that ordinary people can do something to help control smog too. For example, we live a greener life by using more public traffic. Or if we see things that could harm the environment, we can try to stop it. In one scene from the film, Chai sees a dirt mound in a building site exposed in the air, and asks the person in charge to cover it. When she sees a restaurant cooking without any suitable filter facilities, she calls the hotline 12369. The restaurant installed the filter a week later.

    Chen Jining, the new minister of environmental protection, praised Chai. "This film encourages ordinary people to care about the environment. This is what we need in the future. "

    Why do we like drinking water from plastic bottles? Some people think it is healthy and clean. Others drink bottled water because it's easy—you can carry it around with you. In hot countries, like Greece, we often buy bottles of cold water in summer.

    However, making lots of plastic is not a good idea for many reasons. First of all, we need a lot of oil for plastic products. We usually use oil as a source(资源) of energy. If we reduced the number of bottles we made, we wouldn't need so much oil. Plastic bottles also pollute the environment. If we recycled all our plastic bottles, we wouldn't need so much space for rubbish dumps. But in Greece, we don't recycle much of the plastic we use. In 2006, Greeks recycled only about 10% of plastic waste. The rest became rubbish on land and in rivers and seas.

    So next time you want to throw away a plastic bottle in the litter bin, stop and think. If you recycled it, you would help the environment. But what can you do when there isn't a recycling bin near you? Well, there are lots of useful ways that you can use your bottles again. For example, an empty bottle makes a great piggy bank for your pocket money, and if you cut a bottle in half, you will have a plant pot. Go green! You can make a difference.