Some animals can easily find their way home after a long journey. How do they make it? Scientific research shows that they are born with certain unusual abilities for direction.

A certain kind of ants, for example, can count their steps to avoid getting lost. They can go as far as 110 metres and bring food home. These ants live in the open desert (沙漠), so they have nothing to guide them along the way. It’s like someone walking six kilometres through a dark forest.

Some fish have an unbelievable sense of smell. They can smell even a single drop of their home water in a large sea area. Some sea birds have a similar ability. They are able to make a smell map of their flying area.

Some animals can sense the earth’s magnetic field (磁场), while humans can’t. This magnetic field guides a certain kind of fish when they swim a long way to a place and then back. How can this kind of fish do that? It is still a mystery. Scientists have no good answers yet.

However, animals with such unusual abilities still have difficulty dealing with environmental changes caused by human activities. For example, many birds depend on stars for direction, but they get lost easily at night when city lights are kept on all night. To solve this problem, we can simply turn off some lights at night. Clearly, one small act of humans may mean a lot to animals.

Once there were many thousands of Gourma Desert(沙漠)elephants in Mali, a country in West Africa. Now, there are fewer than four hundred.

Why did the number of the elephants drop so quickly? On the one hand, the elephants' main lake, their only water source(来源), dried up. On the other hand, the land which the elephants lived on was overused by humans.

To protect the elephants’ living environment, the Mali Elephant Project (MEP) was started in 2007.MEP met with local people and helped them make rules of using and water. As a result, the situation became better and there was more food, forest and grassland.

However, from 2012 to 2016 poaching(偷猎)and illegal trade in the elephants increased rapidly. Eighty-three elephants were lost in 2015 alone, and another fifty-one elephant were killed in 2016."If this situation goes on, all the Gourma elephants will be killed by 2020," said a member of MEP.

Luckily, the voice of MEP was heard. More organizations (组织) have joined together to educate the local people that trading elephants is against the law. Elephant poaching has dropped to a very low level. The local people have learned to live peacefully with the elephants, one of the wildlife treasures in the world.

2019 is the Year of the Pig. Do you know what pigs are really like? People sometimes say, "You are as stupid (愚蠢) as a pig." But pigs are not stupid at all. 【小题1】 They can remember things well and tell different shapes apart. Many experts think pigs are easier to train than dogs or cats.

People in ancient China really liked pigs. 【小题2】 If someone had a round and fat face, he or she was thought to be lucky. People also believed the animal had to do with wealth (财富). 【小题3】 Most children had piggy banks that they could use to save money.

People born in the Year of the Pig are said to be fun, outgoing and understanding. They care about others too much and forget bad things quickly.

【小题4】 In the story The Three Little Pigs, a mother pig sends her three children to live on their own. Each of them builds a house with different materials. When the bad wolf comes, each pig hides in his own house. Whose house will survive (幸存)? Another popular pig is McDull. He is a little pink pig who lives in Hong Kong. He is not smart, but he works hard. One of his simple wishes is to make his mother happy. He also wants to go to the Maldives and have a turkey dinner for Christmas.