Newspaper-style reports THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF DOLPHINS Here’s a conversation worth talking about: A mother dolphin chats with her baby... over the telephone! The special call was made in an aquarium in Hawaii, where the mother and her two-year-old calf swam. in separate tanks connected by a special underwater audio link. The two dolphins began squawking and chirping to each other ~ distinctive dolphin chatter. w A Pa 10 Cracking the Code “Jt seemed clear that they knew who they were talking with,” says Don White, whose Project Delphis ran the experiment. “Information was passing back and forth pretty quickly.” But what were they saying? That’s what scientists are trying to find out by studying wild and captive dolphins all over the world to decipher their secret language. They haven’t completely cracked the code yet, but they’re 25 listening... and learning. 4 tf a 2 8 Word accomplish captive distinctive mammalsBia Chatty Mammals In many ways, you are just like the more than 30 species of dolphins that swim in the world’s oceans and rivers. Dolphins are mammals, like 30 you are, and must swim to the surface to breathe air. Just as you might, they team up in pods, or groups, to accomplish tasks. And they’re smart. They also talk to each other. Starting from birth, dolphins squawk, whistle, click and 35 squeak. “Sometimes one dolphin will vocalise and then another will seem to answer,” says Sara Waller, who studies bottlenose dolphins off the California coast. “And sometimes members of a pod vocalise in different patterns 40 at the same time, much like many people chattering at a party.” From www.kids.nationalgeographic.com a way to transfer sound between two places understand something that is written in code make a soundresect Comprehension @ Read and answer the questions. 1 Find a sentence in the newspaper report that tells us the dolphins were talking to each other. 2 How many species of dolphins are there? 3 Find the parts of the report that tell us how dolphins are like humans. What do you think? Explain why the report has the headline ‘The Secret Language of Dolphins’. Do you think this story belongs on the front page of a newspaper? If not, where? The newspaper report uses both formal and informal (chatty) language. Why do. you think it uses these different styles?eset] Newspaper-style reports (continued) TIGERS CUDDLE WITH APES Tigers don’t normally snuggle with orangutans. The big cats are meat-eaters, after all. But when Demis and Manis the tiger cubs were rejected by their mother, zookeepers 5 at Taman Safari Zoo* thought they might like the company of two other orphan siblings: Nia and Irma the orangutans. f ‘a Cloud instincts rejected siblings snuggle “The first time I put them together, they just played,” says zookeeper Sri Suwarni. The four 10 shared toys, wrestled, and took naps together. Then one morning, Nia and Irma began hugging Demis the tiger, and he lick-kissed them back! “That’s when I knew they were true friends,” Suwarni says. 1s As the tigers grew, their natural instincts started showing, so Suwarni moved them into a separate exhibit. “Taman Safari Zoo is in Indonesia. ‘Text by Aline Alexander Newman. From www.kids.nationalgeographic.comComprehension re Ct) Imagine you are designing a new magazine. What © Which two sentences below are true? 1 Tigers are meat-eaters. 2 The tiger cubs were not playful when headline would you they first met the orangutans. put on the front of 3 The tigers did not stay with the orangutans the first issue that forever. would persuade people to buy it? oO What do you think? Use phrases from the newspaper report to help with your answers. 1. Why did the zookeepers put the tigers with the orangutans? 2 How do we know the tiger cubs and the orangutans were friends? 3 Why was this behaviour unusual? 4 Newspapers often contain both fact and opinion. Which parts of the newspaper report are fact and which are opinion? eo What about you? Why do you think newspapers often mix fact and opinion?