영어2 비상 홍민표 3과 변형문제 Our Blue Planet

Ever since the earliest life form first appeared on ____ between three and four billion years ago, organisms have developed into a variety of life forms, from tiny bacteria and mushrooms to apple trees and humans.

While most species have gone extinct, the survivors have been ____ to successfully adapt themselves to their surroundings.

As of 2016, scientists estimate that approximately one ____ species exist today, out of which only 1.6 million are documented.

A glance at some remarkable species that have evolved their own course of survival and adaptation may put human life into perspective, ____ us to ask what our place is in the natural world.

Imagine ____ secretly entering your body and controlling your behavior, turning you into one of those zombies from science fiction movies.

____ that sound creepy?

That's exactly how a parasitic fungus species called the “zombie ant fungus,” inhabiting tropical forests around the world, ____ ant colonies.

What happens is that when spores from the fungus land on an ant searching for food in the ____, it infects the ant, hijacks its central nervous system, and controls its brain with a special chemical.

The victim doesn't act like an ant but like a zombie: it stops searching for food for ____ colony, and instead climbs up a tree and holds onto a leaf or a branch, where it is finally killed by the fungus.

Soon, a stalk of spores grows out of the back of the ant's head,from which more spores can ____ more ants under the tree, a cruel but very effective way of expanding the fungus' territory.

While the zombie ant fungi reproduce by enslaving poor ants, an invertebrate species called the tardigrades is extremely difficult to kill, earning the title, “the toughest animal” in the ____.

Their main ____ is wet areas, such as tropical rain forests, the freezing waters of the Arctic Ocean or even your garden.

They are as small as the period at the end of every sentence ____ write.

Despite their small size, however, they employ a series of remarkable ____ tactics.

Putting them in boiling alcohol or into the ____ cold of -272°C won't kill them.

Hunger or thirst is not a word in their dictionary: they can ____ without food or water for decades.

The vacuum of outer ____ can't stop them either; they were sent to space in 2007 and were found to have survived exposure to vacuum and deadly solar radiation for ten full days.

Many things are still unknown about their survival tactics, but one trick they employ to fight dry seasons is ____ well documented.

They rely on “cryptobiosis,” ____ is when they don't die but go into a state where their metabolism decreases to 0.01% of normal activity.

They do this by ____ up and drying out their body.

They can remain in this dehydrated ____ for decades.

They avoid going completely dry with the help of some protectants in their body mass, which prevent the main components of their cells, including their DNA, from ____ destroyed.

____ exposed to water, they rehydrate and reawaken.

Their ability to cope with extreme heat and cold, ____, and pressure is still under investigation.

The wonders of nature ____ not only in the animal kingdom but also in the world of plants.

One ____ plant is the floating bladderwort, which inhabits every continent except Antarctica.

It is a plant with no true leaves or roots but displays beautiful ____ flowers.

Bladderworts float freely on the surface of lakes or ponds ____ rooted connections to the soil.

They grow in ____ that lack dissolved minerals.

What is needed is something to supplement their diet, and thus they feed on small creatures in ponds ____ water fleas.

With their sophisticated trapping mechanism, underwater seed-like bladders suck in prey in the blink of an ____.

This carnivorous ____ uses a vacuum-driven suction trap.

____ structures compose the trap: the walls and the trap door.

When the walls pump out water while the trap door is locked, the walls ____ a partial vacuum inside, storing potential mechanical energy like a spring.

At the bottom of the door, trigger hairs act like a lever that ____ the external water from rushing in.

The hairs are very sensitive, and a slight touch by a nearby prey ____ them, unlocking the door and expanding the walls, which causes the water surrounding the prey to be sucked into the bladder.

It only takes a thousandth of a second for a water flea to touch the ____ and be sucked in.

Many of us ____ it for granted that only humans farm food.

However, a recently discovered deep-sea crab species called the ____ challenges that notion.

____ crabs live 2,000 meters below the surface of the ocean, deep down on sulfur-rich thermal vents that spew water as hot as 380°C.

In such harsh environments, they survive by growing ____ on their hairy claws, which constitute their main food source.

There is no light ____ there, so photosynthesis is impossible.

Instead, the bacteria rely on what's known as chemosynthesis, using oxygen from the surrounding water and the ____ or sulfide from the vents.

The crabs often wave their hairy claws near the vents, allowing the bacteria on the hair to have better access to oxygen, methane, or sulfide to grow better, which is ____ a cool way of farming in the deep.

Despite the relatively recent appearance of modern humans on ____, we are led to believe that we “dominate” the natural world and that we are the “superior” life form.

A closer look at microorganisms, however, demonstrates that plants and animals have adapted to their environments ____ better than we have and in ways that we cannot even imagine.

It is true that we ____ done well to change our environment so that it is more suitable to us, but a study of other life forms leads us to question why we must always change our environment instead of adapting to it the way that other successful life forms have.

Perhaps we need a dose of humility and a ____ in perspective.

Maybe we simply are ____ the masters of this world.