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About the Great Migrations Reading Passage
This passage explores why and how animals migrate across vast distances, covering wildebeest in the Serengeti, Arctic terns, monarch butterflies, and humpback whales. It examines what triggers migration, what keeps animals on course, and how GPS and satellite tags have changed scientists' ability to track journeys in real time. The Cambridge source for this passage is a well-known Academic Reading text that appears in Cambridge IELTS practice materials.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on the passage below.
The passage contains three question types: True/False/Not Given (Questions 1–7), matching sentence endings (Questions 8–11), and sentence completion (Questions 12–13).
Great Migrations : Full Reading Passage
Paragraph A
Migration is the regular seasonal movement, often along well-established routes, of animals from one place to another. It is found in all major animal groups, including birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and crustaceans. The trigger for migration may be local climate change, local availability of food, the season of the year, or for mating reasons. To be counted as a true migration rather than a local, irregular movement called dispersal or irruption, the movement of the animals should be an annual or seasonal occurrence, such as the annual migration of the wildebeest in the Serengeti ecosystem following the annual pattern of rainfall and grass growth.
Paragraph B
In some species, all individuals migrate. In others, only part of the population migrates; those that live at higher latitudes in the summer, for example, may migrate, while those living at lower latitudes may not. In some species, the direction of migration may differ between males and females, adults and young, or between populations. Migrating animals use a variety of cues to find their way. Many birds, for example, navigate by the stars or by the Earth's magnetic field. They may also use the position of the sun or visual landmarks. Some species are believed to use smell and sound to supplement these methods of navigation.
Paragraph C
The Arctic tern makes the longest annual migration of any animal. It breeds in the Arctic during the northern summer, then flies south to spend the southern summer in the waters around Antarctica before returning north. This round trip covers approximately 70,900 kilometres. The bar-tailed godwit makes the longest non-stop migration of any known animal, a continuous flight from Alaska to New Zealand covering about 11,000 kilometres without resting or feeding. Like the godwit, other species save energy during long migrations by flying in formation, allowing trailing birds to benefit from the updraft created by those in front. Studies of resting metabolic rates in migratory birds have found that many species substantially reduce organ size before a migration to reduce the weight they must carry, and rebuild them once at the other end.
Paragraph D
Some of the most spectacular migrations are undertaken by marine animals. The humpback whale travels from feeding grounds near the poles to tropical breeding grounds thousands of kilometres away, among the longest migrations of any mammal. Leatherback sea turtles also make enormous oceanic crossings, travelling from breeding beaches in the tropics to feeding areas in cold, productive waters. The European eel begins its life in the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean and then travels to European rivers and coasts, where it matures. After several years, it migrates back to the Sargasso Sea to breed and then die. Salmon are perhaps the most famous of all migratory fish; born in freshwater, they migrate to the sea as young fish and, years later, return to their birthplace in freshwater to spawn.
Paragraph E
Insect migrations are also remarkably complex. The monarch butterfly of North America makes a spectacular southward journey each autumn. Millions of butterflies leave their summer breeding grounds in southern Canada and the northern United States. They gather in roosts, which grow larger as the butterflies combine into a common south-west direction. Eventually, they reach specific forests in the mountains of central Mexico, where they spend the winter. This migration is particularly remarkable because the butterflies returning to Mexico in the autumn are the great-grandchildren of those that left Mexico the previous spring. No individual butterfly makes the round trip, yet the population as a whole maintains a cycle of migration across generations.
Paragraph F
Scientists have made enormous progress in understanding migration in recent decades, largely thanks to new tracking technologies. Until the 1990s, researchers were limited to ringing or tagging animals and waiting for a tagged individual to be recovered. Modern geolocators and GPS tags now allow researchers to track the precise movements of individual animals in real time. Satellite tracking has been particularly transformative, enabling researchers to follow long-distance migrations across oceans and over terrain that no human observer could cover. Miniaturisation has extended these methods to smaller and smaller animals: geolocators light enough to attach to small songbirds now reveal migration routes that were completely unknown a decade ago.
Paragraph G
Tracking data has also exposed the threats that migratory animals face along their routes. Many migratory species are in decline, and migration itself may make them especially vulnerable to human pressures. Migratory animals depend on habitat at both ends of their journeys and at stopping points along the way. When habitat at any point along the route is destroyed or degraded, the entire migration can be put at risk. Hunting during migration is another major threat. Some species face very high levels of illegal hunting along their flyways. Climate change is an additional pressure. As temperatures shift, the timing of food availability changes, but the cues that animals use to trigger migration (principally day length) do not change at the same rate, creating a mismatch between when an animal arrives and when food is available. Understanding migration is therefore not only a matter of scientific curiosity, but it is urgent conservation work.
Great Migrations Reading Questions and Answers
Questions 1–7: True/False/Not Given
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage? Write:
- TRUE — if the statement agrees with the information
- FALSE — if the statement contradicts the information
- NOT GIVEN — if there is no information on this in the passage
1.Animal migration is defined as a journey that an animal makes more than once in its lifetime.
2. Scientists have always been able to track the migration of small animals accurately.
3. Most migratory animals return to the same specific location every year.
4. Monarch butterflies are known to travel thousands of kilometres during migration.
5. All migrating animals use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate.
6. Some species of birds were found to enjoy the migratory journey.
7. Satellite tracking has improved our understanding of previously unstudied migration routes.
Questions 8–11: Matching Sentence Endings
Match each sentence beginning (8–11) with the correct ending (A–F). Write the correct letter, A–F.
Sentence beginnings:
8. The wildebeest migration in the Serengeti …
9. Humpback whales travel long distances …
10. GPS data collected from Arctic terns showed …
11. Scientists now attach electronic tags to animals …
Sentence endings:
- A. that the birds cover far greater distances than previously estimated.
- B. that migration routes are identical across generations of the same species.
- C. in order to study feeding patterns in polar regions.
- D. involves more than one million animals crossing the same river each year.
- E. to record data that would be impossible to gather by direct observation alone.
- F. in order to reach warmer breeding and feeding waters.
Questions 12–13: Sentence Completion
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.
12. Monarch butterflies fly to Mexico each year, where they gather in forests for the __________ season.
13. One reason many species undertake long migrations is the need to find adequate __________.
