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About the History of the Tortoise Reading Passage
This passage examines how tortoises evolved from sea-going reptiles into land-dwelling creatures and how they eventually spread across continents and remote islands. It discusses the role of continental drift, physical adaptation, and finally the devastating impact of human activity on tortoise populations. The passage is from Cambridge IELTS 9, Academic Test 4, Passage 1.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on the passage below.
The passage contains two question types: True/False/Not Given (Questions 1–7) and Sentence Completion (Questions 8–13).
The History of the Tortoise : Full Reading Passage
Paragraph A
If you go back far enough, everything lived in the sea. At various points in evolutionary history, enterprising individuals within many different animal groups moved out onto the land, sometimes eventually to become so well adapted to terrestrial life that they lost their ability to live in water at all. Sometimes the opposite happened. Various different vertebrate lineages returned to the sea, among them the fish-like ichthyosaurs, the paddle-limbed plesiosaurs, and most successfully of all, the whales and dolphins. On at least one occasion, turtles also returned to the sea after some time on land, where their ancestors had walked on four legs. Their toes became flippers, and their shells became streamlined and rather flat.
Paragraph B
Tortoises, by contrast, stayed on land. Their legs are quite different from turtle flippers, stumpy and elephant-like, designed for walking, not swimming. Their shells, like the shells of all chelonians (the group that includes tortoises and turtles), are extraordinary feats of natural engineering. The shell is an integral part of the skeleton. It is made of about 60 bones, including the spine and shoulder blades. If you ever see a tortoise out of its shell, which you never will, as it cannot be done, it is a very strange sight indeed, like seeing a man without his ribcage.
Paragraph C
Tortoises' shells protect them against most predators, but they have historically been vulnerable to newly arrived predators that they have not co-evolved with. Because island tortoises never needed to protect themselves against large land predators, they never developed the defensive reflexes (drawing in the head or limbs in the face of a threat) that mainland tortoises show. This relative tameness made them easy targets. The giant tortoises of the Galápagos Islands and Aldabra Atoll are the largest surviving tortoises in the world. Giant tortoises were formerly much more widespread across the globe. In former times, there were giant tortoises in Europe, North America, and even Australia. Some of them were truly enormous: an extinct species from India, Colossochelys atlas, was estimated at about 2.5 metres in length and 4 metres in height, and weighed nearly two tons.
Paragraph D
Tortoises are strict vegetarians. This is true of all the modern species and presumably was true of their ancestors as well. Being plant-eating animals is an important part of their lifestyle. A slow-moving animal that had to chase active prey would have to be very different from a tortoise. Their diet also allows them to survive in very barren environments, where food is scarce but plants are still able to grow. Tortoises are well known for their longevity, and this is reflected in the fact that they grow slowly, live long, and have very low metabolic rates. The Aldabra tortoise is among the longest-lived of any animal. Some individuals that are alive today were born long before Charles Darwin visited the Galápagos Islands in 1835.
Paragraph E
The successful dispersal of tortoises around the world is remarkable because they seem to be such slow and inefficient land animals. One answer to this puzzle is that in the past, tortoises may have been more agile than today's species suggests. It is also thought that ancient tortoises could float on water, allowing them to travel enormous distances across oceans. The theory is that they were carried on ocean currents as they drifted between land masses, rather than swimming actively. Studies have shown that tortoises can survive in seawater for many months, surviving on rainwater and eating whatever plant material floats by. Some researchers believe this is how the ancestors of the Galápagos tortoises reached those islands from South America.
Paragraph F
Giant tortoises were once plentiful on many oceanic islands. Most of these populations have now been reduced or wiped out entirely. The Galápagos Islands, which lie about 1,000 kilometres off the coast of Ecuador, were home to 15 subspecies of giant tortoise. Today, three of those subspecies are extinct, and several others are seriously endangered. The islands of the Indian Ocean similarly once supported large tortoise populations, but today only Aldabra Atoll and some small island populations around it still have substantial numbers of wild tortoises. The pattern on these volcanic islands, once thriving populations, now reduced, is the same almost everywhere.
Paragraph G
The main reason for the decline of island tortoises is human activity. Sailors on long sea voyages found giant tortoises easy to capture, since the animals could not move quickly and showed no fear of humans. More importantly, tortoises could be kept alive on ships for months at a time without food or water, providing fresh meat during long voyages. An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 giant tortoises were removed from the Galápagos Islands alone, between the 17th and 19th centuries, by whalers and other sailors. Non-native animals introduced by humans, such as goats, pigs, rats, and dogs, have also caused serious damage to tortoise populations by eating their eggs, young, and food supplies.
The History of the Tortoise Reading Questions and Answers
Questions 1–7 : True/False/Not Given
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage? In boxes 1–7 on your answer sheet, 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.
1.Some animals that moved onto the land eventually lost the ability to live in water.
2. Turtles were the first water animals to move to live on land.
3. The bones of a tortoise's shell include its spine.
4. Tortoises that live on islands have developed strong defensive reflexes against predators.
5. The Colossochelys atlas could swim long distances.
6. Researchers believe that the ancestors of the Galápagos tortoises came from South America.
7. Tortoises were taken onto ships because they were straightforward to keep alive.
Questions 8–13 : Sentence Completion
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A–J, below. Write the correct letter, A–J, in boxes 8–13 on your answer sheet.
Choose NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.
8. Turtles' original habitat was the ………………………
9. Unlike flippers, tortoise ……………………… are built for walking.
10. The tortoise's ……………………… is made up of approximately 60 bones.
11. Tortoises are ……………………… animals, which suits their slow-moving lifestyle.
12. The pattern of declining tortoise populations is found on ……………………… across the world.
13. Giant tortoises were removed from the Galápagos by whalers and other ………………………
