英语听力：2013-07-10 《恐龙的战争》3 顽强防御—11

 The number-one concern in life would befeeding the beast. 

 

The land is covered in vast forests offerns, pines, and monkey puzzle trees. Many of these plants have almost nonutritional valuel. 

 

The hardest job in the animal world, thedinosaur world, was not T-Rex’s job. Digesting meat is a piece of cake. It’svery, very simple. Digesting plant fiber¹ is the hardest job in the world. 

 

To gain enough nutrients² to growindestructibly large, Sauroposeidon has to consume huge amounts of vegetation. 

 

They were like walking vacuum cleaners. 

 

If you’ve got 40 or 50 tons of flesh tofeed and you eat low-quality food, you have to put away hundreds of pounds,maybe a ton of this stuff, every day. 

 

When growing is your best defese, gainingweight is serious business. So Sauroposeidon does away with time-consumingtasks like chewing.

 

If you could just swallow that stuff andlet your giant stomach mash³ it up for you, you could move in a lot more foodper unit time and you could get a lot bigger. 

 

Sauroposeidon’s 52 chisel-like teeth areperfectly designed for the job. They can rake leaves and twigs⁴ straight off atree. 

 

They’ve got these big teeth that are justcropping devices. They just bite down on a branch and either take the wholebranch or strip the leaves and needles off and then swallow it down. 

 

To be able to digest this huge volume offood and grow big enough to avoid attack requires a stomach as large as a ton. That’sas big as a swimming pool, and it’s filled with acid so concentrated it candissolve iron. 

 

It had to be able to hold maybe a ton ormore of plant material at a time, and we’re talking about something …

1 fiber   

n.纤维，纤维质

参考例句：

• The basic structural unit of yarn is the fiber.纤维是纱的基本结构单元。
• The material must be free of fiber clumps.这种材料必须无纤维块。

2 nutrients   

n.（食品或化学品）营养物，营养品( nutrient的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a lack of essential nutrients 基本营养的缺乏
• Nutrients are absorbed into the bloodstream. 营养素被吸收进血液。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 mash   

n.麦芽浆，糊状物，土豆泥；v.把…捣成糊状，挑逗，调情

参考例句：

• He beat the potato into a mash before eating it.他把马铃薯捣烂后再吃。
• Whiskey,originating in Scotland,is distilled from a mash of grains.威士忌源于苏格兰，是从一种大麦芽提纯出来的。

4 twigs   

细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Some birds build nests of twigs. 一些鸟用树枝筑巢。
• Willow twigs are pliable. 柳条很软。