full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Kenny Coogan: This weird trick will help you summon an army of worms
Unscramble the Blue Letters
This was it. Over hundreds of thousands of yares, these earthworms elevovd a behavior that helped them escape a top predator. arbenogvoud, they were immune to the moles, which usually stayed subterranean. But then hanmus came along. And, funnily enough, we aren’t even the only ones that take advantage of this behavior. Herring gulls and wood turtles also sometimes drum their feet on the earth to summon womrs. So then why does this behavior persist?
Scientists think it’s beneficial for a prey species to maintain its adaptations against a more frequent predator, even if it makes it more vrunablele to a raerr one. Many insects, for example, use flight to avoid predation. But painted redstarts take advantage of this: they boldly flash their colorful tail and wing feehrtas to elicit this response, then catch the isencts as they try to fly away. It seems the prey species’ response riemnas simply because it’s beneficial most of the time.
Open Cloze
This was it. Over hundreds of thousands of _____, these earthworms _______ a behavior that helped them escape a top predator. ___________, they were immune to the moles, which usually stayed subterranean. But then ______ came along. And, funnily enough, we aren’t even the only ones that take advantage of this behavior. Herring gulls and wood turtles also sometimes drum their feet on the earth to summon _____. So then why does this behavior persist?
Scientists think it’s beneficial for a prey species to maintain its adaptations against a more frequent predator, even if it makes it more __________ to a _____ one. Many insects, for example, use flight to avoid predation. But painted redstarts take advantage of this: they boldly flash their colorful tail and wing ________ to elicit this response, then catch the _______ as they try to fly away. It seems the prey species’ response _______ simply because it’s beneficial most of the time.
Solution
- insects
- years
- vulnerable
- evolved
- aboveground
- remains
- feathers
- worms
- rarer
- humans
Original Text
This was it. Over hundreds of thousands of years, these earthworms evolved a behavior that helped them escape a top predator. Aboveground, they were immune to the moles, which usually stayed subterranean. But then humans came along. And, funnily enough, we aren’t even the only ones that take advantage of this behavior. Herring gulls and wood turtles also sometimes drum their feet on the earth to summon worms. So then why does this behavior persist?
Scientists think it’s beneficial for a prey species to maintain its adaptations against a more frequent predator, even if it makes it more vulnerable to a rarer one. Many insects, for example, use flight to avoid predation. But painted redstarts take advantage of this: they boldly flash their colorful tail and wing feathers to elicit this response, then catch the insects as they try to fly away. It seems the prey species’ response remains simply because it’s beneficial most of the time.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
worm grunting |
3 |
florida panhandle |
2 |
Important Words
- aboveground
- adaptations
- advantage
- avoid
- behavior
- beneficial
- boldly
- catch
- colorful
- drum
- earth
- earthworms
- elicit
- escape
- evolved
- feathers
- feet
- flash
- flight
- fly
- frequent
- funnily
- gulls
- helped
- herring
- humans
- hundreds
- immune
- insects
- maintain
- moles
- painted
- persist
- predation
- predator
- prey
- rarer
- redstarts
- remains
- response
- scientists
- simply
- species
- stayed
- subterranean
- summon
- tail
- thousands
- time
- top
- turtles
- vulnerable
- wing
- wood
- worms
- years