新編大學(xué)英語(yǔ)第一冊(cè)u(píng)nit10 Text B: Should the Navy Draft Dolphins?

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UNIT 10 AFTER-CLASS READING 1; New College English (I)

Should the Navy Draft Dolphins?

1 First they risked their lives guarding American ships in Vietnam. Next, they protected a fleet of Naval boats from mines and enemy frogmen in the Persian Gulf. Now, they may guard submarines armed with nuclear weapons in Washington's Puget Sound.

2 Who are they? Dolphins. The Navy plans to recruit 16 of them as underwater watchdogs. The plan has set off a storm of controversy.

3 The Navy recognizes that the dolphins are highly intelligent. They say dolphins are easy to train and important in protecting against surprise attacks by enemy submarines.

4 But animal rights groups and dolphin trainers protest. They charge that it's wrong to recruit the animals in the military.

5 It's immoral for people to use animals in their own wars, says Mitchell Fox, of the Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS).

6 PAWS is one of 15 animal rights groups who have joined together to take the Navy to court. The groups charge that the Navy's plan violates federal laws that protect animals from being mistreated.

7 For instance, says Fox, the Navy plans to use Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphins captured in the Gulf of Mexico's warm water. Putting them into Puget Sound's icy cold water could kill them, he says. One dolphin died suddenly just 11 days after arriving at the Navy's submarine base in Washington.

8 But the Navy says they take very good care of their dolphins. "It would be foolish to jeopardize them, mistreat them, or put them in an unsafe area," says Navy spokesman Lt. James Wood. "It would just be wasting our money and effort." In the past four years, he says, the Navy has spent $32 million training marine mammals. 9 If the dolphins don't like the training, they can easily swim away, Lt. Wood points out. In May 1988, Science magazine reports, five dolphins had a chance to swim free when someone cut the nets at a Navy training center in San Diego. But they stayed close by. When trainers returned in the morning, the highly trained dolphins swam back in.

10 Much of the criticism of the program stems from the fact that we are very fond of dolphins, says Thomas Lapuzza, spokesman at the Navy's dolphin training center in San Diego. "Dolphins are cute," he told the New York Times. "They are lovable. People have an emotional attachment to them. I wish we were able to use cows. It would probably be a lot easier for us."

11 But cows can't do the job.

12 Dolphin sonar (tracking by sound) works even better than man-made tracking devices, the Navy claims. With their eyes closed, dolphins can locate a vitamin pill on the bottom of a tank.

13 Dolphins find things by first making a series of clicking and whistling sounds. Then, by listening to the echoes made when the sounds reflect from an object, they determine its position. This system is called echo-location.

14 The swimming sonar comes cheap. All dolphins ask for is 20 pounds of fish a day and a few pats on the nose. For the Navy, that's a real bargain. To actually make a system as good as the dolphins would be much more expensive, says Lt. Wood.

15 But critics wonder if dolphins can be trusted to guard nuclear weapons. Fox worries, for instance, that the animals may decide to take surprise breaks from their duties. "You only have control over them when they are hungry," he says. "Once they are full they may start being a little too playful."

16 Lt. Wood reports that the animals obey orders well. And he stands by his claim that we need dolphins to protect the country.