IELTS Reading: Chủ đề sinh vật - Phân tích từ vựng (Phần 2)

Hãy cùng diễn đàn tiếp tục bài đọc về chủ đề sinh vật và phân tích các từ vựng mới nhé.

Sea monsters are the stuff of legend - lurking not just in the depths of the oceans, but also the darker corners of our minds. What is it that draws us to these creatures? (Phần 2)

[...]

The giant squid continued to dominate stories of sea monsters with the famous 1870 novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne. Verne's submarine fantasy is a classic story of a puny man against a gigantic squid.

The monster needed no embellishment - this creature was scary enough, and Verne incorporated as much fact as possible into the story, says Emily Alder from Edinburgh Napier University. "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and another contemporaneous book, Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, both tried to represent the giant squid as they might have been actual zoological animals, much more taking the squid as a biological creature than a mythical creature." It was a given that the squid was vicious and would readily attack humans given the chance.

That myth wasn't busted until 2012, when Edith Widder and her colleagues were the first people to successfully film giant squid under water and see first-hand the true character of the monster of the deep. They realised previous attempts to film squid had failed because the bright lights and noisy thrusters on submersibles had frightened them away.

By quietening down the engines and using bioluminescence to attract it, they managed to see this most extraordinary animal in its natural habitat. It serenely glided into view, its body rippled with metallic colours of bronze and silver. Its huge, intelligent eye watched the submarine warily as it delicately picked at the bait with its beak. It was balletic and mesmeric. It could not have been further from the gnashing, human-destroying creature of myth and literature. In reality this is a gentle giant that is easily scared and pecks at its food.

Another giant squid lies peacefully in the Natural History Museum in London, in the Spirit Room, where it is preserved in a huge glass case. In 2004 it was caught in a fishing net off the Falkland Islands and died at the surface. The crew immediately froze its body and it was sent to be preserved in the museum by the Curator of Molluscs, Jon Ablett. It is called Archie, an affectionate short version of its Latin name Architeuthis dux. It is the longest preserved specimen of a giant squid in the world.

"It really has brought science to life for many people," says Ablett. "Sometimes I feel a bit overshadowed by Archie, most of my work is on slugs and snails but unfortunately most people don't want to talk about that!"

And so today we can watch Archie's graceful relative on film and stare Archie herself (she is a female) eye-to-eye in a museum. But have we finally slain the monster of the deep? Now we know there is nothing to be afraid of, can the Kraken finally be laid to rest? Probably not, says Classen. "We humans are afraid of the strangest things. They don't need to be realistic. There's no indication that enlightenment and scientific progress has banished the monsters from the shadows of our imaginations. We will continue to be afraid of very strange things, including probably sea monsters."

Indeed we are. The Kraken made a fearsome appearance in the blockbuster series Pirates of the Caribbean. It forced Captain Jack Sparrow to face his demons in a terrifying face-to-face encounter. Pirates needed the monstrous Kraken, nothing else would do. Or, as the German film director Werner Herzog put it, "What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleeping without dreams."

Phân tích từ vựng mới có trong bài:

puny /ˈpjuː.ni/ (adj): nhỏ bé, yếu đuối (small; weak; not effective)

Example: My car only has a puny little engine.

gigantic /ˌdʒaɪˈɡæn.t̬ɪk/ (adj): khổng lồ (extremely large)

Example: The cost has been gigantic.

embellishment /ɪmˈbel.ɪʃ.mənt/ (n): tô điểm (something added to make another thing more beautiful or interesting, or the process of doing this)

Example: The architect was asked to add some sculptural embellishments to the building design.

contemporaneous /kənˌtem.pəˈreɪ.ni.əs/ (adj): đồng thời, cùng lúc (happening or existing at the same period of time)

Example: The two events were more or less contemporaneous, with only months between them.

mythical /ˈmɪθ.ɪ.kəl/ (adj): chuyện thần thoại, chuyện hoang đường (existing only in stories)

Example: the mythical island of Atlantis

vicious /ˈvɪʃ.əs/ (adj): hung tợn, nguy hiểm ((of an act) intending to hurt badly, or (of a person or animal) likely to be violent)

Example: I don’t believe he is a vicious dog.

submersible /səbˈmɝː.sə.bəl/ (n): tàu lặn (a type of ship that can travel underwater, especially one that operates without people being in it)

Example: Undersea geologists hope to send the unmanned submersible vehicle on dives at 12 sites.

bioluminescence /ˌbaɪ.oʊ.luː.məˈnes.əns/ (n): phát quang sinh học (light created by the body of a living creature, for example by some sea creatures and insects such as fireflies)

Example: Plankton float in the ocean current, sparkling with bioluminescence.