The Secret of Staying Young Reading Answers

Oct 21, 2022

The Secret of Staying Young Reading Answers consists of 13 questions to be answered in 20 minutes. Note completion and true, false, not given make up the Secret of Staying Young Reading Answers. Candidates must go through the passage for keywords, understand the concept, and state whether the given statement is true, false, or not given. To answer the question Note completion, candidates must read the IELTS reading passage, identify keywords, and recognize synonyms.

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Reading Passage Question

Pheidole dentata, a native ant of the south-eastern U.S., isn’t immortal. But scientists have found that it doesn’t seem to show any signs of aging. Old workers ants can do everything just as well as the youngsters, and their brains appear just as sharp. ‘We get a picture that these ants really don’t decline,’ says Ysabel Giraldo, who studies the ants for her doctoral thesis at Boston University.

Such age-defying feats are rare in the animal kingdom. Naked mole rats can live for almost 30 years and stay fit for nearly their entire lives. They can still reproduce even when old, and they never get cancer. But the vast majority of animals deteriorate with age just like people do. Like the naked mole rat, ants are social creatures that usually live in highly organised colonies. ‘It’s this social complexity that makes P. dentata useful for studying aging in people,’ says Giraldo, now at the California Institute of Technology. Humans are also highly social, a trait that has been connected to healthier aging. By contrast, most animal studies of aging use mice, worms or fruit flies, which all lead much more isolated lives.

In the lab, P. dentata worker ants typically live for around 140 days. Giraldo focused on ants at four age ranges: 20 to 22 days, 45 to 47 days, 95 to 97 days and 120 to 122 days. Unlike all previous studies, which only estimated how old the ants were, her work tracked the ants from the time the pupae became adults, so she knew their exact ages. Then she put them through a range of tests.

Giraldo watched how well the ants took care of the young of the colony, recording how often each ant attended to, carried and fed them. She compared how well 20-day-old and 95-day-old ants followed the telltale scent that the insects usually leave to mark a trail to food. She tested how ants responded to light and also measured how active they were by counting how often ants in a small dish walked across a line. And she experimented with how ants react to live prey: a tethered fruit fly. Giraldo expected the older ants to perform poorly in all these tasks. But the elderly insects were all good caretakers and trail-followers – the 95-day-old ants could track the scent even longer than their younger counterparts. They all responded do light well, and the older ants were more active. And when it came to reacting to prey, the older ants attacked the poor fruit fly just as aggressively as the young ones did, flaring their mandibles or pulling at the fly’s legs.

Then Giraldo compared the brains of 20-day-old and 95-day-ole ants, identifying any cells that were close to death. She saw no major differences with age, nor was there any difference in the location of the dying cells, showing that age didn’t seem to affect specific brain functions. Ants and other insects have structures in their brains called mushroom bodies, which are important for processing information, learning and memory. She also wanted to see if aging affects the density of synaptic complexes within these structures – regions where neurons come together. Again, the answer was no. what was more, he old ants didn’t experience any drop in the levels of either serotonin or dopamine – brain chemicals whose decline often coincides with aging. In humans, for example, a decrease in serotonin has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

‘This is the first time anyone has looked at both behavioral and neural changes in these ants so thoroughly,’ says Giraldo, who recently published the findings in the Proceeding of the Royal Society B. Scientists have looked at some similar aspects in bees, but the results of recent bee studies were mixed – some studies showed age-related declines, which biologists call senescence, and others didn’t. ‘For now, the study raises more questions than it answers,’ Giraldo says, ‘including how P. dentata stays in such good shape.’

Also, if the ants don’t deteriorate with age, why do they die at all? Out in the wild, the ants probably don’t live for a full 140 days thanks to predators, disease and just being in an environment that’s much harsher than the comforts of the lab. ‘The lucky ants that do live into old age may suffer a steep decline just before dying,’ Giraldo says, but she can’t say for sure because her study wasn’t designed to follow an ant’s final moments.

‘It will be important to extend these findings to other species of social insects,’ says Gene E. Robinson, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This ant might be unique, or it might represent a broader pattern among other social bugs with possible clues to the science of aging in larger animals. Either way, it seems that for these ants, age really doesn’t matter.

Solution With Explanation
Questions 1-8:
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answer in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

Ysabel Giraldo’s research

Focused on a total of 1………………………….. different age groups of ants, analyzing

Answer: four/4
Supporting Sentence: Giraldo focused on ants at four age ranges: 20 to 22 days, 45 to 47 days, 95 to 97 days, and 120 to 122 days.
Keywords: Giraldo, ants at four age ranges
Keyword Location: Paragraph 3, Lines 1-2
Explanation: In Paragraph 3, it is mentioned that Giraldo focused on four age groups while carrying out her analyses on ants.

Behaviour:

how well ants looked after their 2 …………………………..

Answer: young
Supporting Sentence: Giraldo watched how well the ants took care of the young of the colony, recording how often each ant attended to, carried, and fed them.
Keywords: young of the colony
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Lines 1-2
Explanation: In Paragraph 4, it is mentioned that Giraldo analyzed the way the ants take care of the young ones in their colony.

their ability to locate 3………………………… using a scent trail

Answer: food
Supporting Sentence: She compared how well 20-day-old and 95-day-old ants followed the telltale scent that the insects usually leave to mark a trail to food.
Keywords: ants followed the telltale scent, trail to food
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Lines 2-3
Explanation: In Paragraph 4, it is mentioned that the mechanism of trailing the food source by the ants using a scent.

the effect that 4………………………….. had on them

Answer: light
Supporting Sentence: She tested how ants responded to light and also measured how active they were by counting how often ants in a small dish walked across a line.
Keywords: ants responded to light
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Lines 3-4
Explanation: In Paragraph 4, it is mentioned that light affected the ants and this gives the answer to this blank.

how 5…………………………. they attacked prey

Answer: aggressively
Supporting Sentence: And when it came to reacting to prey, the older ants attacked the poor fruit fly just as aggressively as the young ones did, flaring their mandibles or pulling at the fly’s legs.
Keywords: older ants attacked the poor fruit fly
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Lines 9-11
Explanation: In Paragraph 4, it is mentioned how the ants aggressively attacked the fruit fly.

Brains:

comparison between age and the 6…………………………… of dying cells in the brains of ants

Answer: location
Supporting Sentence: She saw no major differences with age, nor was there any difference in the location of the dying cells, showing that age didn’t seem to affect specific brain functions.
Keywords: dying cells, difference in the location
Keyword Location: Paragraph 5, Lines 2-3
Explanation: In Paragraph 5, it is mentioned Giraldo found no major difference when she compared the age of the ants with the location of dying cells in their brain. Hence, the answer is ‘location’.

condition of synaptic complexes (areas in which 7…………………………… meet) in the brain’s ‘mushroom bodies’

Answer: neurons
Supporting Sentence: Ants and other insects have structures in their brains called mushroom bodies, which are important for processing information, learning, and memory. She also wanted to see if ageing affects the density of synaptic complexes within these structures – regions where neurons come together.
Keywords: processing information, learning, and memory
Keyword Location: Paragraph 5, Lines 3-6
Explanation: In Paragraph 5, it is mentioned that the area of the synapse, where the neurons meet, in the brain’s mushroom bodies of the ants.

level of two 8………………………….. in the brain associated with ageing

Answer: chemicals
Supporting Sentence: Again, the answer was no. What was more, the old ants didn’t experience any drop in the levels of either serotonin or dopamine – brain chemicals whose decline often coincides with aging.
Keywords: serotonin or dopamine
Keyword Location: Paragraph 5, Lines 7-8
Explanation: In Paragraph 5, it is mentioned that the reference to two brain chemicals – Dopamine and Serotonin is made, which generally decline with aging in most organisms.

Questions 9-13:
Do the following statements agree with the information give in Reading Passage?
In boxes 9-13 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

Pheidole dentata ants are the only known animals which remain active for almost their whole lives.

Answer: False
Supporting Sentence: Naked mole rats can live for almost 30 years and stay fit for nearly their entire lives. They can still reproduce even when old, and they never get cancer.
Keywords: Naked mole rats, stay fit
Keyword Location: Paragraph 2, Lines 1-2
Explanation: In Paragraph 5, it is mentioned that even naked mole rats remain active and efficient all through their lives along with the Pheidole dentata ants.

Ysabel Giraldo was the first person to study Pheidole dentata ants using precise data about the insects’ ages.

Answer: True
Supporting Sentence: Giraldo focused on ants at four age ranges: 20 to 22 days, 45 to 47 days, 95 to 97 days, and 120 to 122 days. Unlike all previous studies, which only estimated how old the ants were, her work tracked the ants from the time the pupae became adults, so she knew their exact ages.
Keywords: Giraldo focused on ants at four age ranges
Keyword Location: Paragraph 3, Lines 2-4
Explanation: The supporting sentence suggests that Giraldo used the exact data for her studies, unlike all such prior studies that worked on estimations.

The ants in Giraldo’s experiments behaved as she had predicted that they would.

Answer: False
Supporting Sentence: She also wanted to see if aging affects the density of synaptic complexes within these structures – regions where neurons come together. Again, the answer was no.
Keywords: aging effects, synaptic complexes
Keyword Location: Paragraph 5, Lines 5-7
Explanation: Here the supporting sentence states what Giraldo was expecting to find in her studies. But she couldn’t find any age-related differences in the ants from any aspect.

The recent studies of bees used different methods of measuring age-related decline.

Answer: Not Given
Explanation: There is no reference in the passage that states the context of using different methods of measuring the age-related decline in bees.

Pheidole dentata ants kept in laboratory conditions tend to live longer lives.

Answer: True
Supporting Sentence: Out in the wild, the ants probably don’t live for a full 140 days thanks to predators, disease and just being in an environment that’s much harsher than the comforts of the lab.
Keywords: 140 days, predators
Keyword Location: Paragraph 7, Lines 1-3
Explanation: Here the supporting sentence states that the ants live longer in laboratories. As they are more vulnerable and prone to die much earlier in the natural environment due to various reasons.

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