Revised Cambridge 2019 GP P2_Insert

Raffles Institution 2024 Year 6 Comprehension Practice Revised 2019 Cambridge Paper General Certificate of Education Advanced Level Higher 1 GENERAL PAPER 8881/02 Paper 2 INSERT 1 hour 30 minutes READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST This Insert contains the passages for comprehension. This document consists of 4 printed pages

Passage 1. Anne walford argues that it is time to close zoos. 1 Whilst Eastern thinkers have often advocated equal reverence for all life, some Western philosophers have seen man as inherently superior to animals. Aristotle, for instance, thought that because animals lacked emotions, reason and souls, they were clearly inferior to humans and so could be guiltlessly exploited (significantly, he also thought men innately superior to women, and some humans fit only to be slaves). Thankfully, public attitudes evolve, and the issue of animal rights (a concept Aristotle would not have recognised) has moved more centre stage. One manifestation of this increasing concern for animal welfare is how the practice of cap turing, incarcerating and displaying animals in zoos is being called into ever more serious question. 5 2 Egyptian pharaohs, European kings and Eastern potentates all amassed collections of beasts - usually the most charismatic, aggressive or exotic ones - as a means for these vain rulers to bolster their prestige and show their dominance not only over their own subjects but also over non-human creatures. The worst expression of this was probably when Roman emperors demanded the c apture of thousands of animals to provide gruesome spectacles in their arenas. One would have hoped such cruelty -as- entertainment was a thing of the very distant past, but not so: visitors to some Chinese zoos can pay extra to witness live goats being fed to tigers, as others find 'entertainment' in watching bulls tormented to death in Spanish arenas. 10 15 3 Whilst, admittedly, the best of today's zoos are accredited and subject to rigorous inspection, all zoos, great and small, inhibit the exercising of animals' natural behaviours. Forcibly removed from their fellows, destroying their social groupings, the animals are uprooted from their chosen habitats - often remote spaces uninhabited by man - and subject to arduous transportation. They become confined in unwanted and unnatural proximity to man. Other instincts are thwarted too. They will not select a mate but have one selected for them. The size of their world has shrunk almost to nothing; their freedom to roam it at will has been snatched from them or, if they were bred in the zoo, withheld from birth. Whereas wild elephants walk freely over twenty miles a day, in