托福口语 Task 4

Today we're going to talk about a fascinating behavior in the animal kingdom: cooperative hunting. Now, you might think that predators usually hunt alone, but some species have evolved to work together to catch prey that would be impossible for a single hunter. Let me give you two examples. First, consider the lioness in the African savanna. Lions live in prides, and the females often hunt in groups. They use a strategy where some lionesses circle around the prey to drive them toward others waiting in ambush. This teamwork allows them to take down large animals like wildebeests, which are much faster and stronger than a single lion. My second example is the humpback whale. These whales feed on schools of small fish. They work in groups to create a 'bubble net'—one whale blows bubbles in a circle to trap the fish, while others swim beneath to push the fish upward. Then, with synchronized timing, they all lunge through the net with mouths open. Without this cooperation, catching such tiny prey would be inefficient. So, the key point is that cooperative hunting enables predators to access food sources that would be otherwise unavailable or too costly to capture alone.