The rat has many enemies and its greatest enemy is man. Nevertheless, it is the survivor. Although man has 1_______ an unending war against them, rats have 2_______ the world. In almost every country, from the 3_______ cold of the Arctic regions to the unbearable 4_______ of the tropics, rats are 5_______ thriving, increasing and multiplying.
Apart from their ability to 6_______ themselves to varying climate conditions, rats possess another 7_______ that gives them an advantage in extending their boundaries. More so than most other animals, 8_______ snakes, mosquitoes and spiders, they induce fear. Why should this be so? Certainly they carry 9_______ and man is slow to forget the Black Plague 10_______ killed off millions of people in the fourteenth century. Also, rats have been known to bite 11_______ babies, but the number of such attacks is very much exaggerated. One reads 12_______ the danger of being attacked by “a cornered rat", but this belongs to fiction. Rats do not 13_______ your throat, as many would have us believe. 14_______,it is difficult to believe that its appearance can be a source of 15_______ the common black or brown rat can almost be regarded as a frightful creature while its cousin, the squirrel, is quite pretty and gentle.
9
A、food
B、diseases
C、microbes
D、illness
【正确答案】：B
【题目解析】：译文：毫无疑问，它们携带疾病（病菌），而且人们正慢慢地遗忘掉曾经杀死数百万人的黑死病了。在表示疾病的时候,disease常指传染性疾病，而illness泛指各种身体或精神方面的疾病,disease符合题意。答案为B。
