Reading Fill Blank
Fill Blank question 1/1:
Read the passage and answer the questions.
Australian Parrots: Their Adaptation to Habitat Change
Parrots are found across the tropics and on all southem hemisphere continents except Antarctica.
but nowhere do they display such a richness of diversity and form as in Australia. One-sixth of the
world's 345 parrot species are found there, and Australia has long been renowned for the number and
variety of its parrots.
In the 16th century, the German cartographer Mercator made a world map that included a place,
somewhere near present-day Australia, that he named Terra Psittacorum -the Land of Parrots - and
the first European settlers in Australia often referred to the country as Parrot Land. In 1865, the
celebrated British naturalist and wildlife artist John Gould said: "No other group of birds in
Australia gives such a tropical and gentle feeling as the many species of this family."
Parrots are descendants of an ancient line. Due to their great diversity, and since most species
inhabit Africa, Australia, and South America, it seems almost certain that parrots originated
millions of years ago on the ancient southem continent of Gondwana, before it broke up into the
