The Secret Of Staying Young IELTS Reading Answers

The Academic passage, The Secret of Staying Young, is a reading passage that appeared in an IELTS Test. Try to find the  – Secret of Staying Young IELTS reading answers to get an idea of the difficulty level of the passages in the actual reading test. The IELTS Reading Module of the IELTS can be the top-scoring category with diligent practice.

To achieve the best results in this section, you must understand how to approach and answer the different Question types in the Reading Module. By solving and reviewing Sample Reading Questions from past IELTS papers, you can ensure that your Reading skills are up to the mark.

The question types found in this passage are:

1. True/False/Not Given (Q. 1-5)
2. Sentence Completion (Q. 6-10)
3. Matching Headings (Q. 11-13)

The Secret Of Staying Young 

The Secret Of Staying Young IELTS Reading Answers with Explanations

Find below the answer key for the given IELTS reading passage on the secret of staying young that you just attempted to solve!

1 Answer: four/4

Question Type: Note Completion

Answer location: Paragraph 3, Lines 1-2

Answer explanation: “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.” This gives the answer to this question that Giraldo focused on four age groups while carrying out her studies on ants.

2 Answer: young

Question Type: Note Completion

Answer location: Paragraph 4, Lines 1-2

Answer explanation: “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.” This provides the answer that Giraldo analysed how did the ants take care of the young ones in their colony.

3 Answer: food

Question Type: Note Completion

Answer location: Paragraph 4, Lines 2-3

Answer explanation: “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.” It is clear that the notes are referring to the mechanism of trailing the food source by the ants using a scent.

4 Answer: light

Question Type: Note Completion

Answer location: Paragraph 4, Lines 3-4

Answer explanation: “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.” Giraldo studied how light affected the ants and this gives the answer to this blank.

5 Answer: aggressively

Question Type: Note Completion

Answer location: Paragraph 4, Lines 9-11

Answer explanation: “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.” This tells us how the ants aggressively attacked the fruit fly (prey).

6 Answer: location

Question Type: Note Completion

Answer location: Paragraph 5, Lines 2-3

Answer explanation: “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.” The quoted sentence from the passage proves that 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’.

7 Answer: neurons

Question Type: Note Completion

Answer location: Paragraph 5, Lines 3-6

Answer explanation: “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.” Here, the area of synapse, where the neurons meet, in the brain’s mushroom bodies of the ants is mentioned.

8 Answer: chemicals

Question Type: Note Completion

Answer location: Paragraph 5, Lines 7-8

Answer explanation: “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.” Here, the reference of two brain chemicals – Dopamine and Serotonin is made, which generally decline with ageing in most organisms.

9 Answer: False

Question Type: True/False/Not Given

Answer location: Paragraph 2, Lines 1-2

Answer explanation: “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.” This shows that even naked mole rats remain active and efficient all through their lives besides the Pheidole dentata ants.

10 Answer: True

Question Type: True/False/Not Given

Answer location: Paragraph 3, Lines 2-4

Answer explanation: “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.” This line suggests that Giraldo used the exact data for her studies unlike all such prior studies that worked on estimations.

11 Answer: False

Question Type: True/False/Not Given

Answer location: Paragraph 5, Lines 5-7

Answer explanation: “She also wanted to see if ageing affects the density of synaptic complexes within these structures – regions where neurons come together. Again, the answer was no.” This line suggests that contrary to what Giraldo was expecting to find in her studies, she couldn’t find any age-related differences in the ants from any aspect.

12 Answer: Not Given

Question Type: True/False/Not Given

Answer location: N/A

Answer explanation: There is no reference where the context of using different methods of measuring age related decline is studied in bees.

13 Answer: True

Question Type: True/False/Not Given

Answer location: Paragraph 7, Lines 1-3

Answer explanation: “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.” This line suggests that the ants live longer in laboratories as they are more vulnerable and prone to die much earlier in the natural environment (wild) due to various reasons.

Tips for Answering the Question Types in the above Reading Passage 

Let us check out some quick tips to answer the two types of questions in the ‘The Secret Of Staying Young’ Reading Answers passage.

True/False/Not Given: 

True/False/Not Given questions are a type of IELTS Reading question that requires you to identify whether a statement is true, false, or not given in the passage.

• True statements are statements that are explicitly stated in the passage.
• False statements are statements that are explicitly contradicted in the passage.
• Not Given statements are statements that are neither explicitly stated nor contradicted in the passage

To answer True/False/Not Given questions, you need to be able to understand the passage and identify the key information. You also need to be able to distinguish between statements that are explicitly stated, contradicted, and not given.

Sentence/Summary Completion:

Sentence/Summary Completion is a type of IELTS reading question that requires you to fill in a gap in a sentence/summary with a word or phrase from the passage.

To answer sentence completion questions, you can use the following strategies:

• Read the sentence carefully: This will give you an idea of the type of word or phrase that is missing.
• Scan the passage for the keywords: The keywords in the sentence can help you to identify the correct word or phrase.
• Read the sentence with the missing word or phrase: This will help you to see how the word or phrase fits into the sentence.
• Check your answer: Once you have filled in the gap, make sure that your answer makes sense in the context of the sentence.

Matching Headings:

Matching Headings is a type of IELTS reading question n that requires you to match a list of headings to the correct paragraphs in a passage. To answer matching headings questions, you can use the following strategies:

• Read the headings first: This will give you an idea of the topics that will be covered in the passage.
• Read the paragraphs quickly: This will give you a general understanding of the content of each paragraph.
• Match the headings to the paragraphs: As you read each paragraph, look for the heading that best summarizes the main idea of the paragraph.

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