PASSAGE 2

Tuatara are lizard-like reptiles, found only in New Zealand. They are representative of ancient life forms. Tuatara are the only living representatives of an ancient lineage of reptiles called Sphenodontia, which is over 250 million years old. Because tuatara still look like fossils of reptiles that lived during the age of dinosaurs, they are often called living fossils.

Now just two species of tuatara survive, and only in New Zealand. One is the Brothers Island tuatara, which, until recent reintroductions to sanctuaries (safe places for wildlife), only survived on North Brother Island. The other species is the common tuatara, which survives on many other offshore islands. Although the tuatara species appear similar, they have genetic differences.

Tuatara bones have been found in many parts of New Zealand. Where dated, they are usually a few hundred to 5,000 years old. It is not known whether these bones are from the two living species or other species that are now extinct.

Many anatomical features distinguish tuatara from other living reptiles. For example, they have a defining pattern of openings in the skull and a unique type of haemoglobin in the blood, and males have no external reproductive organ. Adults are between 30 and 75 centimeters long and weigh between 250 and 1,200 grams. Males are larger than females and have more developed spines in the crest along the neck, back, and tail.

The male tuatara courts the female by approaching her with a proud walk. Tuatara mate in late summer, and the female usually lays 6-10 eggs the following spring, in a shallow nest at ground level. She may guard the nest for a few nights, then return to her burrow underground. The eggs incubate for about a year, so hatchlings emerge about the time that eggs are being laid the following season.

Evidence indicates the gender of tuatara hatchlings is determined by both genetic and environmental factors. It is said that it is more likely for warmer eggs to produce male tuatara, and cooler eggs to produce females. The hatchlings receive no parental care and need to find their own food.

Tuatara live for a relatively long time, reaching reproductive maturity at about 15 years, and may breed for many decades. Their maximum lifespan is not known for certain, but many tuatara have reached 80 years, still looking vigorous and healthy. Tuatara live in underground burrows and are more active at night but will come out during the day to bask in the sun. Both sexes are territorial, and males aggressively defend their territory by posing and fighting if necessary. Teeth are their main weapons, and a bite can cause serious injury. Tuatara are carnivorous, eating invertebrates, lizards, and the baby seabirds with which they often share burrows.

Tuatara were once widespread and abundant on the New Zealand mainland, but when Polynesian settlers arrived in New Zealand, around 1250-1300 AD, they brought with them Pacific rats, which killed tuatara. By the time of European settlement, in the 1840s, tuatara were almost extinct on the New Zealand mainland. Some islands provided temporary havens, but soon these too began to be invaded by rats and other mammalian predators.

Gradually, tuatara became restricted to 32 nearshore islands. Many of these islands were tiny, some as small as only one hectare. A few, such as the Poor Knights, where the common tuatara lives, are on islands off the northeastern coast of New Zealand, and on some islands in Cook Strait. The Brothers Island tuatara survived only on the Brothers Island. New sanctuaries for the Brothers Island tuatara have been created on Titi Island in the Marlborough Sounds, and on Somes Island in Wellington Harbour.

Tuatara can live in remarkably dense populations. Most tuatara islands have 50-100 tuatara per square hectare - so an island of only 10 hectares may have a population of hundreds. Larger islands with many seabirds and invertebrates, which tuatara eat, may have greater densities. The largest population is on Stephens Island, where there are estimated to be as many as 2,500 per hectare in some places, with a total of at least 30,000. The total number of tuatara on all the islands is estimated to be between 50,000 and 100,000.

Legal protection was granted to tuatara and the islands they occupied in 1895, but the reptiles continued to decline. Since then, active conservation management has reversed the decline, and new populations have become established on predator-free islands. In the mid-1980s, the New Zealand Wildlife Service and its successor, the Department of Conservation, developed ways to eradicate rats from islands. Rats have now gone from almost all of the tuatara islands, making them safe for many threatened native species.

In addition, the collection by conservationists of eggs for incubation in captivity, breeding in captivity, and moving tuatara to rat-free islands off the Northland coast or Stephens Island in Cook Strait, were never invaded by rats and had few of the other mammals that threaten native animals. The tiny, 4-hectare North Brother Island in Cook Strait is one such example. However, two new populations free of rats have increased the number of islands that are inhabited by tuatara to 37. Many new tuatara populations are planned for islands and mainland reserves that have been freed of predators.

PASSAGE 3

Reaching the moon, multiplying two 12 digit numbers instantly, searching trillions of gigabytes of information at one go has all been made possible due to technology. It has realized possibilities that would have otherwise been considered a mammoth task to complete. Imagining a life without technological devices in the vicinity is an unpleasant thought for most people. But is the dependence desirable or does it have its downside too?

In a survey conducted in the US, people were asked if society has become dependent on technology. Out of the total responses, 77% of people believed that dependence on technology has increased at an alarming rate. According to a study, 6% of school-going teenagers in China are addicted to the internet. In South Korea, the figures are likely to reach 10%. These results are not surprising. Today, if teenagers are asked the meaning of a particular word or to state their opinion on a given issue, they will instantly reach for their mobile and the internet instead of referring to a physical dictionary or a book for information. Turning pages of physical books are relatively time-consuming, but it does not necessarily mean that the much-trusted technology will always be able to deliver better.

We have improved with technology, but we have not thought of an alternative if technology does not work. The most recent examples are the outages at the New York Stock Exchange when a break-down in the system took three-and-half hours to resolve and resume trading, halting the overall pace of Wall Street. Another such example is a minor router issue at United Airlines which grounded its planes for two hours leading to 800 flight delays. These are just a couple of the many incidents of a technical outage. While the technology in use may be state-of-the-art, having a reliable backup is equally important.

Sophisticated systems in various areas such as airlines, military, or electric grids add to the convenience. However, there are inherent risks. For example, even upgraded security systems may be vulnerable to the slightest malfunction. A minor change in readings, codes, or chips with malicious intent may harm innocent people and society at large.

Online networking, a gift of advanced technology, has become a part of our daily lives and its advantages are undeniable. However, it has changed our daily interactions and can change our social structure too. Face-to-face meetings have been replaced by chats and text messages on social media. Reduced face-to-face interaction has kept smartphone users away from real-life situations. The virtual world cannot replace real-life situations that demand communication skills, problem-solving skills, tolerance, and receptivity to coexist in society. "They don't know how to handle conflict face to face because so many things happen through some sort of technology," said Melissa Ortega, a child psychologist at New York's Child Mind Institute.

Technology has improved our way of life, but it should be used only as a tool. Relying on it to an extent where a technological detox becomes next to impossible is worrying. We must be technologically advanced and not technology dependent.

PASSAGE 4

Crime fiction books, in which detectives hunt for the perpetrators of crimes, have been popular with readers for many decades—so popular, in fact, that at a recent London Book Fair, sales of the genre overtook general fiction for the first time ever, a development that had been widely anticipated. Commercial success, of course, does not impress everyone and there are those who believe crime fiction should not be held in such high regard. Prominent in this group is Sebastian Franklin, who has argued that most crime fiction books better resemble crossword puzzles than literature. His view is shared by other literary critics. However, increasingly this is a minority opinion as crime fiction becomes recognised around the world as a rich and dynamic literary genre in its own right.

Crime writing really came to prominence in the 1920s and 30s with the books of the British author Agatha Christie, and to a slightly lesser extent the American James M. Cain. Agatha Christie was a prolific writer, publishing more than 60 detective novels over a 50-year period, beginning in 1920. However, the majority of the general public have never picked up one of her books and are more familiar with Christie from the numerous adaptations of her work for films.

The colourful locations around the world where Christie set many of her stories were not fictional depictions, but were informed by her extensive travels, on the Orient Express train, to Cairo and the River Nile, and elsewhere. Her memoir, Come, Tell Me How You Live, published in 1946, is a non-fiction account of these real-life travels, so is unique among Christie's publications. Success brought Christie considerable wealth and international fame, though she never lost her appetite for work, continuing writing and publishing until shortly before her death in 1976.

Without doubt, there are certain elements that tend to be repeated in Christie's books. The stories generally revolve around a well-off if not aristocratic circle of people, whose privileged lives are thrown into chaos by an unexplained crime. What's more, the location is often a confined space of some sort: a train, an island, a boat, an isolated house, or a village. This is quite different, for example, to the world of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, who often has as his hunting ground the entire city of London. But the influence of Christie's sheltered, secluded locations has been immense, for they have been used in countless television series ever since.

The writer Michael Utley argues that Christie's characters lack depth and are not convincing people we can believe in. This is a not infrequent complaint, but it is quite untrue. Christie was a perceptive observer of human nature and psychology and she put the traits of people she knew into many of her fictional characters. Part of the reason her appeal has been so widespread is that she wrote about human relationships in a way so many of us can relate to. Her very first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, features the amateur detective Hercule Poirot. Poirot and Miss Marple are Christie's two best known and most frequently imitated characters precisely because they are so well drawn and believable.

Further evidence of Christie's ability at characterisation was provided by a recent survey. The survey asked readers to identify the villain revealed in the final pages of Christie's sixteenth book, Murder on the Orient Express. Most readers could not recall, because for them the really important aspect of the book had been the interplay between the characters, not the outcome. The truth is that Christie's characters were one of her greatest achievements as a writer.

The books are also action-packed, no less so than today's most popular thrillers. Christie mastered the art of the page-turner: events unfold so quickly and unpredictably that we keep reading to find out what happens next. The most significant consequence is that it is so simple to overlook vital clues. It is worth reading a Christie book a second time just to notice how carefully she hides crucial information about the criminal's identity. It was there all along, but we just fail to see it because she has created such tension and so many exciting distractions.

Attempts to retell Christie's stories in contemporary times have largely been unsuccessful; they work best in their original early twentieth-century settings and cannot accommodate mobile phones, computers, and DNA analysis. But that does not mean her influence has come to an end. Indeed, a new generation of global crime writers is emerging in nations as diverse as Brazil, Singapore, South Korea, India, and Nigeria, to name but five. And though each new writer adds something of their own, they all employ conventions first established by Christie.

If we take just one of her books, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, we find near perfect examples of conventions that are still used today: tight plotting, clever sub-plots, unexpected twists, perceptive characterisation. Perhaps this is why Christie herself is believed to have ranked The Murder of Roger Ackroyd above all her other work. Certainly, the digital revolution has transformed crime fighting. But a survey of contemporary crime writing shows that Agatha Christie's legacy is more important now than at any time previously, at the very point when crime writing has become the most popular of all book genres.