EN हिं

NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 2 Animals, Birds, and Dr. Dolittle — Let us think and reflect

Book page 50 to 52 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.
Read the extract and answer: “If I say, ‘Polly wants a cracker', you understand me. But hear this: Ka-ka oi-ee, fee-fee?” / “Good Gracious!” cried the Doctor. “What does that mean?” / “That means, ‘Is the porridge hot yet?'—in bird language.” / “My! You don't say so!” said the Doctor. “You never talked that way to me before.” / “What would have been the good?” said Polynesia, dusting some cracker crumbs off her left wing. “You wouldn't have understood me if I had.” — Complete the sentence by choosing the correct option. In the line, “Good Gracious!” cried the Doctor, the expression ‘Good Gracious' can be replaced by ______! A. bravo B. gosh C. alas D. hurray
Answer

The correct option is B. gosh.

‘Good Gracious!' and ‘Gosh!' are both mild exclamations of surprise — they say “I did not expect that at all.”

Why the others do not fit:
  • bravo — praise for a fine performance (“Well done!”). The Doctor is not applauding, he is startled.
  • alas — sorrow or regret. Nothing sad has happened.
  • hurray — celebration of good news. He has not yet decided whether the news is good; he only wants to know what the words mean.
Q2.
Why had Polynesia never used bird language with the Doctor earlier?
Answer

Because it would have been of no use — the Doctor did not know bird language, so he would not have understood a single word.

Polynesia says it herself, quite bluntly: “What would have been the good? … You wouldn't have understood me if I had.” She had always used people's language with him because that was the only language they shared.

Did you know? Polynesia is careful, not unkind. She waits until the Doctor is ready to learn — the very afternoon he picks up a book and a pencil — and only then starts the lessons.
Q3.
Identify whether the following statement is true or false. Polynesia had been munching on a food item while talking to Doctor Dolittle.
Answer

True.

The proof is in the stage-like detail the writer slips into the middle of her speech: she spoke “dusting some cracker crumbs off her left wing”. Crumbs on a wing mean she had been eating a cracker — a thin, dry biscuit — while she talked.

Tip: In an extract question, the answer is often hidden in a descriptive phrase rather than in the dialogue. Read what the characters do, not only what they say.
Q4.
How did Doctor Dolittle feel according to the extract? A. anxious B. surprised C. angry D. relaxed
Answer

The correct option is B. surprised.

Two of his lines carry the feeling: “Good Gracious!” cried the Doctor, and “My! You don't say so!” Both are exclamations of amazement, and the verb ‘cried' shows he blurted them out.

Why not the others: He is not anxious (nothing threatens him), not angry (he is delighted enough to run for a book and pencil), and not relaxed — a relaxed man does not shout ‘Good Gracious!' and rush to the drawer.
Q5.
Read the extract and answer: “I would like a pair like yours,” said the horse—“only green. They'll keep the Sun out of my eyes while I'm ploughing the field.” / “Certainly,” said the Doctor. “Green ones you shall have.” / “You know, the trouble is, Sir,” said the plough horse as the Doctor opened the front door to let him out—“the trouble is that anybody thinks he can doctor animals—just because the animals don't complain. As a matter of fact, it takes a much cleverer man to be a really good animal doctor than it does to be a good people's doctor.” — Choose a word from the extract to complete the analogy. digging: flower bed:: ______: field
Answer

The word is ploughing.

digging : flower bed :: ploughing : field

The relationship is action → the piece of ground on which that action is done. You dig a flower bed; you plough a field. The extract supplies the word in the horse's own line: “while I'm ploughing the field.”

Q6.
Choose the correct word to complete the sentence. Doctor Dolittle's attitude in the extract is ______. A. respectful B. sentimental C. understanding D. careful
Answer

The correct option is C. understanding.

The horse asks for something unusual — spectacles, and green ones at that — and gives a reason of its own. Dolittle neither laughs nor argues. He simply answers, “Certainly … Green ones you shall have,” because he has grasped what the animal actually needs.

Why the others are weaker: respectful and careful describe manners, not the point of the extract; sentimental would mean he is being emotional about the horse, but he is being practical — he accepts the animal's own account of its problem.
Q7.
Complete the sentence with an appropriate reason. Based on the extract, we can conclude that doctors take animals for granted because ______.
Answer

A suitable completion:

… because animals cannot complain in a language people understand, so a careless vet is never questioned or corrected.

The horse says exactly this: “anybody thinks he can doctor animals—just because the animals don't complain.” Its own vet had treated it for six weeks “for something or the other”, kept giving it big pills, and never once looked at its eyes — and the horse could not tell him he was wrong.

Other acceptable wordings: “… because animals cannot describe their pain or object to wrong treatment”, or “… because no animal can go and tell others that the doctor failed.”
Q8.
Do you agree with the concluding sentence of the extract? Why/why not?
Answer

The concluding sentence is: “it takes a much cleverer man to be a really good animal doctor than it does to be a good people's doctor.”

Yes, I agree — for one strong reason: an animal doctor gets no case history. A human patient walks in and says, “I have had a headache for three days and light hurts my eyes.” A horse can only stand there. The vet must reach the same conclusion from swelling, gait, breathing, appetite and the look of the eye alone. That takes sharper observation, not less.

The story backs the horse up: the vet over the hill had six weeks and still missed a plain problem of eyesight, while Dolittle solved it in one conversation.

The other side, fairly stated: One could argue that a people's doctor faces harder cases in some ways — patients hide symptoms, exaggerate, or refuse treatment. So the honest answer is that the two jobs are differently difficult. But on the horse's own point — diagnosing without words — it is clearly right.
Q9.
How can we say that Polynesia was a good trainer of animal language?
Answer

Polynesia teaches the way a good teacher does — she begins at the beginning, controls the pace, and moves from words to real situations.

  • She starts with the alphabet. The Doctor asks for “the Birds' A.B.C. first” and she gives it — she does not begin with hard sentences.
  • She sets the right speed. She lets him say “don't go too fast—and I'll write it down”, then sits on the kitchen table the whole afternoon “giving him bird words to put down in the book”. Patience over one long session, not a rushed lesson.
  • She uses examples he already knows. ‘Polly wants a cracker' (which he understands) is set against ‘Ka-ka oi-ee, fee-fee?' (which he does not), so he can feel the difference between the two languages.
  • She teaches beyond words. When Jip comes in at teatime she moves straight to body language — “animals don't always speak with their mouths … They talk with their ears, with their feet, with their tails”, and points out the twitching nose that means a question.
  • The result proves the teaching. “After a while, with the parrot's help, the Doctor got to learn the language of the animals so well that he could talk to them himself and understand everything they said.”
Q10.
Explain how Doctor Dolittle gave equal and individual attention to each animal who came to him for treatment.
Answer

He treated every animal as a patient with a name and a need of its own, whatever its size.

  • He listened to each one personally. “As soon as they found that he could talk their language, they told him where the pain was and how they felt.” Each animal gave its own account.
  • He accepted an animal's own choice. The plough horse did not just get spectacles — it got green ones, because it explained that green would keep the Sun out while it ploughed. Dolittle answered, “Green ones you shall have.”
  • He treated the smallest with the same care as the largest. Not only horses and cows and dogs but “harvest mice, badgers, and bats” came to him.
  • He redesigned his house around his patients. ‘HORSES' over the front door, ‘COWS' over the side door, ‘SHEEP' on the kitchen door — “Each kind of animal had a separate door—even the mice had a tiny tunnel made for them into the cellar.”
  • He gave follow-up dates. “I'll have them for you next week … Come in again Tuesday—Good morning!” A real appointment, exactly as for a human patient.
Why it happens: Because he could hear each animal, he never had to treat “animals” as one crowd. He treated this horse, this mouse — and that is what individual attention means.
Q11.
How does Doctor Dolittle's readiness to follow the parrot's advice highlight the importance of listening to different viewpoints?
Answer

The advice that changed his whole life came from the two people the world would have ignored — an illiterate cat's-meat seller and a parrot. Dolittle listened to both.

  • The Cat's-food-Man “can't read or write” himself, yet he had understood the value of Dolittle's book. Dolittle did not brush him aside.
  • Polynesia was a pet in a window, but she knew something no vet in England knew — that animals have languages. He took her seriously enough to fetch a book and a pencil and become her student.
Why it matters: Expertise and experience are not the same thing. The trained vets over the hill had the degrees; the parrot had lived inside the world of animals. Dolittle's willingness to hear a viewpoint from outside his profession gave him knowledge no textbook could.

The lesson for us is plain: judge an idea by what it is worth, not by who happens to be saying it. Dolittle became “the best doctor in the world” for animals precisely because he did not think he already knew everything.

Q12.
Which qualities of Doctor Dolittle made him famous among the animals? Explain with evidence from the text.
Answer
QualityEvidence from the text
Open-mindednessHe believes a parrot when she says animals can talk, instead of laughing at her — “This is interesting—very interesting—something quite new.”
Eagerness to learnHe fetches a book and a pencil at once and spends a whole rainy afternoon writing down bird words.
Patient listeningHe lets the horse tell its own story about the vet over the hill without interrupting or dismissing it.
Respect for the patient's wish“I would like a pair like yours … only green.” — “Certainly. Green ones you shall have.”
Thoughtfulness and planningSeparate doors for horses, cows and sheep, and a tiny tunnel into the cellar for the mice.
Fairness to every creatureHe treats badgers, bats and harvest mice as readily as valuable farm animals.
Genuine skillThe horse's blindness, missed for six weeks by a trained vet, is cured — “a blind horse was a thing unknown.”

Together these qualities made the animals themselves his messengers: “Now all these animals went back and told their brothers and friends that there was a doctor in the little house with the big garden who really was a doctor.”

Q13.
What changes do you think would happen in the world if people suddenly gained the ability like Doctor Dolittle, to understand and communicate with animals?
Answer

The change would reach far beyond medicine. Here is how I would organise the answer:

AreaWhat would change
Veterinary careDiagnosis would become quick and exact — no more guessing, no more six weeks of wrong pills
Farming and work animalsBullocks, horses and elephants could say when a load is too heavy or a harness is cutting; overwork would be harder to hide
Wildlife and conservationAnimals could report where a forest is drying up, where poachers move, which corridor they use to cross a highway
DisastersBirds and animals often sense storms and earthquakes early; they could give warnings
Food and ethicsHard questions would arise about how we keep, use and eat animals — many people would change their habits
Everyday lifeStreet dogs, cows and pigeons in our cities would become neighbours with opinions, not scenery
Sample answer (short form): I think the biggest change would not be in science but in conscience. Once a bullock could say that its shoulder hurts, or a caged bird could ask to be let out, we could no longer pretend not to know. Treatment would get better, cruelty would get harder, and forests would be managed with advice from the animals that live in them. The world would be noisier — and much fairer.
Link to the text: Lofting hints at this himself. The moment Dolittle can hear animals, one district's horses stop going blind. Multiply that by every species and every country, and you have the answer.
Was this helpful? Report an error