【英语时差8,16】黄蜂和玫瑰的对话

 

Have you ever started talking to someone, only to discover you have nothing in common and, therefore, nothing to say?  

You might imagine that a yellow jacket, flying about its waspy business, and a rose bush, intent on growing green leaves in the sun, would be in a similar fix: nothing in common, nothing to say. Actually, rose bushes and other plants have a time honored method of communicating with yellow jackets and other wasps².

 

A yellow jacket's waspy business is probably finding food. One of the things it likes to eat is nice, juicy caterpillars³. The caterpillar⁴, of course, likes to eat nice, green leaves. So you see, the plant and the yellow jacket have something in common after all: The plant is eaten by the very thing the wasp¹ likes to eat.

 

Yellow jackets have good eyes for spotting caterpillars and other prey⁵, but a plant that is being eaten doesn't want to just wait around for the wasp to notice. Fortunately for your roses, evolution has provided the plant with its very own distress⁶ signal, based on smell. When a caterpillar chomps⁷ into a leaf, the plant releases an acid that smells the same as fresh cut grass. The caterpillar's bites also spill a kind of alcohol from the damaged leaf cells. This alcohol mixes with the cut grass aroma⁸ and carries it upward in a rising plume⁹ where it can be smelled by our circling yellow jacket. Millions of years of evolution have taught the yellow jacket that following this smell often leads to a delicious meal.

 

So what do wasps and roses talk about? They talk about what's for lunch.

1 wasp   

n.黄蜂，蚂蜂

参考例句：

• A wasp stung me on the arm.黄蜂蜇了我的手臂。
• Through the glass we can see the wasp.透过玻璃我们可以看到黄蜂。

2 wasps   

黄蜂( wasp的名词复数 )； 胡蜂； 易动怒的人； 刻毒的人

参考例句：

• There's a wasps' nest in that old tree. 那棵老树上有一个黄蜂巢。
• We live in dread not only of unpleasant insects like spiders or wasps, but of quite harmless ones like moths. 我们不仅生活在对象蜘蛛或黄蜂这样的小虫的惧怕中，而且生活在对诸如飞蛾这样无害昆虫的惧怕中

3 caterpillars   

n.毛虫( caterpillar的名词复数 )；履带

参考例句：

• Caterpillars eat the young leaves of this plant. 毛毛虫吃这种植物的嫩叶。
• Caterpillars change into butterflies or moths. 毛虫能变成蝴蝶或蛾子。 来自辞典例句

4 caterpillar   

n.毛虫，蝴蝶的幼虫

参考例句：

• A butterfly is produced by metamorphosis from a caterpillar.蝴蝶是由毛虫脱胎变成的。
• A caterpillar must pass through the cocoon stage to become a butterfly.毛毛虫必须经过茧的阶段才能变成蝴蝶。

5 prey   

n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨

参考例句：

• Stronger animals prey on weaker ones.弱肉强食。
• The lion was hunting for its prey.狮子在寻找猎物。

6 distress   

n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛

参考例句：

• Nothing could alleviate his distress.什么都不能减轻他的痛苦。
• Please don't distress yourself.请你不要忧愁了。

7 chomps   

v.切齿，格格地咬牙，咬响牙齿( chomp的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• If you notice, she TOTALLY sides with Mark as she chomps on her bacon. 如果你留心，就会发现Cristina完全同意Mark的观点，因为她非常使劲儿地咬她嘴里的培根。 来自互联网

8 aroma   

n.香气，芬芳，芳香

参考例句：

• The whole house was filled with the aroma of coffee.满屋子都是咖啡的香味。
• The air was heavy with the aroma of the paddy fields.稻花飘香。

9 plume   

n.羽毛；v.整理羽毛，骚首弄姿，用羽毛装饰

参考例句：

• Her hat was adorned with a plume.她帽子上饰着羽毛。
• He does not plume himself on these achievements.他并不因这些成就而自夸。