【英语时差8,16】大角公羊怎样取得成功？

Sheep With Personality “To boldly go where no man has gone before,” are famous words from the science fiction series Star Trek¹. Being bold does tend to help people be successful in life, but what about bighorn sheep? Well, it seems Canadian scientists have found that if you’re a bighorn ram², a bold personality can be a good thing. Scientists can’t measure an animal’s success by finding how much money it earns. Instead, they measure how successfully it reproduces. Bighorn sheep rams³ compete in order to breed with females. Large size and high dominance status usually determine a male’s success. Older rams between six and twelve years are typically the most successful, but paternity tests have shown that some younger rams also father offspring. So what’s going on? Scientists believed successful younger males might have bolder personalities⁴, but measuring personality traits is more complicated than counting offspring. To measure boldness, researchers trapped animals in plywood enclosures and measured how much of a fight they put up when they were weighed and measured. Needless to say, sheep wrestling was not the safest way to gather data, but they found sheep had quite different personalities. At one end of the spectrum⁵, some sheep were well behaved and sat while being measured. At the other end were rams like Psycho who was very aggressive every time he was trapped. After all that wrestling, scientists did find that young rams who fathered offspring were the most combative⁶, boldest males. Unfortunately, bold rams tended to die earlier than their more docile⁷ peers because they took more risks. So, going boldly is not always the best choice.

1 trek   

vi.作长途艰辛的旅行；n.长途艰苦的旅行

参考例句：

• We often go pony-trek in the summer.夏季我们经常骑马旅行。
• It took us the whole day to trek across the rocky terrain.我们花了一整天的时间艰难地穿过那片遍布岩石的地带。

2 ram   

(random access memory)随机存取存储器

参考例句：

• 512k RAM is recommended and 640k RAM is preferred.推荐配置为512K内存，640K内存则更佳。

3 rams   

n.公羊( ram的名词复数 )；(R-)白羊（星）座；夯；攻城槌v.夯实（土等）( ram的第三人称单数 )；猛撞；猛压；反复灌输

参考例句：

• A couple of rams are butting at each other. 两只羊正在用角互相抵触。 来自辞典例句
• More than anything the rams helped to break what should have been on interminable marriage. 那些牡羊比任何东西都更严重地加速了他们那本该天长地久的婚姻的破裂。 来自辞典例句

4 personalities   

n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There seemed to be a degree of personalities in her remarks.她话里有些人身攻击的成分。
• Personalities are not in good taste in general conversation.在一般的谈话中诽谤他人是不高尚的。

5 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。

6 combative   

adj.好战的；好斗的

参考例句：

• Mr. Obama has recently adopted a more combative tone.奥巴马总统近来采取了一种更有战斗性的语调。
• She believes that women are at least as combative as are.她相信女性至少和男性一样好斗。

7 docile   

adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的

参考例句：

• Circus monkeys are trained to be very docile and obedient.马戏团的猴子训练得服服贴贴的。
• He is a docile and well-behaved child.他是个温顺且彬彬有礼的孩子。