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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
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This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute.
There are plenty of tales of animals finding some alcohol and getting tipsy. But those stories usually involve manmade beer or wine. There’s been no evidence of animals seeking out naturally fermented1 fruit in the wild—until now. Researchers stumbled upon the first example of animals looking for a drink in the Malaysian rainforest. The scientists noticed a yeasty smell wafting2 from a local palm. They saw a frothy substance, like the head on a mug of beer. It turns out the palm’s nectar has as much alcohol as some beer does. Then scientists followed two tiny mammals – the pentailed treeshrew slow loris. The critters dip into the nectar several times nightly. They regularly guzzle3 the equivalent of about nine drinks a night—though they don’t display what we’d consider drunken behavior. And they act as the plant’s pollinator. The research appeared in the Proceedings4 of the National Academy of Sciences. The pentailed treeshrew is a living version of an ancient mammal, a kind of relic5 of the mammals from which both shrews and primates6 – and eventually humans – branched off. So this discovery could lend some weight to the hypothesis that our love of the hard stuff has a deep evolutionary7 history. I’ll toast to that.
Thanks for the minute, for Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Cynthia Graber.
1 fermented | |
v.(使)发酵( ferment的过去式和过去分词 );(使)激动;骚动;骚扰 | |
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2 wafting | |
v.吹送,飘送,(使)浮动( waft的现在分词 ) | |
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3 guzzle | |
v.狂饮,暴食 | |
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4 proceedings | |
n.进程,过程,议程;诉讼(程序);公报 | |
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5 relic | |
n.神圣的遗物,遗迹,纪念物 | |
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6 primates | |
primate的复数 | |
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7 evolutionary | |
adj.进化的;演化的,演变的;[生]进化论的 | |
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