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No Bull: Lizards² Flee When They See Red

原来蜥蜴也怕红

You wouldn't think studying lizards is a particularly dangerous profession. Until, that is, sheriffs approach you with their guns drawn³. "We get the cops called on us sometimes."

你一定不认为研究蜥蜴是一个特别危险的职业。直到，警长举着枪来到你面前。“有时候，我们真的会被警察‘逮到’。”

Bree Putman, a behavioral ecologist at U.C.L.A. and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Her colleague at the museum, Greg Pauly, really did end up on the wrong side of a gun once, and here's why:

布雷·帕特曼，加州大学洛杉矶分校和洛杉矶自然历史博物馆的行为生态学家。她和博物馆的同事格雷格·保利还真经历过一次枪口历险，原因如下:

\"A lot of times we're doing work at night in people's neighborhoods and we're using flashlights to look for geckos on the sides of people's houses. And so sometimes people will think we're criminals or burglars or something."

“很多时候，我们会夜间在社区里工作，用手电筒在人们房屋的周边寻找壁虎。所以有时人们会错把我们当成罪犯或窃贼之类的。”

The museum's solution was neon orange shirts with the museum logo. "And we call these shirts the ‘don't shoot me’ shirts." But the bright orange left Putman with a concern: that the color would spook the very animals they were trying to study.

博物馆给出的解决方案是让她们穿上印有博物馆标志的霓虹橙色衬衫。“我们把这些衬衫称为‘别-射-我’衬衫。”但是这种亮橙色却让帕特曼感到担忧：这种颜色会吓到她们想要研究的动物。

So she devised an experiment. "I basically designed a study to show to the museum staff that these shirts were not going to be good for research, and that's what I found.”

于是她设计了一个实验。“我通过设计一项研究，向博物馆的工作人员展示，这些衬衫会对研究不利，而那就是我发现的结果。”

In her trials, Putman wore tank tops of various colors—red, gray, light blue, dark blue—and then attempted to approach and capture western fence lizards in public and private parkland in L.A. And she found that when wearing dark blue, she could get twice as close to the lizards, compared to when she wore red. And she was about twice as likely to catch a lizard¹ too, while wearing dark or light blue, compared to red or gray. The study appears in the journal PLOS ONE.

在她的试验中，帕特曼穿着各种颜色的背心——有红色、灰色、浅蓝色、深蓝色，然后试图在洛杉矶的公共和私人公园里接近并捕获西部篱笆蜥蜴。她发现，当她身穿深蓝色背心时，比她身穿红色背心时接近的蜥蜴几乎要多两倍。而且，与身穿红色或灰色背心相比，她穿深蓝色或浅蓝色背心时，捕捉到蜥蜴的几率也会高出大约两倍。这项研究发表在《公共科学图书馆·综合》杂志上。

Putman thinks that the lizards may be more tolerant of blue hues⁴, because they most closely resemble the blue patches males have on their bellies—a sexual signal. Other studies have shown that birds with orange and red plumage are similarly less creeped out by orange and red shirts. She's not ready to issue a dress code to hikers just yet, but:

帕特曼认为蜥蜴可能更能容忍蓝色调，因为这种色调最接近雄性在发布一种求爱信号时，其腹部上出现的蓝色斑块。其他研究表明，拥有橙色和红色羽毛的鸟类同样也不太会被橙色和红色的衬衫吓到。不过，虽然她还没准备好为徒步旅行者发布一个着装要求，但是：

"You know for a scientist or biologist working with wild animals, you want to make sure either that you're wearing the same outfit⁵ every time you're going to do animal behavior. Or you want to randomize what you wear."

“要知道，对于一个从事野生动物研究的科学家或生物学家来说，你是想要确保每次研究动物行为时都穿了同一套衣服，还是想每次的穿着都随机。”

As for those museum shirts, "I actually wear the orange shirt. I don't wear a blue shirt." Because studying wildlife in urban areas, you never know when you might encounter that other species: gun-toting Homo sapiens.

至于那些博物馆的衬衫，“我确实穿了橙色的衬衫。没有穿蓝色的。”因为在城市里进行野生动物研究，你永远不知道什么时候会遇到另一种物种——持枪的人类。