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This is Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。

People speak thousands of languages in the world today. And same goes for the bird world.

今天，全世界人类使用的语言有几千种。鸟类世界也是如此。

"Each bird species has effectively its own language." Andy Radford, a professor of behavioral ecology at the University of Bristol. "And there might be similarities between some languages just as there are in the human world. And then there are other languages that sound extremely different, even though they're conveying exactly the same meaning."

“实际上每种鸟类都有自已的语言。”布里斯托大学的行为生态学教授安迪·拉德福德说到。“一些鸟类语言可能很相似，就像人类世界一样。其他语言则听起来极为不同，尽管它们表达的是同样的含义。”

In fact some birds are known to pick up on the "language" of other species...in particular, they've learned to detect danger by eavesdropping¹ on the alarm calls of other birds.

事实上，我们已经知道有些鸟类学会了其他鸟类的“语言”，特别是它们学会了通过偷听其他鸟类的警报叫声来察觉危险。

Radford and his colleagues wanted to investigate how that learning occurs. So they first played an alarm call that fairy wrens², an Australian bird, shouldn't be familiar with - a computer-generated alarm call (synthetic³ call) meant to mimic⁴ a bird's. As expected, the unfamiliar⁵ sound had no effect on the fairy wrens.

拉德福德和同事想研究这种学习的发生过程。因此，他们首先播放了一种澳大利亚细尾鹩莺不可能熟悉的警报叫声，这一由计算机生成的警报叫声（计算机合成的叫声）对鸟类的声音进行了模仿。不出所料，这种陌生的叫声对细尾鹩莺没有任何影响。

But then the researchers paired the synthetic call with a chorus of alarm calls the wrens would recognize. (chorus) And after this training, the sound of the initially⁶ unfamiliar synthetic call alone (synthetic call) was enough to send the birds ducking HA! for cover. The results are in the journal Current Biology.

但随后，研究人员将电脑合成的叫声与细尾鹩莺能识别出的警报叫声和声组合在一起。（和声）经过这种训练，细尾鹩莺一开始不熟悉的合成叫声本身（合成叫声），就足以让这些鸟儿闪避躲藏。这项研究结果发表在《当代生物学》期刊上。

Radford says the study shows birds can learn from their peers, without ever seeing them...or a predator⁷ either. "And so I think that's the coolest thing of all, is that you can learn with your eyes shut about something really important in the natural world."

拉德福德表示，这项研究表明，鸟儿可以向同伴学习，即使从来没有看到过同伴或捕食者。“所以，我认为最酷的地方在于，闭上眼睛学习自然界中真正重要的东西。”

Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。