科学美国人60秒 新研究破译了海牛的隐藏语言

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New Research Decodes² the Sea Cow's Hidden Language

新研究破译了海牛的隐藏语言

Ashleigh Papp: This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I'm Ashleigh Papp.

OK — listen to this:

Ashleigh Papp: ... If you had to guess, what would you say made those sounds? ... Did you guess that they were from a blubbery, 10-foot long sea cow, otherwise known as a manatee³? If you didn't get it, don't be too hard on yourself.

That's what manatees⁴ sound like when they're communicating in the warm, shallow waters around Florida. And researchers are starting to learn how to decode¹ this crazy high-pitched chatter⁵.

Ashleigh Papp：这是《科学美国人》的 60 秒科学，我是 Ashleigh Papp。

好的——听听这个：

Ashleigh Papp：......如果你不得不猜测，你会说什么发出这些声音？ ...您是否猜到它们来自一头 10 英尺长的胖海牛，也称为海牛？ 如果你没有得到它，不要对自己太苛刻。

这就是海牛在佛罗里达附近温暖的浅水区交流时发出的声音。 研究人员开始学习如何解读这种疯狂的高音喋喋不休。

We know that manatees produce vocalizations via the vocal⁶ folds in their throat, similar to how humans and other mammals produce noise. They use their voices for talking to each other–and probably not for echolocating, like dolphins do. And while previous research has documented the noises, new work l  looked into connecting how manatee chatter in the wild is related to behavior in different social settings.

我们知道海牛通过喉咙中的声带发出声音，类似于人类和其他哺乳动物产生噪音的方式。 他们用自己的声音互相交谈——而且可能不像海豚那样用于回声定位。 虽然之前的研究已经记录了这些噪音，但我的新工作正在研究将野外海牛喋喋不休与不同社会环境中的行为联系起来。

Beth Brady, a marine⁷ mammalogist at the Mote⁸ Marine Laboratory and Aquarium⁹ in Florida ran the new research. She says that manatees use vocalizations to convey all sorts of things ... kind of like the way a house pet lets you know that they're not into that new brand of food, or they're really happy to see you at the end of a long day.

佛罗里达州莫特海洋实验室和水族馆的海洋哺乳动物学家贝丝·布雷迪 (Beth Brady) 进行了这项新研究。 她说海牛用发声来传达各种各样的东西……有点像家养宠物让你知道他们不喜欢那种新品牌的食物，或者他们很高兴最后见到你 漫长的一天。

Beth Brady: If you have a dog or a cat, you can tell by the way your cat meows, or your dog barks, whether or not it wants to go outside, whether it wants to play, but they're still using that bark, or just that meow. And Manatees are the same way ... they change the pitch of the sound and the structure of the sound just a little bit to convey different meanings.

贝丝·布雷迪：如果你养了一只狗或一只猫，你可以通过你的猫叫声或狗叫声来判断它是否想出去，它是否想玩，但它们仍在使用这种叫声 ，或者只是那个喵。 和海牛是一样的……它们只是稍微改变声音的音高和声音的结构，以传达不同的含义。

Ashleigh Papp: Manatees are solitary¹⁰ marine herbivores. They spend a lot of time grazing in shallow waters ... hence, their affectionate nickname, the "sea cow". According to Brady, manatees are generally shy, gentle creatures that can be difficult to approach in the wild and therefore, tough to really study.

Ashleigh Papp：海牛是孤独的海洋食草动物。 他们花很多时间在浅水区放牧……因此，他们亲切的绰号“海牛”。 根据布雷迪的说法，海牛通常是害羞、温和的生物，在野外很难接近，因此很难真正研究。

All in all, Brady and her team spent about seven years recording¹¹ manatee vocalizations. They would drop a hydrophone off the side of a kayak while they paddled through fields of seagrass or cruised near freshwater river mouths. And they would also jot¹² down notes about what the manatees were doing while they were making noise.

总而言之，布雷迪和她的团队花了大约七年的时间来录制海牛的发声。 当他们划过海草田或在淡水河口附近巡航时，他们会从皮划艇的一侧放下一个水听器。 他们还会记下海牛在制造噪音时所做的事情

The team analyzed¹³ each of the recordings¹⁴ using computer software built for bioacoustic research and conservation work. They dissected¹⁵ the soundwaves of each vocalization and looked at things like how long the call lasted and each sound’s frequencies. They learned that 99% of the vocalizations that they recorded fell into 3 types of sound.

该团队使用为生物声学研究和保护工作而构建的计算机软件分析了每个录音。 他们解剖了每个发声的声波，并研究了诸如通话持续了多长时间和每个声音的频率之类的东西。 他们了解到，他们录制的 99% 的发声属于 3 种类型的声音。

And because each recording was attached to an observation of the manatee's behavior at the time of the call, they were able to relate certain noises with specific behaviors. And that’s how they started to make sense of the chatter.

而且由于每个录音都附有对海牛在通话时行为的观察，他们能够将某些噪音与特定行为联系起来。 这就是他们开始理解喋喋不休的方式。

The squeal¹⁶, or [Audio of a "squeal"], was the top call recorded during cavorting¹⁷, or social play and frisky¹⁸ behavior.

尖叫声或 [“尖叫声”的音频] 是在嬉戏、社交游戏和活泼行为期间记录的最高呼叫。

Stressed out manatees almost exclusively produced this noise [Audio of a "squeak¹⁹"], which is described by Brady and her team as the squeak.

This call, the high squeak, [Audio of a "high squeak"], was mostly used between a mother manatee and her calf²⁰.

压力过大的海牛几乎完全产生了这种噪音 [“吱吱声”的音频]，布雷迪和她的团队将其描述为吱吱声。

这个叫声，高声，[“高声”的音频]，主要用于海牛母亲和她的小牛之间。

The findings were published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. [Beth Brady, et al., Behavior related vocalizations of the Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris)]

研究结果发表在《海洋哺乳动物科学》杂志上。

This new information is useful in a lot of different ways. Manatees are what's known as a "keystone species." This means that by better understanding how this one species is doing, researchers can infer a lot more about the overall health of the coastal²¹ Florida ecosystem²².

这些新信息在许多不同的方面都很有用。 海牛是所谓的“基石物种”。 这意味着通过更好地了解这一物种的行为方式，研究人员可以更多地推断佛罗里达沿海生态系统的整体健康状况。

Brady: ... Case in point, there's a lot of seagrass missing from over in the Indian River Lagoon²³ area and a lot of manatees unfortunately perishing due to this. But sea grasses are also important for other species, you have sport and game fish, who use seagrass beds for those or juvenile²⁴ nurseries. You have other animals, such as sea horses who use that, and it's food for turtles as well. So when you lose manatees, you're also losing it's also an indicator²⁵ for general health of an ecosystem.

布雷迪：... 举个例子，印度河泻湖地区的海草消失了，许多海牛不幸因此而死亡。 但海草对其他物种也很重要，你有运动鱼和野味鱼，它们将海草床用于那些或幼年托儿所。 您还有其他动物，例如使用它的海马，它也是海龟的食物。 因此，当您失去海牛时，您也会失去它，这也是生态系统总体健康状况的指标。

Ashleigh Papp: There’s also the issue of climate change. Marine ecosystems²⁶ are changing rapidly around the world because of it. Understanding the manatee's hidden language might offer us a sonic warning system that we never knew existed.

Ashleigh Papp：还有气候变化问题。 因此，世界各地的海洋生态系统正在迅速变化。 了解海牛的隐藏语言可能会为我们提供一个我们从未知道存在的声音警告系统。

Brady also says that the things they learned about the Florida manatees can be useful when it comes to understanding and protecting the other, lesser-studied manatee groups around the world. Whether or not there's a universal manatee language remains²⁷ to be seen ... but we're starting to understand that there's a lot more to manatee squeaking²⁸ and squealing²⁹ than pure chatter.

布雷迪还说，他们从佛罗里达海牛身上学到的东西对于了解和保护世界上其他研究较少的海牛群体很有用。 是否有一种通用的海牛语言还有待观察……但我们开始明白海牛的尖叫声和尖叫声比纯粹的喋喋不休要多得多。

For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I’m Ashleigh Papp.

这是《科学美国人》的 60 秒科学，我是 Ashleigh Papp。

1 decode   

vt.译（码），解（码）

参考例句：

• All he had to do was decode it and pass it over.他需要做的就是将它破译然后转给他人。
• The secret documents were intercepted and decoded.机密文件遭截获并被破译。

2 decodes   

v.译（码），解（码）( decode的第三人称单数 )；分析及译解电子信号

参考例句：

• Figure 5.1 shows a network that decodes a given bIt'sequence. 图5．1是一个对给定二进制序列进行解码的网络。 来自辞典例句
• The receive decodes the message and attempts to interpret the sender's meaning. 接收者解码收到的信息，并解释发送者的意思。 来自互联网

3 manatee   

n.海牛

参考例句：

• We watched dolphin,manatee,sea lion and whale shows.我们看了海豚、海牛、海狮和鲸的表演。
• One of the most extraordinary river creatures is Amazonian manatee.其中河里最特别的生物之一要数亚马孙海牛。

4 manatees   

n.海牛（水生哺乳动物，体宽扁，尾圆，有鳃状肢）( manatee的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The manatees tamed quickly. 海牛很快地被驯服。 来自互联网
• Gentle and slow moving, manatees are said to be the mythical mermaids of sailors' imaginations. 海牛游动温和而缓慢，被认为是海员遐想中富有神秘色彩的美人鱼。 来自互联网

5 chatter   

vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战

参考例句：

• Her continuous chatter vexes me.她的喋喋不休使我烦透了。
• I've had enough of their continual chatter.我已厌烦了他们喋喋不休的闲谈。

6 vocal   

adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目

参考例句：

• The tongue is a vocal organ.舌头是一个发音器官。
• Public opinion at last became vocal.终于舆论哗然。

7 marine   

adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵

参考例句：

• Marine creatures are those which live in the sea. 海洋生物是生存在海里的生物。
• When the war broke out,he volunteered for the Marine Corps.战争爆发时，他自愿参加了海军陆战队。

8 mote   

n.微粒；斑点

参考例句：

• Seeing the mote in one's neighbor's eye,but not the beam in one's own.能看见别人眼里的尘埃，看不见自己眼里的木头。
• The small mote on her forehead distinguishes her from her twin sister.她额头上的这个小斑点是她与其双胞胎妹妹的区别。

9 aquarium   

n.水族馆，养鱼池，玻璃缸

参考例句：

• The first time I saw seals was in an aquarium.我第一次看见海豹是在水族馆里。
• I'm going to the aquarium with my parents this Sunday.这个星期天，我要和父母一起到水族馆去。

10 solitary   

adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士

参考例句：

• I am rather fond of a solitary stroll in the country.我颇喜欢在乡间独自徜徉。
• The castle rises in solitary splendour on the fringe of the desert.这座城堡巍然耸立在沙漠的边际，显得十分壮美。

11 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

12 jot   

n.少量；vi.草草记下；vt.匆匆写下

参考例句：

• I'll jot down their address before I forget it.我得赶快把他们的地址写下来，免得忘了。
• There is not a jot of evidence to say it does them any good.没有丝毫的证据显示这对他们有任何好处。

13 analyzed   

v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析

参考例句：

• The doctors analyzed the blood sample for anemia. 医生们分析了贫血的血样。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The young man did not analyze the process of his captivation and enrapturement, for love to him was a mystery and could not be analyzed. 这年轻人没有分析自己蛊惑著迷的过程，因为对他来说，爱是个不可分析的迷。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 recordings   

n.记录( recording的名词复数 )；录音；录像；唱片

参考例句：

• a boxed set of original recordings 一套盒装原声录音带
• old jazz recordings reissued on CD 以激光唱片重新发行的老爵士乐

15 dissected   

adj.切开的，分割的，（叶子）多裂的v.解剖（动物等）( dissect的过去式和过去分词 )；仔细分析或研究

参考例句：

• Her latest novel was dissected by the critics. 评论家对她最近出版的一部小说作了详细剖析。
• He dissected the plan afterward to learn why it had failed. 他事后仔细剖析那项计划以便搞清它失败的原因。 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 squeal   

v.发出长而尖的声音；n.长而尖的声音

参考例句：

• The children gave a squeal of fright.孩子们发出惊吓的尖叫声。
• There was a squeal of brakes as the car suddenly stopped.小汽车突然停下来时，车闸发出尖叫声。

17 cavorting   

v.跳跃( cavort的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The photos showed her cavorting on the beach with her new lover. 这些照片展现了她和新情人在海滩上放荡嬉戏的情景。
• If her heart would only stop bumping and drumming and cavorting. 要是她那颗心停止冲撞、轰鸣、急跳，那该多舒服啊！ 来自飘（部分）

18 frisky   

adj.活泼的，欢闹的；n.活泼，闹着玩；adv.活泼地，闹着玩地

参考例句：

• I felt frisky,as if I might break into a dance.我感到很欢快，似乎要跳起舞来。
• His horse was feeling frisky,and he had to hold the reins tightly.马儿欢蹦乱跳，他不得不紧勒缰绳。

19 squeak   

n.吱吱声，逃脱；v.（发出）吱吱叫，侥幸通过；（俚）告密

参考例句：

• I don't want to hear another squeak out of you!我不想再听到你出声！
• We won the game,but it was a narrow squeak.我们打赢了这场球赛，不过是侥幸取胜。

20 calf   

n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮

参考例句：

• The cow slinked its calf.那头母牛早产了一头小牛犊。
• The calf blared for its mother.牛犊哞哞地高声叫喊找妈妈。

21 coastal   

adj.海岸的，沿海的，沿岸的

参考例句：

• The ocean waves are slowly eating away the coastal rocks.大海的波浪慢慢地侵蚀着岸边的岩石。
• This country will fortify the coastal areas.该国将加强沿海地区的防御。

22 ecosystem   

n.生态系统

参考例句：

• This destroyed the ecosystem of the island.这样破坏了岛上的生态系统。
• We all have an interest in maintaining the integrity of the ecosystem.维持生态系统的完整是我们共同的利益。

23 lagoon   

n.泻湖，咸水湖

参考例句：

• The lagoon was pullulated with tropical fish.那个咸水湖聚满了热带鱼。
• This area isolates a restricted lagoon environment.将这一地区隔离起来使形成一个封闭的泻湖环境。

24 juvenile   

n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的

参考例句：

• For a grown man he acted in a very juvenile manner.身为成年人，他的行为举止显得十分幼稚。
• Juvenile crime is increasing at a terrifying rate.青少年犯罪正在以惊人的速度增长。

25 indicator   

n.指标；指示物，指示者；指示器

参考例句：

• Gold prices are often seen as an indicator of inflation.黃金价格常常被看作是通货膨胀的指标。
• His left-hand indicator is flashing.他左手边的转向灯正在闪亮。

26 ecosystems   

n.生态系统( ecosystem的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There are highly sensitive and delicately balanced ecosystems in the forest. 森林里有高度敏感、灵敏平衡的各种生态系统。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Madagascar's ecosystems range from rainforest to semi-desert. 马达加斯加生态系统类型多样，从雨林到半荒漠等不一而足。 来自辞典例句

27 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

28 squeaking   

v.短促地尖叫( squeak的现在分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者

参考例句：

• Squeaking floorboards should be screwed down. 踏上去咯咯作响的地板应用螺钉钉住。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Can you hear the mice squeaking? 你听到老鼠吱吱叫吗？ 来自《简明英汉词典》

29 squealing   

v.长声尖叫，用长而尖锐的声音说( squeal的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Pigs were grunting and squealing in the yard. 猪在院子里哼哼地叫个不停。
• The pigs were squealing. 猪尖叫着。