科学美国人60秒 SSS 红翅黑鹂能听懂黄莺的警报叫声（在线收听）

This is Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Jason Goldman.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学。我是杰森·古德曼。

Brown-headed cowbirds are obligate brood parasites.

棕头牛鹂属于专性巢寄生。

That means they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, leaving all the hard work of incubating the eggs and feeding the chicks to somebody else.

意思是，它们将卵产在其它鸟类的巢里，抒孵卵和喂养雏鸟的所有辛苦工作都留给别人。

Luckily, many of those other species have evolved some antiparasitic defenses.

幸运的是，许多其它錑已经进化出一些反寄生的防御能力。

Yellow warblers, for example, produce a certain type of call to warn other warblers about nearby cowbirds. Researchers call it a "seet" call.

比如，黄莺会发出某种叫声，提醒同类周围有棕头牛鹂。研究人员称之为“see”叫声。

"We were working on the yellow warbler.

“我们一直在研究黄莺。

And whenever we were doing seet call playbacks to the yellow warblers, the red-winged blackbirds kept showing up.

只要我们给黄莺播放seet叫声，红翅黑鹂就会出现。

That was truly a discovery, this aha moment that allowed us to explore this question even further."

这真的是个重大发现，是让我们得以进一步探索这个问题的好时机。”

Ecologist Mark Hauber from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who ran the study.

负责这项研究的伊利诺伊大学香槟分校的生态学家马克·豪伯说到。

The yellow warblers' seet call is called a "referential alarm call," because it is only produced for a single threat: the brown-headed cowbird.

黄莺的seet叫声被称为“指示警报叫声”，因为它只针对一种威胁：棕头牛鹂。

"And in response to the seet call, the female yellow warbler, instead of attacking or mobbing the cowbird,

“听到seet叫声后，雌黄莺没有攻击或围攻棕头牛鹂，

she sneaks back to her nest and sits on it tightly so as to prevent the cowbird from being able to lay a parasitic egg."

而是偷偷回到巢中，紧紧地坐在上面，防止牛鹂在此产寄生卵。”

Red-winged blackbirds, which sometimes nest near warblers, do not produce referential alarm calls.

红翅黑鹂有时在黄莺附近筑巢，它们没有发出指未警报叫声。

But it turns out that they can eavesdrop on the yellow warblers' calls.

但事实证明它们会偷听黄莺的叫声。

And they respond to the seet calls the same way they do to the sounds of cowbirds themselves.

听到seet叫声后，它们的反应与听到棕头牛鹂叫声时一样。

The results were published in the journal Communications Biology.

这项研究结果发表在《通讯·生物学》期刊上。

So red-winged blackbirds prefer to nest near yellow warblers,

因此，红翅黑鹂更喜欢在黄莺附近筑巢，

since the warblers provide additional vigilance against brown-headed cowbirds.

因为黄莺能提供对抗棕头牛鹂有额外警戒。

But it's probably a two-way street.

但这可能是互利互惠的。

"From the literature, we know that yellow warblers do better when they nest near red-winged blackbird territories.

“我们从文献中得知，黄莺在红翅黑鹂领地附近筑巢时生活得更好。

And that makes sense because the redwings are really aggressive.

这是有道理的，因为红翼真的很有进攻性。

If you walk in a reed bed full of redwings, you actually get physically attacked by the redwings.

如果你走进满是红翅黑鹂的芦苇草垫，会被它们身体攻击。

They are not intimidated by large predators. So for the yellow warblers, it makes sense for them to nest near the redwings."

它们不会被大型捕食者吓倒。因此对于黄莺而言，在红翅黑鹂附近筑巢是有道理的。”

The researchers say that this is the first known evidence of animals eavesdropping on antiparasitic referential alarm calls.

研究人员表示，这是首个表明动物偷听反寄生指示警报叫声的已知证据。

"These birds, yellow warblers and red-winged blackbirds, they speak different languages.

“黄莺和红翅黑鹂说的是不同的语言。

They understand their own communication signals and systems.

它们懂得自己的通讯信号和系统。

And what we discovered here is, basically, a bilingual red-winged blackbird that can understand the vocalization systems and the communication systems of another species."

我们在这里发现的是，懂双语的红翅黑鹂能理解另一个物种的发声系统和通讯系统。”

Young birds learn their vocalizations much like young humans learn languages.

幼鸟学习发声就像年轻人学习语言一样。

In future research, Hauber hopes to understand whether the birds rely on the same underlying neurobiology to understand the calls of other species as they do when they hear the sounds of their own species—

在未来的研究中，豪克希望了解鸟类是否像听到同类叫声时一样，依靠同样的潜在神经生物学来理解其它物种的叫声，

and what that might mean for our own efforts to learn additional languages.

以及这对我们学习其他语言有何蚁。

Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Jason Goldman.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是杰森·古德曼。