科学美国人60秒 破译海牛语言的秘密(1)（在线收听）

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

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是阿什利·帕普。

OK — listen to this:

好，听听这个:

If you had to guess, what would you say made those sounds?

如果让你猜，你觉得这是什么发出的声音?

Did you guess that they were from a blubbery, 10-foot long sea cow, otherwise known as a manatee?

你会猜这些声音是来自一只10英尺长、胖胖的海牛(也被称为manatee)吗?

If you didn't get it, don't be too hard on yourself.

如果你没有猜到，不要对自己太苛刻。

That's what manatees sound like when they're communicating in the warm, shallow waters around Florida.

这是海牛在佛罗里达附近温暖的浅水区交流时发出的声音。

And researchers are starting to learn how to decode this crazy high-pitched chatter.

研究人员开始研究如何解码这种疯狂的高音叫声。

We know that manatees produce vocalizations via the vocal folds in their throat, similar to how humans and other mammals produce noise.

我们知道海牛通过喉咙的声带发声，类似于人类和其他哺乳动物发声的方式。

They use their voices for talking to each other–and probably not for echolocating, like dolphins do.

它们使用自己的声音来互相交谈——可能不像海豚，用来进行回声定位。

And while previous research has documented the noises, new work looked into connecting how manatee chatter in the wild is related to behavior in different social settings.

虽然之前的研究已经记录了这些高音，但新的工作研究了不同社会环境下野生海牛的叫声与行为之间的联系。

Beth Brady, a marine mammalogist at the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Florida ran the new research.

贝丝·布雷迪是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，负责这项新研究。

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.

她说，海牛用声音来传达各种各样的事情——有点像家养宠物让你知道它们不喜欢那个新品牌的食物，或者它们真的很高兴在漫长的一天结束时见到你。

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.

如果你养了一只狗或一只猫，你可以通过猫叫或者狗叫的方式来判断，它是否想出去，是否想玩耍，但它们仍然在那样汪汪叫，或者只是那样喵喵叫。

And Manatees are the same way and they change the pitch of the sound and the structure of the sound just a little bit to convey different meanings.

海牛也使用同样的方式，它们会稍微改变声音的音高和结构来传达不同的意思。

Manatees are solitary marine herbivores.

海牛是海洋中唯一的食草动物。

They spend a lot of time grazing in shallow waters.

它们会花很多时间在浅水区吃草。

Hence, their affectionate nickname, the "sea cow".

因此，它们的爱称为“海牛”。

According to Brady, manatees are generally shy, gentle creatures that can be difficult to approach in the wild and therefore, tough to really study.

根据布雷迪的说法，海牛通常是害羞、温和的动物，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 recording manatee vocalizations.

总而言之，布雷迪和她的团队花了大约7年的时间来记录海牛的声音。

They would drop a hydrophone off the side of a kayak while they paddled through fields of seagrass or cruised near freshwater river mouths.

当他们划桨穿过海草田或在淡水河口附近巡航时，他们会把一个潜水测音器从皮艇边上扔下去。

And they would also jot down notes about what the manatees were doing while they were making noise.

他们还会匆匆记下海牛在发出声音时在做什么。

The team analyzed each of the recordings using computer software built for bioacoustic research and conservation work.

这个小组使用为生物声学研究和保护工作构建的计算机软件分析了每一份录音。

They dissected the soundwaves of each vocalization and looked at things like how long the call lasted and each sound’s frequencies.

他们详细分析了每一种声音的声波，并观察叫声持续的时间和每一种声音的频率。