搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号:tingroom,领取免费英语资料大礼包。
(单词翻译)
What Animals Are Most Like People
Once again we go to the mailbag. A listener writes:
Dear A Moment of Science, Besides chimps1, which animals do you think are the most like people?
It’s Prairie Dogs!
Scientists have closely studied prairie dog chirps2 and found that they’re really complex.
You know how some animals have warning calls such as warning shrieks3 or yells that alert their group when a predator4 is nearby?
Prairie dogs do this, too, but in a way that’s impressively detailed5. For example, they not only have specific chirps for different kinds of predators6, but also for specific details about what the predators look like.
Size, Shape, And Clothes!
Yes. In fact, they’d exchange information not only about your presence but about what you look like your size, shape, and the color of your clothes.
How Do Scientists Know?
They did a cool little experiment where they sent the same person into a prairie dog colony at different times, wearing different colored tee shirts. When they analyzed7 the animals’ alarm calls they found that they used the same ones for the person’s size and shape, but different ones depending on the color of the tee shirt.
And it speaks to the larger point that humans are not the only animals with a sophisticated language system. Ours may be the most complex, but it’s only one among many other, non human descriptive languages.
1 chimps | |
(非洲)黑猩猩( chimp的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 chirps | |
鸟叫,虫鸣( chirp的第三人称单数 ); 啾; 啾啾 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 shrieks | |
n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 predator | |
n.捕食其它动物的动物;捕食者 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 detailed | |
adj.详细的,详尽的,极注意细节的,完全的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 predators | |
n.食肉动物( predator的名词复数 );奴役他人者(尤指在财务或性关系方面) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 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: |
|
|
本文本内容来源于互联网抓取和网友提交,仅供参考,部分栏目没有内容,如果您有更合适的内容,欢迎 点击提交 分享给大家。