万物简史 第644期:一个星球,一次实验(5)

（单词翻译）

Then in 1939, by happy coincidence two separate birding enthusiasts¹, in widely separated locations, came across lone² survivors³ just two days apart.

接着，1939年，有两个狂热的鸟类爱好者仅仅在相隔两天的时间里，

They both shot the birds, and that was the last that was ever seen of Bachman's warblers.

分别在两个相距很远的地点巧遇了几只幸存的虫森莺，他们不约而同地向这些鸟开了枪。

The impulse to exterminate⁴ was by no means exclusively American.

这种灭绝行为并不仅仅发生在美国。

In Australia, bounties⁵ were paid on the Tasmanian tiger (properly the thylacine), a doglike creature with distinctive⁶ "tiger" stripes across its back,

在澳大利亚，一直在悬赏捕杀塔斯马尼亚虎（确切的称谓是袋狼），一种长得像狗，背部有明显的老虎条纹的动物

until shortly before the last one died, forlorn and nameless, in a private Hobart zoo in 1936.

直到过不多久它们中的最后一只于1936年悄无声息地死在霍巴特的一家私家动物园。

Go to the Tasmanian Museum today and ask to see the last of this species

今天，如果你去塔斯马尼亚博物馆兼美术馆要求看一眼最后一只这种动物

the only large carnivorous marsupial⁷ to live into modern times—and all they can show you are photographs.

惟一生存到现代的大型肉食有袋动物——他们所能展示给你的仅仅是这种动，物的照片和一段61秒钟长的老电影。

The last surviving thylacine was thrown out with the weekly trash.

最后一只存活下来的袋狼死了以后已经随每周清理一次的垃圾扔掉了。

I mention all this to make the point that if you were designing an organism to look after life in our lonely cosmos⁸,

我所以提这一切，为的是说明，如果你在打算委派哪种生物去照料我们这个寂寞宇宙中的生命，

to monitor where it is going and keep a record of where it has been, you wouldn't choose human beings for the job.

监测它们正在去往何方，记录它们去过何处，你不会选择人类来担当这一项工作。

But here's an extremely salient point: we have been chosen, by fate or Providence⁹ or whatever you wish to call it.

但是，无可改变的事实是：我们已经被选中了，不管是命中注定，还是天意眷顾，抑或你希望称做任何别的原因。

As far as we can tell, we are the best there is.

就我们所知，我们是最优秀的。

We may be all there is. It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme¹⁰ achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously¹¹.

我们也许是最有智慧的，我们也许是万物之灵长，同时也是万物最可怕之噩梦，想到这一点真令人沮丧。

Because we are so remarkably¹² careless about looking after things, both when alive and when not, we have no idea

我们对于自己的照料工作是如此的漫不经心，无论它们活着的时候还是死了以后，

really none at all—about how many things have died off permanently¹³, or may soon, or may never, and what role we have played in any part of the process.

究竟有多少种生物已经灭绝，或即将灭绝，或永远不会灭绝，在此过程中我们究竟扮演何种角色，我们都一无所知——真的是一无所知。