?Birds become good at avoiding danger by eavesdropping on the alarm calls of other birds—and the learning occurs without even seeing their peers or predators. Christopher Intagliata reports.?鳥類通過偷聽別的鳥類的警報叫聲而變得善于躲避危險,這種學(xué)習(xí)行為甚至可以發(fā)生在見不到它們的同類及捕食者的時候。克里斯托弗·因塔利亞塔報道。
? 撰文\播音:克里斯托弗·因塔利亞塔(Christopher Intagliata) 翻譯:邱燕寧 審校:張清越 People speak thousands of languages in the world today. And same goes for the bird world.? 當(dāng)今,人類世界有成千上萬種語言。鳥類世界也是如此。 "Each bird species has effectively its own language." Andy Radford, a professor of behavioral ecology at the University of Bristol. "And there might be similarities between some languages just as there are in the human world. And then there are other languages that sound extremely different, even though they're conveying exactly the same meaning." “每種鳥類都有自己的語言。”安迪·雷德福,布里斯托爾大學(xué)行為生態(tài)學(xué)教授說。“一些語言之間可能有相似之處,就像人類世界一樣。還有一些語言聽起來非常不同,盡管它們表達(dá)的意思完全一樣。” In fact some birds are known to pick up on the "language" of other species…in particular, they've learned to detect danger by eavesdropping on the alarm calls of other birds. 事實上,有一些鳥類已經(jīng)學(xué)會了其他物種的語言,尤其是,它們學(xué)會了通過偷聽其它鳥類的警報叫聲來探測危險。 Radford and his colleagues wanted to investigate how that learning occurs. So they first played an alarm call that fairy wrens, an Australian bird, shouldn't be familiar with - a computer-generated alarm call <> meant to mimic a bird's. The unfamiliar sound had no effect on the fairy wrens. 雷德福和他的同事們想研究這種學(xué)習(xí)是如何發(fā)生的。因此,他們首先播放了一段仙女鷯鶯(fairy wrens,一種澳大利亞鳥類)不應(yīng)該熟悉的警報聲,這是一種計算機(jī)生成的警報聲,旨在模仿鳥兒的叫聲。這種不熟悉的聲音對仙女鷯鶯沒有任何影響。 But then the researchers paired the synthetic call with a chorus of alarm calls the wrens would recognize. <> And after this training, the sound of the initially unfamiliar synthetic call alone <?was enough to send the birds ducking HA! for cover. The results are in the journal?Current Biology. [Dominique A. Potvin et al.,?Birds Learn Socially to Recognize Heterospecific Alarm Calls by Acoustic Association] 但隨后,研究人員將合成的叫聲與鷯鶯能夠識別的警報叫聲進(jìn)行了配對播放。這次訓(xùn)練后,最初不熟悉的合成聲現(xiàn)在即使單獨(dú)播放也足以讓鳥躲避尋求掩護(hù)。研究結(jié)果發(fā)表在《當(dāng)代生物學(xué)》雜志上。 Radford says the study shows birds can learn from their peers, without ever seeing them…or a predator either. "And so I think that's the coolest thing of all, is that you can learn with your eyes shut about something really important in the natural world."? 雷德福說,這項研究表明,鳥類可以向同伴甚至者捕食者學(xué)習(xí),哪怕看不到它們。“我認(rèn)為最酷的事情是,即使閉上眼睛,你依然可以學(xué)習(xí)自然界中真正重要的東西。”