TED演讲:嘻哈音乐如何帮助我们理解科学(3)

Now, it was so bad that this was the headline of the "New York Times" science section, August, 1990.

这件事情的影响如此广泛，使它成为了《纽约时报》1990年8月刊科学板块的头条。

"Mating for Life? It's not for the Birds or the Bees." We had to come up with new definitions.

“终身厮守？鸟类和蜜蜂才不适用。”我们需要想出一个新的定义。

The situation where an individual would change partners,

鸟类换掉他们的伴侣，

either between breeding seasons or just simply because they didn't like their partner anymore?

要么是发生在交配的季节，要么仅仅只因为他们不再喜欢各自的伴侣。

We now call this "serial¹ monogamy." I didn't know it was going to be this funny.

我们现在把它称作“系列一夫一妻制”。我不知道这个发现这么有趣。

The situation where we know the male and female pair together

我们知道雌雄配对在一起，

and all the babies belong to both partners? We call that "genetic² monogamy."

那么所有的鸟宝宝都属于这对父母，我们把它称作“遗传性一夫一妻制”。

And we now recognize that it only holds true for about 14 percent of the songbird species,

然而我们现在认识到这个数据，在鸣禽种类中只有14%是正确的，

which we were very certain were truly monogamous. And with this reclassification,

而我们曾经确信这些鸟类是严格的一夫一妻制。随着这次修正，

we realized that in a lot of those field observations where we saw a male and female sharing a nest,

我们意识到在野外观察的大多数事例中，我们看到的雌雄鸟同居，

comaintaining a territory, even provisioning offspring together,

共同捍卫自己的领土，甚至是共同养育后代，

often included a few baby birds that did not belong to the male partner.

这些幼鸟中通常有几个不是雄鸟的后代。

We call this "social monogamy." And the mechanism³ responsible? Extra-pair copulation.

我们把这种情况称为“社会性一夫一妻制”。其演化机制呢？额外配对。

1 serial   

n.连本影片，连本电视节目；adj.连续的

参考例句：

• A new serial is starting on television tonight.今晚电视开播一部新的电视连续剧。
• Can you account for the serial failures in our experiment?你能解释我们实验屡屡失败的原因吗？

2 genetic   

adj.遗传的，遗传学的

参考例句：

• It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
• Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。

3 mechanism   

n.机械装置；机构，结构

参考例句：

• The bones and muscles are parts of the mechanism of the body.骨骼和肌肉是人体的组成部件。
• The mechanism of the machine is very complicated.这台机器的结构是非常复杂的。