英语听力：自然百科 Bees Key to Better Missiles 蜜蜂：新武器的启示（在线收听） |
Honey bees are fairly placid insects when left alone. But if antagonized, they will react violently. Researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia are working to better understand honey bees’ vision, navigation, and, in particular, aggressive behavior. They hope this can be replicated in new defense technologies. Normally bees are rather peaceful creatures, when they are off foraging for food for the hive, for example. But if they detect an alarm pheromone from another bee, the group acts as one.
"(Do you) simply blindly aim towards a target and fly as fast as possible towards it? Or do you do something a little more intelligent like computer, an interception course? "
Their flight dynamic changes, and they resemble mini missiles or aircrafts. The team is filming bees flying towards fast moving objects, then watching the footage in slow motion and plotting the insects’ flight paths on computer diagrams.
"So we want to do it with aggressive bees, so that the trajectory that we have is direct as we can see. Just how it is that they’re visualizing the target possibly, and how they’re following it to attack it. "
The scientists will then look inside the bees’ brains to try to find the neurons that control this behavior.
"It seems to be a system that's beautifully honed by evolution to sense these moving targets, and then go for them."
The research has previously been funded by NASA, and now has funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, and its practical potential is diverse. It could be used for aerial surveillance, weather monitoring and minerals exploration. The research could also lead to planetary explorer robots that are able to behave autonomously in the same way as insects. |
| 原文地址：http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/zrbaike/2009/255496.html |