科学美国人60秒 SSS 放屁甲虫 毒气般的存在（在线收听）

Daylight Brings Toxic Beetles Together For Safety

If you’re a skunk, or fox, or very strange person, and you poke your nose under a rock in the desert Southwest looking for something to eat, you might be surprised to see dozens of bright blue and red beetles scurrying to and fro. And you might be really curious as they quickly turn their butts toward you.

如果你是一只臭鼬，一只狐狸，或者是一个非常奇怪的人，当你在西南部沙漠的一块岩石下寻找食物时，可能会惊讶地发现几十只鲜艳的蓝色和红色的甲虫跑来跑去。你可能真的很好奇，因为他们很快就把屁股转向你。

But the curiosity wouldn’t last long: a couple thousandths of a second later, a fusillade of boiling hot, toxic spray would drive off both you and your musings.

但好奇心不会持续太久:几千秒之后，一股滚烫的、有毒的喷剂会驱散你和你的沉思。

The insects with the spraying butts are fittingly named bombardier beetles. And they can fire off 500 pulses per second of caustic defensive chemicals. What also makes them unusual is that, even though the nocturnal beetles are solitary by night, dozens or even hundreds of them—of various bombardier species—snuggle together under rocks during the day.

这种有喷射屁股的昆虫被称为放屁甲虫。它们每秒能发射500次腐蚀性防御化学物质。另一个不同寻常之处在于，尽管夜间活动的甲虫在夜间是独居的，但白天却有数十甚至数百种不同种类的放屁甲虫依偎在岩石下。

“It's actually a fairly unusual phenomenon for different species to regularly associate with one another.”

“对于不同的物种来说，经常彼此联系是一种相当不寻常的现象。”

University of Arizona entomologist Wendy Moore.

亚利桑那大学昆虫学家温迪·摩尔说道。

“But these guys are sheltering together and they're actually doing it intentionally you know because they have more options. There's plenty of options within the habitat that they could actually segregate out by species, and they don’t.”

“但这些家伙躲在一起，实际上它们是有意这样做的，因为他们会有更多的选择。在栖息地中有很多选择，它们实际上可以根据物种进行隔离，但它们没有。

In fact, when Moore and her colleagues put beetles into a setting where they had cozy solitary hiding places, aswell as hiding places already packed with other beetles, the newcomers invariably chose to shelter with others under the crowded rocks. The study is in the journal PLOS One.

事实上，当摩尔和同事们把甲虫放到一个舒适的单独的藏身之处，或者已经挤满其他甲虫的藏身之处时，新来者总是选择和其他甲虫一起躲在拥挤的岩石下。这项研究发表在PLOS One杂志上。

Moore says buddying up may help protect the insects from predators.

摩尔说，亲近可能有助于保护昆虫免受捕食者的伤害。

“Bombardier beetles produce benzoquinones which are really powerful as a matter of defense, but these other beetles produce other kinds of defensive chemicals that probably contribute to a big chemical cocktail for a vertebrate predator that might find them during the day.”

“放屁甲虫会产生苯并醌类化合物，作为一种防御手段，苯并醌类化合物非常强大，但这些甲虫也会产生其他种类的防御性化学物质，这些化学物质可能会为脊椎动物捕食者提供一种巨大的化学混合物，导致可能会在白天找到它们。”

In addition, a lone beetle, no matter how brightly colored, might not scare off a predator as effectively as a whole bunch of beetles.

此外，一只单独的甲虫，不管它的颜色有多鲜艳，都不可能像一群甲虫那样有效地吓跑捕食者。

“If you imagine being a predator, even a human, turning over a rock and seeing hundreds of these blue and red beetles going in every direction, that serves as a bigger advertisement to them of their toxicity. It may help them be able to avoid attack.”

如果你想象自己是一个捕食者，甚至是一个人，翻过一块石头，看到数以百计的蓝色和红色甲虫朝各个方向移动，这有助于扩大它们的毒性。可能有助于它们避免攻击。”

So whatever you can say about an encounter with these fearsome little insects, you can’t say that you weren’t warned.

所以无论你能说什么关于遇到这些可怕的小昆虫，你不能说没有收到警告哦~