【英语语言学习】人类与响蜜列鸟

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

This next story is about a unique relationship between people and a wild animal, a bird called the honeyguide. Like the name suggests, this bird will deliberately¹ guide people to honey. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports a new study by a woman who wanted to understand this unlikely game of follow the leader.

NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE²: Even as a kid, Claire Spottiswoode loved birds.

CLAIRE SPOTTISWOODE: I've been obsessed³ with birds since I was about seven, so by then I was already a well-established nerd (laughter).

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The kind of nerd who would go the lectures at her local bird club in Cape⁴ Town, South Africa. That's where a scientist came to talk about his research on an African bird called the greater honeyguide.

SPOTTISWOODE: And I attended as an 11-year-old child and, of course, was transfixed and enthralled⁵.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He explained that this small, grayish bird was legendary⁶. Stories had long told of how it knew the location of honeybee nests hidden inside of hollow tree trunks. It would tweet at people and flutter in front of them as it flew from tree to tree toward a bees nest. And the lecturer said this wasn't just a folktale. He'd done the first rigorous study.

SPOTTISWOODE: And by following honeyguides, human honey-hunters can really increase their rates of finding bees nest.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The idea of a wild bird communicating with people in this way seemed almost magical to Spottiswoode, and she learned the birds got something, too. After hunters subdued⁷ the bees with smoke and hacked⁸ open the tree to harvest the honey, the birds ate the discarded beeswax, their favorite food.

Spottiswoode grew up to become a researcher with the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and now she's done her own rigorous study of honeyguides in Mozambique. There, honey hunters who follow these birds rely on a distinctive⁹ call.

SPOTTISWOODE: It goes something like this (imitating honeyguide call) (laughter). So on the face of it, it's a rather unlikely noise.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Imitating honeyguide call).

GREENFIELDBOYCE: That's a honey-hunter in Mozambique looking for a guide. And he finds one, or maybe the chattering¹⁰ birds finds him. What Spottiswoode wondered is whether that strange call meant anything special to the bird. To find out, she did a study, comparing the birds response to the call with a response to other nonhuman and human sounds like these.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Foreign language spoken).

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He's saying, "honeyguide and human" in the local language. It turned out the random¹¹ sounds didn't really appeal to the birds. They'd guide people only about a third of the time. But when they heard...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Imitating honeyguide call).

GREENFIELDBOYCE: ...They guided people two-thirds of the time. Overall, making the special call more than tripled a hunter's chance of finding honey. The study is written up in the journal Science, but the dry analysis doesn't really capture how Spottiswoode felt as she talks to a little, wild bird that listened and led her through the trees.

SPOTTISWOODE: I don't think I've ever had as much fun I've had in my life (laughter). Yes, perhaps that shows what a sheltered life I've led, but it was tremendously good fun.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Honeyguides don't get trained like falcons¹². No one breeds them like dogs, yet somehow they responded to specific human calls.

RICHARD WRANGHAM: This is really an extraordinary relationship.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Richard Wrangham is a biological anthropologist¹³ at Harvard University. He says, why would birds team up with humans?

WRANGHAM: The critical feature of the relationship is the fact humans have fire as well as axes.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The tools that let of them harvest honey. That's why Wrangham thinks this collaboration¹⁴ might go back more than a million years. The birds may have evolved an innate¹⁵ desire to guide people to honey. Still, they're probably not born knowing what human sounds to listen for. That's because people in different parts of Africa called the birds in different ways. For example, in Tanzania, people whistle at that the birds.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Whistling).

GREENFIELDBOYCE: So how does a wild bird learn which human sounds matter - maybe from other birds, but scientists aren't sure. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.

1 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 obsessed   

adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的

参考例句：

• He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
• The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。

4 cape   

n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风

参考例句：

• I long for a trip to the Cape of Good Hope.我渴望到好望角去旅行。
• She was wearing a cape over her dress.她在外套上披着一件披肩。

5 enthralled   

迷住，吸引住( enthrall的过去式和过去分词 )； 使感到非常愉快

参考例句：

• The child watched, enthralled by the bright moving images. 这孩子看着那明亮的移动的影像，被迷住了。
• The children listened enthralled as the storyteller unfolded her tale. 讲故事的人一步步展开故事情节，孩子们都听得入迷了。

6 legendary   

adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学）

参考例句：

• Legendary stories are passed down from parents to children.传奇故事是由父母传给孩子们的。
• Odysseus was a legendary Greek hero.奥狄修斯是传说中的希腊英雄。

7 subdued   

adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He seemed a bit subdued to me. 我觉得他当时有点闷闷不乐。
• I felt strangely subdued when it was all over. 一切都结束的时候，我却有一种奇怪的压抑感。

8 hacked   

生气

参考例句：

• I hacked the dead branches off. 我把枯树枝砍掉了。
• I'm really hacked off. 我真是很恼火。

9 distinctive   

adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的

参考例句：

• She has a very distinctive way of walking.她走路的样子与别人很不相同。
• This bird has several distinctive features.这个鸟具有几种突出的特征。

10 chattering   

n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The teacher told the children to stop chattering in class. 老师叫孩子们在课堂上不要叽叽喳喳讲话。
• I was so cold that my teeth were chattering. 我冷得牙齿直打战。

11 random   

adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动

参考例句：

• The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。

12 falcons   

n.猎鹰( falcon的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Peregrine falcons usually pluck the feathers and strip the flesh off their bird prey. 游隼捕到鸟类猎物时，通常是先拔掉它们的羽毛，再把肉撕下来。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Though he doubted the wisdom of using falcons, Dr. de la Fuente undertook the project. 虽然德·拉·富恩特博士怀疑使用游隼是否明智，但他还是执行了这项计划。 来自辞典例句

13 anthropologist   

n.人类学家，人类学者

参考例句：

• The lecturer is an anthropologist.这位讲师是人类学家。
• The anthropologist unearthed the skull of an ancient human at the site.人类学家在这个遗址挖掘出那块古人类的颅骨。

14 collaboration   

n.合作，协作；勾结

参考例句：

• The two companies are working in close collaboration each other.这两家公司密切合作。
• He was shot for collaboration with the enemy.他因通敌而被枪毙了。

15 innate   

adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的

参考例句：

• You obviously have an innate talent for music.你显然有天生的音乐才能。
• Correct ideas are not innate in the mind.人的正确思想不是自己头脑中固有的。