字神帝國英語天地

今日主題：Humans Are Superpredators in the Landscape of Fear / 人類的敬畏景觀效應

洪欣老師推薦：托福聽力最好的課外教材：60-Second Science

康康精選托福會考的主題，堅持每天精聽一定會進步的哦!!

建議方法：

1. 先聽兩三遍 (不看文稿)

2. 再一句一句聽寫 (每句都要聽寫數遍，直到寫出85%以上的字)

3. 最後check文稿，看哪聽不出來，單字沒背過，還是發音不熟。

4. 堅持天天聽，就能每天進步哦。

#科學人SSS

MP3音檔 (按右鍵可下載聽)：喜歡的同學，幫忙推或按讚哦~~

http://online1.tingclass.net/voaspe/…/20160925sa_science.mp3

只有音檔怎夠，聽不懂地方，不用怕，康康幫你準備好中英文稿了：

中英文稿：

Small carnivores—like foxes or raccoons or badgers—are themselves prey for larger predators—like wolves. So they spend time hiding instead of hunting. This influence that big predators have on their ecosystem is called a "landscape of fear." But humans are wiping out most of the world's big predators. Which you might assume is good news for the small ones.

小型食肉動物——像是狐狸或者浣熊或者獾——它們自己都是更大一些的食肉動物的食物——比如說狼。所以它們的大部分時間是躲藏而不是捕獵。這種大型捕食者對小型動物的生態系統的影響被稱為“敬畏景觀”。但是人類已經把這個世界大部分的大型捕食動物都毀滅的差不多了。或許你覺得這對小型食肉動物來講是個好消息。

But some researchers think that humans exert our own landscape of fear. Those foxes, raccoons and badgers just keep on hiding—only now, they're hiding from us. In reality, the situation may be far worse.

但是，一些研究人員認為，人類發揮我們自己的這種“敬畏景觀”作用了。狐狸，浣熊和獾只是保持繼續躲藏的狀態——只是當前時代下，它們躲著我們人類。在現實中，也許更糟。

“Humans kill these smaller carnivores, so things like raccoons and foxes that we have here in North America, European badgers that they have in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe, and we kill them at a rate that's four times greater than their conventional large carnivore predators…”

人類獵殺這些小型食肉動物，所以對於浣熊和狐狸這些動物我們在北美洲可以見到，歐洲獾在英國有，其它地方如歐洲也有，之後我們在那些地方對它們的獵殺率比它們傳統意義上的天敵大型食肉動物對它們的獵殺率要高4倍。

Liana Zanette of Western University in London, Ontario. "Because our killing of these smaller carnivores is kind of off the scale, we're considered the superpredator."

Liana Zanette，來自倫敦和安大略省的Western University大學。因為我們對這些小型食肉動物的獵殺是一種超標的狀態，所以我們應該把人類自己稱為一種超級食肉動物。

To see how humans have altered the landscape of fear, Zanette and her team traveled to a small forest that’s home to lots of European badgers near Oxford in the U.K. They used hidden speakers to broadcast the sounds of bears and wolves—two historic predators, both of which are no longer a threat.

為了查看人類是如何改變這種“敬畏景觀”， Zanette 和她的團隊來到一個小森林，那裡是許多歐洲獾的棲息地，就在英國的牛津郡附近。他們使用隱性對講機廣播熊和狐狸的叫聲——兩種傳統的大型食肉動物，現在在那裡，這兩種都已經不再對小型動物有生命威脅了。

They also played the sounds of sheep, dogs and people. Hidden cameras recorded the badgers’ willingness to look for food outside of their burrows as those sounds were played. They discovered that the badgers have retained some of their fear of bear sounds, and know that dogs still pose a threat. But they've lost their fear of wolves. "They treated the wolf calls just like the sheep calls."

他們還播放了綿羊，犬類和人類的聲音。隱藏的照相機記錄到了獾在有那些聲音存在下是願意出洞找尋食物的。他們還發現，這些獾還對熊的叫聲保留有一些恐懼，還知道犬類仍然具有一定危險性。但是他們對狼的恐懼已經不復存在。它們對狼叫的反應和聽到羊叫差不多。

Despite their fear of bears and dogs, the badgers still eventually went out to eat amid their sounds. But when they heard people "they would not emerge from their burrows at all until the human sounds were completely off. So they would cower in their burrows for the two hours that the sounds were on, waiting for those human sounds to go off." In other words, they were leery of bears but were downright terrified of us. The findings are in the journal Behavioral Ecology.

儘管它們還是對熊，犬類懷有敬畏的感覺，這些獾最後還是在伴有它們這些動物的叫聲存在下出來覓食。可是當它們聽到人類的聲音，它們只有在所有人類聲音都完全消失後才會從洞裡出來。所以它們在有人類聲音播放的兩小時裡，是躲在洞裡發抖等著那些人聲消失。換言之，它們對熊保持警覺，但是對我們人類是徹底的恐懼。他們的研究結果已發表在《行為生態學》雜誌上。

"The badgers recognize who their enemies are…they have recognized humans as their principle threat."

這些獾知道誰是它們的敵人，它們已經把人類當作它們生存的主要威脅。