字神帝國英語天地

✿ 今日主題：Sperm Whales Congregate in Click-Based Cliques
抹香鯨根據聲音群居

✿ 托福聽力最好的課外教材：60-Second Science
堅持每天精聽一定會進步的哦!!

✿ MP3音檔：http://bit.ly/1Fed3pC
喜歡的同學，幫忙推或按讚哦~~

✿ 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：

✿ 建議方法：
1. 先聽兩三遍(不看文稿)
2. 再一句一句聽寫
3. 最後check文稿，看哪聽不出來，是單字還是該字的發音不熟。
4. 堅持天天聽，就能每天進步哦。

We humans are social creatures—we stick together. Family traditionally came first. Then more distant relatives. Then larger groups of unrelated individuals, connected by culture. But it turns out the same could be said for sperm whales. "So usually you find the female, and their mom and the grandmas and their aunts, and they all stay together for many years."
我們人類是群居性的動物——團結友愛。傳統而言，家庭是第一位的，然後才遠房親戚。之後，更大部分群體是不相關的個體，這些人由文化連接到一起。但是結果證明，抹香鯨也是這樣。「所以，你通常會發現雌性的抹香鯨，以及她的母親還有祖母、姑姑，會共同生活很多年。」
抹香鯨

Maurício Cantor, a biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He says those closely related family groups then seek out other families with similar behavior: "They tend to hang out or stay together with those who produce the same kinds of sounds." Meaning whale cliques are based on producing similar clicks.

Maurício Cantor是加拿大新斯科舍省哈利法克斯市的達爾豪西大學的一名生物學家。他說那些關係密切的家庭會尋找和自己行為相近的其他家庭：「他們會和發聲相同的群體一同玩耍或居住。」這也就意味著鯨魚派系是根據聲音劃分的。

And similarly clicking whales don't just hang out together, he says. They also emulate each other's songs, or codas. Meaning clans of whales evolve their own dialects—their own form of culture. And these dialects are key.
發生相近的鯨魚他們不僅一起玩耍，Cantor說。他們還互相模仿對方的歌聲和尾聲。這也就意味著鯨魚宗族在演變自己的方言——他們自己的文化。因為，這些方言是很重要的。

Cantor and colleagues built a computer simulation of generation after generation of virtual whales. And they found that no other factor—like genetics or mother-daughter teaching—could explain the emergence of the clans and dialects in real sperm whale society. The study appears in the journal Nature Communications.

Cantor和同事們建立了一套計算機程序來模擬一代又一代的鯨魚。他們發現，沒有任何的因素——例如遺傳或者母女相承——可以解釋在真實的抹香鯨群內，氏族和方言出現的。該研究已發表在《自然交流》雜誌上。

"I'm not trying to say that the types of culture the whale has are the same as human culture. Obviously human culture is much more diverse and complex and cumulative and symbolic. But it's very fascinating just to see that they can have some type of similarities, they can have their own type of culture." And maybe a better understanding of that whale culture, he says, might persuade a few human cultures to be a bit more conservation-minded, when it comes to whales.
「我並不是想說鯨魚的文化類型和我們人類是一樣的。很明顯人類的文化更加多元化、更加複雜，且更具有交流意義和象徵意義。但是僅僅看到兩者之間有很多相似 的地方，兩者都有自己的文化，這就很有趣。」或許更加深入的瞭解鯨魚的文化，可以，讓我們在談到鯨魚的時候，讓一些人類的文化變得保守一些。