字神帝國英語天地

👑字神老師推薦：加強英聽力最好的課外教材：60-Second Science
👑康康精選各考試中重要主題，堅持精聽一定會進步的哦!
👑今日主題：Ravens Crow with Individual Flair / 有著天才個性的烏鴉

🍄建議堅聽四步驟：
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。

🍄MP3音檔 (按右鍵可下載聽)：喜歡的同學，幫忙推或按讚哦~~
https://goo.gl/9eEyqT

🍄只有音檔怎夠，有聽不懂地方，不用怕，老師都幫你準備好中英文稿了哦：
🍄中英文稿：
There's a well-known conspiracy of ravens—that's what you call a group of ravens—that likes to hang out near a zoo in the Austrian Alps. Every day these ravens conspire to steal the food that's set out for the wild boars there.
烏鴉有一個眾所周知的秘密—就是大家所稱的一群烏鴉—喜歡在奧地利阿爾卑斯山的動物園附近閒逛。這些烏鴉每天都會竊取那裡為野豬準備的食物。
"So we have a really great opportunity to really watch those individuals daily."
University of Vienna cognitive biologist Markus Boeckle. He spends lots of time ignoring the zoo animals and watching the ravens.
“所以我們每天都有非常好的機會來真正關注他們。”維也納大學認知生物學家Markus Boeckle說。他不顧其它動物，而花了大量時間來觀賞烏鴉。
"And what we found is that every time they come they do those food calls, which is very typical for the ravens when they are close to potentially dangerous food resources." [Raven haa call sounds]
“我們發現，每次烏鴉來的時候，都會呼叫，這對烏鴉來說非常典型，因為他們在接近潛在危險的食物資源。”
The ravens use these calls to recruit their buddies to show up, both to reduce potential dangers from predators and to overpower dominant ravens who might be trying to hoard all the food for themselves. But Boeckle and his colleagues began to suspect the calls revealed other information.
烏鴉使用這些呼叫，來招募他們的夥伴，這樣既減少了來自掠食者的潛在危險，也能壓制可能試圖為自己囤積所有食物的強勢烏鴉。但Boeckle和他的同事開始懷疑，這些呼叫洩露了其他資訊。
"So we had the feeling we could say, this is a juvenile, this is a sub-adult, and this is most probably an adult, just by listening to the calls."
“所以我們有這種感覺，我們可以說，這是一個未成年烏鴉，這是一個次級成年人，而且這很可能是一個成年烏鴉，只是通過呼叫聲就能判斷出來。”
If the researchers could use the calls to distinguish among ravens, then perhaps the ravens themselves could do so too. So Boeckle and his team recorded the calls of around a hundred known individuals—all of which had previously been catalogued by weight, age and sex and were identifiable by colored leg bands.
如果研究人員可以使用這些呼叫來區分烏鴉，那麼烏鴉自己也可以這樣做。所以Boeckle和他的團隊，記錄了大約一百個已知個體的烏鴉呼叫聲—所有這些呼叫聲之前都按體重、年齡和性別進行了分類，並且可以通過彩色腿帶來進行識別。
The researchers combined that data with the acoustic properties of their calls and dumped everything into a computer program. And as they suspected, there were differences in the frequency, duration, and amplitude of the calls that could sort the ravens according to sex and age. The results were published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology. [Markus Boeckle, et al.. Raven food calls indicate sender's age and sex.]
研究人員將這些資料，與其呼叫的聲學特性相結合起來，並將所有內容都轉化為電腦程式。正如他們所懷疑的那樣，根據性別和年齡的不同，烏鴉呼叫的頻率，持續時間和振幅可能會有所不同。該研究結果發表在“動物學前沿”期刊上。
"So the benefit is, especially for birds like ravens who travel long distances every day, that whenever you encounter a new individual, or listen to a new individual, you are already able to categorize one of the birds just based on the calls…. So this really helps to assess whether you're going to be in an aggressive situation or whether you're going to be the more dominant individual, just by listening to the call."
“所以，這樣做的好處是，特別是像烏鴉這樣的鳥類，每天都要長途跋涉，每當遇到一個新的個體，或者聽一個新的個體時，就已經能夠根據呼叫，對其中一隻鳥進行分類。所以，這真的有助於評估對方是否處於侵略的狀態，或者對方是更強勢的個體—只是通過呼叫聲。
To be clear, the researchers showed that they could categorize ravens according to their calls, not that ravens actually do so. That's what Boeckle and his team are working on now.
事先說明，研究人員發現，他們可以根據呼叫對烏鴉進行分類，而烏鴉實際上並不是這樣做。這就是Boeckle和他的團隊現在正在開展的工作。
Still, the study shows that while a call can primarily refer to some external object, like food, it can also transmit additional social information. And since these sorts of calls are thought of as the precursors for language, this study might shed light on how a simple system for communication can evolve into something far more complex—such as me talking to you now.
儘管如此，研究表明，雖然呼叫主要是指某種外部對象，如食物，但它也可以傳送額外的社交資訊。而且，由於這些呼叫被認為是語言的雛型，本研究可能會闡明一個簡單的溝通系統，如何演變成更加複雜的事物—就如同我和你說話。