字神帝國英語天地

 今日主題：Wolves Have Local Howl Accents  狼語入門

 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。

 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/voas…/2016/20160418sa_earth.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：
"She has this thing where she goes to a movie theater, watching a horror movie and there was a wolf howling in the background.” University of Cambridge zoologist Arik Kershenbaum, talking about his collaborator Holly Root-Gutteridge, a biologist at Syracuse University. She said to herself, 'Well, that's wrong. That's clearly a European wolf and not a North American wolf like it should be in the scene.'"
當她去電影院去看一部恐怖電影的時候帶著這個東西，背景音樂裡出現了一聲狼嚎。這是劍橋大學動物學家艾瑞克，他正在談論自己同事奧利，錫拉丘茲大學的一位生物學家。她對自己說，嗯，這不對啊。這明明就是一隻歐洲狼的叫聲，不是電影場景裡應該出現的北美狼啊。

Slight variations in the way we speak allow us to tell whether someone is from Boston or New York just by listening to them. The same turns out to be true for the animals known as canids, which includes wolves, dogs and coyotes. They all howl to communicate—but those howls vary. Canids can tell which howls belong to their known associates and which belong to strangers.
大家說話方式上的細微差異，使我們可以通過聽對方說話而分辨出談話的人是來自波士頓還是紐約。同樣的道理也適用於某些動物，比如犬科動物，包括狼，狗，土狼等等。它們通過嚎叫進行交流——但是這些叫聲也是有區別的。犬科動物可以通過嚎叫聲來分辨出哪些是同伴那些是敵人。

So Kershenbaum and Root-Gutteridge decided to categorize the howls of different canids around the world. Together with colleagues, they compiled recordings of more than 2,000 canid howls, including European wolves, Mexican wolves, arctic wolves, dingoes, coyotes, golden jackals, domestic dogs, New Guinea singing dogs, and more. A computer program sorted the howls into different types. The study was published in the journal Behavioral Processes.
所以Kershenbaum 和Root-Gutteridge決定分類整理一下全世界不同犬科動物的嚎叫聲音。和同事們一起努力，他們彙編了超過2000種犬科動物的嚎叫聲，其中包 括歐洲狼，墨西哥狼，北極狼，澳大利亞犬，美國西部小郊狼，黃金胡狼，家犬，新幾內亞唱歌犬等。他們用計算機程序分選了這些嚎叫聲音文件。該研究已經發表 在《行為過程》雜誌上。

Based on the analysis, canids use 21 different kinds of howls to communicate. If you think of the howls as words, then all canids have the same vocabulary—but each species or sub-species has its own unique dialect. Some words are more common in one dialect, while other words are more common in another dialect and so on. By matching dialect with species and geography, researchers could monitor endangered species, like red wolves, just by listening.
基於這種分析，犬科動物共使用了21種不同的嚎叫聲影進行同類交流。如果你把這些嚎叫聲音想像成為某種語言，那麼所有的犬科動物就擁有的是同樣的詞彙—— 但是每個種或者亞種又都有各自獨特的方言。一種方言中的某些詞很常見，但是另一種方言中可能常見的就是另外一些詞，以此類推。通過比對這些具備方言的品種 和地理環境，研究人員們就可以僅僅通過監聽聲音，對一些瀕危的品種，比如像是紅狼，進行監控。

[AK:] "Being able to distinguish between the howls of a coyote and the howls of a red wolf opens the possibility for techniques of passive monitoring, passive population monitoring, using acoustics."
能夠區分草原狼和紅狼的嚎叫，就為過去被動的監控，被動的種群監測等技術開啟了新方法，比如採用聲音監控。

Meanwhile, ranchers have tried to broadcast specific howls to discourage grey wolves from feasting on their livestock, but it's never been successful.
同時，農場主們也已經開始嘗試用播放特殊的嚎叫聲來防止大灰狼偷吃他們的牲畜，儘管這種方法還沒有試驗成功。

[AK:] "Because we don't really know what message we're conveying to the wolves when we play back an arbitrary howl. For all we know, we could be playing back a howl that means come and eat, there's lots of interesting food over here."
因為當播放一段人類主觀選擇的嚎叫聲時，我們並不是真的了解我們此刻傳達給這些狼們的信息究竟是什麼。我們只是知道，我們播放了一段嚎叫聲，也許內容是說 來吃吧，這有好多好吃的啊!

The research could thus finally bring peace to the conflict between ranchers and wolves, by finally speaking to the predators in their own language.
如果最後能通過和捕食者之間進行同種語言的交流，這項研究最終會因此緩和農場主和狼群之間的矛盾。