（圖片侵刪）
||建議提前熟悉生詞
Funnel 漏鬥
Arachnid 蛛形綱動物
Convulsion 痙攣、抽搐
Venom (分泌的)毒液
Succumb 屈服、被壓垮
Mutation 變化、突變
Conspecific 同種
Mammal 哺乳動物
Berth 停泊處、錨位
Peptide 多肽結構、縮氨酸
Jurassic 侏羅紀（的）
Vertebrate 脊椎動物；脊椎動物的
Quirk 怪癖、急轉
||需要注意的詞組
Shake it off 甩掉、擺脫
Confer resistance to 對……具備抵抗性/耐受性
Whittle away 削減
Funnel-web spiders have a fearsome reputation. People bittenby these Australian arachnids suffer extreme pain, breathing problems, confusion, convulsionsanddangerously high blood pressure. Left untreated, the venom can kill within hours. Foryears, researchers assumed this lethal effect was an evolutionary accident. The venom, they presumed, evolved to help the spiders kill their prey— normally insects. Killing mammals was either just collateral damageor a form of protection against possible predators.
漏鬥蛛素來令人畏懼。被這種澳大利亞蛛形綱動物咬傷之後，傷者將承受劇痛，出現呼吸困難、頭腦混亂、抽搐甚至危及生命的高血壓等症狀。如果不加以治療，其毒液可在幾小時內致命。多年來，研究者認為這種致命性是漏鬥蛛進化過程中的意外事件。他們認為，經過進化，毒液可以幫助漏鬥蛛殺死獵物——通常是昆蟲。而哺乳動物死於漏鬥蛛毒液或許只是附帶傷害，又或者是漏鬥蛛面對潛在掠食者時的自我保護。
Funnel 漏鬥
Arachnid 蛛形綱動物
Convulsion 痙攣、抽搐
Venom (分泌的)毒液
Except that the venom does not, in general, kill mammals. Dogs, cats, mice, rabbits and guinea pigs all shake it off. It is only human beings and other primates that succumb. And there is another odd thing about it.Funnel-web-spider venom has thousands of components, but delta-hexatoxins,the specific molecules within it that kill people, are produced in particularly large quantities by sexually mature males during the breeding season—a time when they are barely feeding at all.
除此之外，漏鬥蛛毒液一般不至於殺死哺乳動物。貓、狗、鼠、兔以及豚鼠在遇到這種蜘蛛時都能輕易擺脫，只有人類和其他靈長類動物會束手就擒。另外還有一點比較奇怪，漏鬥蛛毒液有成千上萬種成分，但是其中的delta-hexatoxin的毒素分子是造成這種傷害的真兇。性成熟雄性個體在繁殖季節會產生大量該毒素，而在此期間，它們並不會進食。
Shake it off 甩掉、擺脫
Succumb 屈服、被壓垮
Putting these various facts together has led Bryan Fry of the University of Queensland to suggest, in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that the role of delta-hexatoxins in funnel-web venom is not to kill prey but rather as a sophisticated form of defence—and that, paradoxically, its deadliness to humans is because neither they nor their primate ancestors were, until recently, a threat to the spiders.
綜合以上各種因素，美國昆士蘭大學的Bryan Fry在《美國國家科學院院刊》上發表的文章中表示，漏鬥蛛毒液中的delta-hexatoxin分子並不是為了殺死獵物，而是一種複雜的防禦方式。矛盾的是，由於人類及其靈長類祖先向來沒有對漏鬥蛛構成威脅，反而令這種毒素對其擁有致命性。
Prey animals routinely attacked by venomous predators are under powerful pressure from natural selection. Any mutation which confers resistance to the venom will spread. This puts evolutionary pressure back onto the predator, encouraging the emergence of more potent venoms, which encourages further resistance and provokes further potency. And so on. Toxins directed against prey thus evolve rapidly.
經常被帶毒捕食者攻擊的獵物面對著巨大的自然選擇壓力。任何有助於抵抗毒素的變異都會在種群中遍布開來。反過來，這會給捕食者帶來進化壓力，刺激個體及種群進化出更有威力的毒素，循環往復，毒性與抗性之間不斷促進。因此，專門用於捕食獵物的毒素也在快速進化。
Mutation 變化、突變
Conferresistance to 對……具備抵抗性/耐受性
That, though, is not true for defensive venoms. Taking a single type of spider off its menu diminishes a predator’s potential to survive and reproduce only slightly. From this predator’s point of view the requirement to evolve resistance to a venom, particularly one that is not lethal, is therefore low. The spider’s interests, too, may be served by the evolution of non-lethal venom. A live predator that has learnt not to attack may be better than a dead one, which might then be replaced by a conspecific which has not learned that lesson. This is particularly true when the venom is directed towards animals that teach their young, as many mammals do, about what is and is not dangerous in the world. Get stung by a bee and you will surely advise your children to give bees a wide berth, even though bees are not predators.
但是對於用來防禦的毒液而言，情況並非如此。放棄捕食某種蜘蛛並不會對捕食者的生存繁殖造成太大影響。從這一角度考慮，捕食者沒有必要針對防禦性毒液進化出抗性，尤其當這種毒液不具有致命性時。而進化出非致命毒液或許也符合蜘蛛的利益--如果捕食者學會不去攻擊，那麼活的捕食者會比死的捕食者對蜘蛛更有利，因為如果捕食者被毒死則會有其它同種捕食者代替死去的捕食者對蜘蛛構成新的威脅。比如很多哺乳動物，在遭受毒液攻擊後會以此教育年幼個體關於世界上存在的危險。如果被蜜蜂蟄了，你肯定會讓你的孩子離蜜蜂遠點，即使蜜蜂算不上捕食者。
Conspecific 同種
Mammal 哺乳動物
Berth 停泊處、錨位
To pursue this idea, Dr Fry and his colleagues looked at the genetic sequences describing 22 types of delta-hexatoxin, extracted fromten species of funnel-webs. This let them analyse the peptides』 evolutionary histories. Funnel-webspiders are an ancient group, believed to have emerged about 150m years ago, near the end of the Jurassic period. Dr Fry’s analysis suggested that, around that time, delta-hexatoxin peptides were evolving rapidly, but have subsequently barely changed. This isconsistent with the idea that they were evolving into something which would discourage, but not kill, vertebrate predators such as mammals—a group that also appeared in the late Jurassic. Which is all well and good, but does not explain why funnel-web delta-hexatoxins are so deadly to people.
為了進一步印證這一思路，Fry博士與同事對照查看了10種漏鬥蛛分泌的22種delta-hexatoxin毒素的基因序列，從而研究其中多肽結構的進化歷程。漏鬥蛛是一種古老的生物群體，據悉大約出現在1億5千年前的侏羅紀晚期。Fry博士分析指出，大約在這一時期，delta-hexatoxin中的多肽結構在迅速進化，但是並沒有因此發生巨大變化。這一點與之前的設想一致，即，漏鬥蛛毒液經過進化並不致死，而是有助於驅趕脊椎動物捕食者，比如同期出現的哺乳動物。這一發現固然具有突破性，但是並不能解釋為什麼漏鬥蛛毒液會對人類如此致命。
Peptide 多肽結構、縮氨酸
Jurassic 侏羅紀（的）
Vertebrate 脊椎動物；脊椎動物的
The answer to this, Dr Fry suspects, is that until the arrival in Australia 65,000 years ago of human beings, funnel-web spiders had never encountered primates (of which that continent has no wild representatives) and so had had no chance to coevolve with them. In one sense,then, the fact funnel-web delta-hexatoxins are lethal to humans is indeed an unlucky accident caused by some quirk of primate biochemistry not shared with other groups of mammals. But if such co-evolution had taken place, it would have been in the interests of both sides for this lethality, too, to have been whittled away.
Fry博士猜測該問題的答案在於，6萬5千年前，澳洲大陸上還未出現人類的影子，也沒有野生靈長類動物的足跡，因此漏鬥蛛尚且沒有機會與之邂逅並和他們共同進化。那麼，從某種意義上講，漏鬥蛛毒液對人類的致命性的確是一個不幸的意外。而這種意外是由靈長類動物體內存在的某種區別於其他哺乳動物的特殊生物化學反應造成的。但是如果這種共同進化得以實現，這將符合漏鬥蛛和人類雙方的利益，因為毒液的致命性也會逐漸消失。
Quirk 怪癖、急轉
Whittle away 削減