Unicorns of the Sea Reveal Sound Activities
03:16來自科學英語世界
Unicorns of the Sea Reveal Sound Activities
海洋中的獨角獸的聲音活動
[CLIP: 「Bye, Buddy. I hope you find your dad.」]
再見，好朋友。我希望你能找到你的爸爸。
[CLIP: 「Thanks, Mr. Narwhal.」]
謝謝Narwhal先生。
In real life, narwhals don’t speak English, like the one bidding farewell to Will Ferrell’s character in the movie Elf. Instead, they sound more like this:
在現實世界中，獨角鯨不說英語，就像電影《Elf》中告別Will Ferrell角色的那個人，它們像這樣發出的聲音：
[CLIP: Whistles]
口哨聲
That’s an audio clip recorded by scientists last summer under the icy waters of Northwest Greenland.
這是科學家去年夏天在格陵蘭島西北部冰冷的海水下錄製的一段音頻。
「If we want to describe what animals are doing, we first better understand what sounds are telling us.」
「如果我們想要描述動物在做什麼，我們首先要知道聲音告訴了我們什麼。」
Evgeny Podolskiy, a geophysicist at Hokkaido University in Japan. Podolskiy and his colleagues study the soundscape of glacial fjords. They are noisy places, where icebergs crash into the ocean and air bubbles fizz out of melting ice. These fjords are also home to narwhals.
Evgeny Podolskiy是日本北海道大學的地球物理學家。Podolskiy和他的同事研究了冰川峽灣下的聲音。這裡充滿噪聲，冰川劃入大海，融化的冰發出氣泡。這海灣也是獨角鯨的家。
The animals are sometimes called unicorns of the sea because of their single, long spiraled tusk. And they are shy, which makes them hard to study. So Podolskiy teamed up with local Inuit hunters, who snuck up on narwhals in kayaks and captured audio.
這些動物有時也被稱為海洋中的獨角獸，原因是它們那唯一長長的螺旋狀的尖刺。它們很害羞，這讓我們很難研究。所以Podolskiy和當地的因紐特獵人組隊，他們能坐獨木舟提取獨角鯨的聲音。
[CLIP: Echolocation]
回聲定位
That’s the sound of a narwhal looking for food using echolocation, like a dolphin or a bat.
這是獨角鯨使用回聲定位在搜尋食物，像海豚和蝙蝠一樣。
[Clip: Terminal buzz]
最後的嗡嗡聲
And that’s a narwhal closing in on its prey, which it vacuums up into its toothless mouth.
這是獨角鯨靠近它的獵物，獵物被吸進無牙的嘴裡。
「It starts sounding like, to my ear, like a chainsaw or something: crrk, crrk, crrk, crrk. It’s so many little clicks that we cannot even distinguish them. And this is recognized as foraging-related sound, used also by other animals. For example, other delphinoids or bats, they do the same trick. Because when they approach the target, the prey—which is, for narwhals, Arctic cod or Greenland halibut—they want to update their knowledge about the position of the target more frequently, because they target it moving. And they need to suck it in. That’s why this interval is getting shorter. And we even—by using some simple assumptions in the equation—can know how far the animal is from the target.」
「在我聽來，它開始的聲音像鋸子鋸什麼似的，咔嚓咔嚓咔嚓咔嚓。還有很多小咔噠聲我們甚至不能辨別出來。它被認為是覓食相關的聲音，其他動物也使用。例如，其他海豚或蝙蝠，它們也會做同樣的事情。原因是它們靠近目標，獵物，對於獨角鯨來說是北極鱈魚或格陵蘭大比目魚，它們更加頻繁的更新目標的位置，原因是目標在移動。獨角鯨要吸它們進嘴巴。所以後來為什麼後來間隔變短了。甚至我們可以在方程中使用一些簡單的假設來了解到動物與目標的距離。」
The whistles you heard earlier are thought to be social calls, individuals communicating with other narwhals. The researchers reported these observations in [JGR] Oceans.
早期聽到的口哨聲被認為是社交信號，是個體獨角鯨之間的交流。這一研究發布在海洋觀測雜誌上。
「There are still sounds that we don’t know 『What do they mean?』 And there are several like this.」
「仍然有些聲音我們不知道它是什麼意思，有這些例子。」
Podolskiy says that listening to narwhals is a first step toward understanding this mysterious whale and how it will cope as climate change, shipping and other human activities alter its Arctic home.
Podolskiy說道聆聽獨角鯨首先第一步是去理解這神秘的鯨魚，它是與如何應對氣候變化、海事和人類活動在它們北極家園活動的。
「There are all these things taking place right now in the region which will affect, somehow, these animals. But we have no clue even about the state or the previous state of these animals. So if we want to learn what’s going to happen, we better start now. And I hope this is where sound monitoring can help us to learn more about these still mysterious creatures.」
「這些事情都正在這些地區出現並影響這些動物。但是我們甚至不知道這些動物的狀態或以前的狀態。所以。如果我們想知道將會發生什麼，我們最好現在開始關注。我希望聲音檢測可以幫助我們更多地理解這些仍然神秘的生物。」