「Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow.」
– Jerry Spinelli, Writer
「活在今天，不是昨天，也不是明天，佔據你的每一刻，別把它租給明天。」
– 傑瑞．史賓納利 (作家)
Hi, I'm Scientific American podcast editor Steve Mirsky. Here’s a short piece from the May 2018 issue of the magazine, in the section we call Advances: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science, Technology and Medicine:
大家好，我是《科學美國人》播客編輯史蒂夫·米爾斯基。以下是收錄在本雜誌2018年5月刊「進展：科學、技術和醫學前沿快報」版塊中的一篇短文。
Orangutan Medicine by Doug Main
《紅毛猩猩的藥》 作者：道格·梅恩
Medicine is not exclusively a human invention. Many other animals, from insects to birds to nonhuman primates, have been known to self-medicate with plants and minerals for infections and other conditions. Behavioral ecologist Helen Morrogh-Bernard of the Borneo Nature Foundation has spent decades studying the island's orangutans and says she has now found evidence they use plants in a previously unseen medicinal way.
During more than 20,000 hours of formal observation, Morrogh-Bernard and her colleagues watched 10 orangutans occasionally chew a particular plant (which is not part of their normal diet) into a foamy lather and then rub it into their fur. The apes spent up to 45 minutes at a time massaging the concoction onto their upper arms or legs. The researchers believe this behavior is the first known example of a nonhuman animal using a topical analgesic.
藥物並不是人類的獨家發明。從昆蟲到鳥類再到非人靈長類動物，目前已知有很多其它動物都會用植物和礦物質來自我治療感染和其他疾病。婆羅洲自然基金會的行為生態學家海倫·莫羅·伯納德研究了婆羅洲紅毛猩猩數十年，她現在發現這些猩猩以一種此前從未見過的治療方法來使用植物治病。
在兩萬多個小時的正式觀察中，莫羅·伯納德和同事觀察到10隻紅毛猩猩偶爾會咀嚼一種特殊植物，這種植物並不是它們的日常飲食，它們會將該植物嚼成泡沫然後擦在毛皮上。這些猩猩每次花45分鐘在上臂和腿上揉擦這種調配品。研究人員認為這種行為是目前已知的非人類動物使用外用止痛藥的首個案例。
Local people use the same plant—Dracaena cantleyi, an unremarkable-looking shrub with stalked leaves—to treat aches and pains. Morrogh-Bernard's co-authors studied its chemistry. They added extracts from the plant to human cells that had been grown in a dish and had been artificially stimulated to produce cytokines, an immune system response that causes inflammation and discomfort. The plant extract reduced the production of several types of cytokines, the scientists reported the finding in a study published last November in Scientific Reports.
The results suggest that orangutans use the plant to reduce inflammation and treat pain. Such findings could help identify plants and chemicals that might be useful for human medications.
當地人用同一種植物——龍血樹，一種葉子長在莖上的不起眼灌木——來治療疼痛。莫羅·伯納德的合作作者研究了這種植物的化學成分。他們將龍血樹提取物加入人類細胞中，這些人類細胞在培養器皿中培養，並通過人工刺激產生細胞因子，這是引發炎症和不適的一種免疫系統反應。龍血樹提取物降低了多種細胞因子的產量，科學家將這一結果發表在《科學報告》2017年11月刊上。
研究結果表明，紅毛猩猩用龍血樹來減輕炎症和治療疼痛。此類發現有助於識別可能對人類藥物有用的植物和化學物質。
In creatures such as insects, the ability to self-medicate is almost certainly innate; woolly bear caterpillars infected with parasitic flies seek out and eat plant substances that are toxic to the flies. But more complex animals may learn such tricks after an initial discovery by one member of their group. For example, an orangutan may have rubbed the plant on its skin to try to treat parasites and realized that it also had a pleasant pain-killing effect. That behavior may then have been passed on to other orangutans. Because this type of self-medication is seen only in south-central Borneo, Morrogh-Bernard says, it was probably learned locally.
對昆蟲這類生物來說，自我治療能力幾乎必然是天生的；被寄生蠅感染的燈蛾毛蟲會尋求並食用對寄生蠅有毒的植物。但更複雜的動物可能是在群體中一名成員首先發現後，才學會這種訣竅。舉例來說，一隻紅毛猩猩可能會用一種植物在皮膚上揉搓試圖去除寄生蟲，然後發現這種植物還有不錯的止痛效果。之後，這種行為可能傳給了其它紅毛猩猩。莫羅·伯納德表示，因為人們只在婆羅洲中南部地區看到過這種自我治療，所以這很可能是種局部學習行為。
That was Orangutan Medicine by Doug Main.
以上是道格·梅恩發表的文章《紅毛猩猩的藥》。
sight‧se‧er /ˈsaɪtsiːə $ -ər/ noun [countable] someone, especially a tourist, who is visiting a famous or interesting place 觀光者，遊覽者。► see thesaurus at touristExamples from the Corpus
sightseer• Aesop kept craning his neck about like a sightseer all the way down, until it broke.• The cries of the annoyed sightseers dying away behind them, they left the wharf and slid off downstream.• This is reflected in the fairs, festivals and sports events which are held throughout the year and which attract many sightseers.• A crowd of sightseers had gathered on the street across from the burning houses.• And police have been mobilised to keep order among hundreds of sightseers.• Some problems were the result of sightseers splashing through submerged roads in vehicles.• A uniformed man, there to ward off sightseers, saluted.滑屏敲字，看似重複，卻是最好的鞏固和記憶，請留言告知：
你記住了一句格言；
你聽懂了一句語音；
你明白了一個單詞；
你發現了一個錯誤；
……，……。
我們期待您的收穫、點評、建議和分享，謝謝！
1、本期名言欄目取自傑瑞．史賓納利 (1941- ) 是美國童書作家，1991 年以《馬尼亞克傳奇》榮獲美國紐伯瑞兒童文學金獎，1998 年再以《小殺手》榮獲紐伯瑞兒童文學銀獎。
2、本期新聞速遞欄目取自Scientific American — 60-Second Science. 本期Word of the day欄目取自Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online。
本文僅供學習交流參考，未用作商業用途。如對本公眾號發布的文章存有異議，歡迎留言告知，編輯將在24小時內回復處理。
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長按二維碼 關注外刊看世界
掌握語言，是為了換一個視角看世界
也許長，但必定值得耐心學習
願你看待這個星球的眼光能夠批判且不同