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「竊聽」使松鼠更容易放輕鬆
似乎每次你看到一隻小松鼠，它總是忙忙碌碌：或奔向某個地方，或搜尋好吃的。然而，時刻身處自然也意味著：「它們也是許多食肉動物的美味佳餚。」
基思·塔爾文（Keith Tarvin）是歐柏林學院（Oberlin College）的行為生態學家。他說松鼠會仔細觀察周圍環境中的老鷹、貓頭鷹、野貓和狐狸，但它們還擁有另一套監控系統：偷聽附近鳥兒發出的聲音。
「偷聽警告性叫聲或者交談聲是一種便捷的信息補充方式。因為這是免費的，由周圍環境中的其他個體製造出來。對於任何具有認知能力能夠識別並解釋信息的生物來說，都是公開可獲取的信息。」
塔爾文的同事瑪麗·莉莉（Marie Lilly）對這種監聽能力進行了測試。她騎著自行車在城裡轉悠，發現松鼠後就停下來；然後，架設好設備，播放紅尾鷹可怕的尖叫聲[咿啊～]。接下來，她又播放了隨意而輕鬆的鳥鳴對話聲[呱 呱呱 呱 呱]，或者是作為對照組的環境噪聲[呼譁呼譁]。一邊播放一邊觀察松鼠的反應。
她注意到……[查看全文]
Eavesdropping Puts Anxious Squirrels at Ease
Seems like any time you see a squirrel, it’s busy doing something—headed somewhere; scrounging for food. And being out and about all the time also means 「they’re tasty morsels for a lot of different predators.」
Keith Tarvin, a behavioral ecologist at Oberlin College. He says squirrels scan their surroundings for hawks and owls, cats and foxes. But they also have another surveillance system: they eavesdrop on nearby birds.
「Eavesdropping on alarm calls or eavesdropping on chatter is a cheap and easy way to supplement the information they have access to. Because it’s free. It’s produced by other individuals in the environment. It’s publicly available to any organism that has the cognitive ability to recognize and interpret that information.」
Tarvin's colleague Marie Lilly tested that ability by riding round town on her bicycle, stopping when she found a squirrel. Then she』d set up her equipment. Play the fearsome scream of a red-tailed hawk. [CLIP: Hawk sound] And then either play the casual, unworried chatter of songbirds ... [CLIP: Chatter] ... or ambient noise ... [CLIP: Ambient] ... as a control. All the while, she observed the squirrels』 behavior.
And she noticed that…[full transcript]
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