大自然中生物发电的未解之谜

The modern age is an age of electricity. People are so used to electric lights, radio, televisions, and telephones that it is hard to imagine what life would be like without them. When there is a power failure, people grope about in flickering candlelight, cars hesitate in the streets because there are no traffic lights to guide them, and food spoils in silent refrigerators.

现代是电气时代。人们已经如此习惯了有电灯、收音机、电视和电话的生活，以至于难以想象没有他们的生活会是怎样的。每当停电的时候，人们在摇曳的烛光下四处摸索；汽车在马路上彷徨-因为没有交通灯做导向；电冰箱不再“嗡嗡”，里面的食物也要变质了。

Yet, people began to understand how electricity works only a little more than two centuries ago. Nature has apparently been experimenting in this field for millions of years. Scientists are discovering more and more that the living world may hold many interesting secrets of electricity that could benefit humanity.

虽然电对人类如此正要，但人类开始了解电的原理也只不过在2个世纪多一点之前。而显然，大自然致力于这个领域的实验研究已经有数百万年了。科学家们越发觉得，生物界中蕴藏着很多关于电的有趣的秘密，可以造福人类的秘密。

All living cells send out tiny pulses of electricity. As the heart beats, it sends out pulses of record; they form an electrocardiogram, which a doctor can study to determine how well the heart is working. The brain, too, sends out brain waves of electricity, which can be recorded in an electroencephalogram. The electric currents generated by most living cells are extremely small- often so small that sensitive instruments are needed to record them. But in some animals, certain muscle cells have become so specialized as electrical generators that they do not work as muscle cells at all. When large numbers of these cells are linked together, the effects can be astonishing.

每个活细胞都会发出微小的电脉冲。心脏在跳动的时候，会发出脉冲记录，用这些记录可以描绘一幅心电图。医生则可以通过研究心电图来判断病人心脏是否正常。大脑也是一样，会发出脑电波，而脑电波可以在脑电图中记录。大部分活细胞所产生的电流都非常小-常常是需要灵敏的仪器才能进行记录。不过，有些动物的某些肌肉细胞已经专门用来发电而完全丧失肌肉细胞的功能了。当这些细胞大量聚集，产生的效果会非常令人吃惊。

The electric eel is an amazing storage battery. It can send a jolt of as much as eight hundred volts of electricity through the water in which it lives. ( An electric house current is only one hundred twenty volts.) As many as four-fifths of all the cells in the electric eel’s body are specialized for generating electricity, and the strength of the shock it can deliver corresponds roughly to length of its body.

电鳗就像一个奇妙的蓄电池。在它生活的水中，电鳗可以释放一阵电压高达800伏的电流（家庭用电电压也仅有120伏）。在电鳗的身体中，五分之四的细胞都是专门用来发电的。电鳗能释放的电流强度大体上与它的身体长度相一致。