抛弃第一枚蛋？朋克企鹅的奇特孵蛋策略

This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。

Hundreds of miles southeast of New Zealand, you will find the windswept Bounty and Antipodes Islands.

在新西兰东南数百英里处，你会发现饱经风霜的邦蒂群岛和安蒂波德斯群岛。

It's there you'll find the breeding grounds of what may be the world's most punk-rock penguin, which sports twin bleached-blond Mohawks.

那里可能是世界上最朋克摇滚的企鹅的繁殖地，这些企鹅蓄着两溜儿漂过的金色莫霍克发型。

So it's like if you took a penguin and you put its flipper in an electricity outlet and it got a shock.

这就像你把一只企鹅的鳍足插进电源插座里，让它被电击一下。

That's what you might imagine it looks like.

这就是你可能想象的它的样子。

Lloyd Davis of New Zealand's University of Otago says the erect-crested penguin, as it's known, also has a peculiar breeding strategy.

新西兰奥塔哥大学的劳埃德·戴维斯表示，众所周知，翘眉企鹅有一种奇特的繁殖策略。

The females lay two eggs. But generally leave the first one to die.

雌性企鹅会产下两枚蛋。但一般会让第一枚自生自灭。

They just plop the egg on the rock.

它们只是把这枚蛋扑通一声下到石头上

And you know, it's just bizarre to see.

这场景看起来很奇怪。

And then 40 percent of them, they just turn their back on it.

然后40%的雌性企鹅就此转身离去。

They don't even attempt to incubate it, it's like 'I don't care about that.'

它们甚至都不尝试去孵化它，仿佛在表示“我不在乎这枚蛋”。

Davis says that's unusual—because most birds pour resources into the first egg, and the second, and however many more, but the last egg is almost an afterthought.

戴维斯表示，这不同寻常，因为大多数鸟类都会把资源投入到第一枚蛋上，然后才是第二枚蛋以及后面的蛋，但最后一枚蛋几乎是事后才想到要照顾的那枚。

The final egg just acts like an insurance policy for them, so if they lose one of the other eggs, they can rear the chick from that one.

最后一枚蛋对它们来说就像一个保单，如果它们失去了其他蛋中的一枚，它们还可以用最后那枚蛋孵出幼鸟。

But this is quite the opposite.

但翘眉企鹅恰恰相反。

Because, in this case—and this is why it's such a conundrum in the biological world—they don't favor the first egg, they favor the second one.

这就是为什么这在生物界是一个谜题——翘眉企鹅不悉心照料第一枚蛋，而是选择第二枚蛋。

Davis and his colleagues traveled to the Antipodes Islands in 1998 to investigate that conundrum.

戴维斯和他的同事于1998年前往安蒂波德斯群岛调查这个难题。

And in reanalyzing their data, they've narrowed down the possible explanations for this behavior.

在重新分析数据时，他们缩小了对这种行为的可能的解释范围。

For one, they think the penguins might reject the first egg because it forms while the birds are migrating, so it's smaller—inferior, perhaps—to the second, larger egg.

比如，他们认为翘眉企鹅之所以会拒绝第一枚蛋是因为这枚蛋是在企鹅迁徙过程中孕育的，所以与第二枚更大的蛋相比，第一枚蛋形状更小，质量也可以更差。

And the penguins may also be acknowledging a reality many species face—they simply don't have the resources to rear two chicks.

翘眉企鹅可能意识到了许多物种面临的现实——它们根本没有足够的资源来养育两只幼小的企鹅。

The results are in the journal PLOS ONE.

这项研究结果发表在《公共科学图书馆·综合》期刊上。

Davis says when he visited the islands almost 25 years ago, the penguins were the least studied penguins in the world.

戴维斯称，当他25年前前往这些岛屿时，翘眉企鹅是世界上被研究得最少的一种企鹅。

He says they still are and now they are endangered.

他表示，现在获得的研究也最少，它们现在正濒临灭绝。

They seem to have gone down by about a third of the population from based on the evidence we have,

根据我们掌握的证据，翘眉企鹅的数量可能已经减少了约三分之一，

and yet we know nothing about them, we know nothing about the causes, and we need to do what we can to protect these wonderful and forgotten penguins.

然而我们对它们却一无所知，对减少的原因也一无所知，我们需要尽我们所能来保护这些被遗忘的奇妙企鹅。

After all, you could say the birds themselves are already putting all their eggs in one basket.

毕竟，你也可以说它们自己已经把所有的蛋都放在一个篮子里了。

Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。