颠覆认知：乌龟其实很话唠(下)

If there’s one animal from this study that I would’ve sworn is 100 percent mute, it’s the caecilian.

如果这项研究中有一种动物我发誓是百分之百不会发声的话，那就是蚓螈。

For those who’re not familiar, let me paint a little picture: Caecilians are slippery, slimy and slithery little things.

对于那些不熟悉蚓螈的人，脑子里有这样一个画面: 蚓螈是一种全身滑溜溜、黏糊糊的小动物。

They burrow, and they look like earthworms or even snakes.

它们会挖洞，外形酷似蚯蚓，甚至是蛇。

But they’re neither. They’re in fact amphibians. They have a backbone and a skull, jaws and all, but no limbs.

但它们既不是蚯蚓，也不是蛇。它们实际上是两栖动物。它们虽无四肢，却有脊骨、头骨、下颚等。

And like many tetrapods, they emit sounds through their respiratory tract, just like their common ancestor.

与许多四足动物一样，它们通过呼吸道发声，与它们的共同祖先的发声方式一致。

It’s actually not very easy to come across one.

实际上遇到一个并不容易。

The caecilian was a special one because I definitely expected it not to make any sounds.

蚓螈是一种特殊的物种，因为我绝对没指望它会发出任何声音。

And it’s not only that it does, but it makes very strange and very loud sounds.

它不仅会发声，而且会发出异常响亮的声音。

Not to be crass, but that sounds a bit like a fart.

无意冒犯，但这听起来有点像放屁。

When I heard it for the first time, I started laughing, and I sent it to my friends who did fieldwork with me.

当我第一次听到这个声音时，我笑了起来，把它发给了和我一起在野外工作的朋友们。

They also started laughing, and they said, “I cannot believe you. You made the sound with your mouth, and you’re sending me the file.”

他们也开始笑，他们说: “我不信你。你是用嘴制造了这个声音，你把文件发给我。”

I was like, “No, I swear.”

我说，“没有，我发誓。”

The study, “Common Evolutionary Origin of Acoustic Communication in Choanate Vertebrates,” is less focused on the function of these sounds and more on the evolution of acoustic signals.

这项名为“内鼻孔类脊椎动物发声交流的共同进化起源”的研究，较少关注这些声音的功能，而对声信号的进化关注更多。

But in future studies, the researchers plan to dig deeper by analyzing the sounds further in an attempt to understand what they mean.

但在未来的研究中，研究人员计划通过进一步分析这些声音来进一步挖掘，试图理解这些声音的含义。

We try to also make footage of the animals while we’re recording the sounds so we could try to correlate any type of behavior to the sound that they were making and try to understand how they use the sounds or what ideas they convey.

我们在记录这些动物的声音的同时，也尝试拍摄了视频，这样我们就可以尝试将它们的行为类型与发出的声音相联系，尝试了解它们如何使用这些声音，或它们传达的想法是什么。

Sometimes Jorgewich-Cohen and his colleagues would find more than 30 different sounds in a single species’ repertoire.

有时，乔格维奇-科恩和他的同事会在单个动物科目中发现30多种不同的声音。

It seems that the more socialized the animal is, the more vocally diverse it is, he says. But further studies are needed to confirm this.

他表示，似乎这种动物越社会化，声音就越多样化。但这还需要进一步的研究来证实。

Hopefully this is the beginning of a new field of study.

希望这是一个新的研究领域的开始。

So people are going to go out there and try to record more of these animals and get to new conclusions and new discoveries.

人们会前往那里，对这些动物记录更多，从而得出新的结论和新的发现。

But it will be really cool if we could, for example, do playback experiments and try to understand if they reply to the sounds we make.

但如果我们能做回放实验，试着了解它们是否会对我们发出的声音做出回应，那就太酷了。

And then we can start understanding what these sounds mean and how they are used.

这样我们就可以开始理解这些声音的意思以及它们使用声音的方式。

Thank you for listening! For Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Pakinam Amer.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是帕基纳姆·阿默尔。