VOA慢速英语:Australian Spider May be World’s Fastest

Australia is home to many unknown species.Researchers now say that it may be home to the world’s fastest lunging predator.
澳大利亚是很多不知名物种的栖息地。研究人员表示，世界最快的捕食者也生活在那里。

The karaops spider is a small and flat spider found only in Australia.The spider is a predator that gets its food by killing and eating other insects.It has eight legs and usually creates a web of sticky threads to catch insects for food.
卡拉奥普蜘蛛是一种小而扁平的蜘蛛，目前只见于澳大利亚。这种蜘蛛是捕食者，杀死其它昆虫作为自己的食物。该蜘蛛有八条腿，通过织网捕食其它昆虫。

Sarah Crews, 38, is a researcher at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. She spent two months in the Australian Outback, collecting 100 karaops spiders.
38岁的Sarah Crews 是旧金山加州科学院的一名研究员。她花费了两个月时间在澳大利亚内陆收集了100只卡拉奥普蜘蛛。

Crews told the Australian Broadcasting Company, or ABC, that collecting the spiders was not easy.They usually hide under loose bark, often on eucalyptus trees.
Crews接受澳大利亚广播公司采访时表示，收集这些蜘蛛并不容易。它们经常躲在松软的树皮下，尤其是桉树树皮下。

She and her research assistant spent a lot of time turning over rocks to find and catch the speedy spiders.
Crews和其研究助手花费大量时间翻石头，捕捉速度惊人的卡拉奥普蜘蛛。

“I’ve worked on these spiders, this family, for about 15 years now and I just don’t really care about other spiders at all anymore,” Crews told ABC.“I just like these guys.”
Crews 说：“我研究这类蜘蛛15年了，我现在真的不关心其它的蜘蛛。我就是喜欢卡拉奥普蜘蛛。”

The spiders will be examined with high-definition cameras at the Academy of Sciences.
这些蜘蛛将会被带至科学院，在高清相机下进行查看。

Linda Rayor is an expert on insect behavior, including spiders, at Cornell University in New York.She said Crews appears to be onto something about the unusual speed of karaops.
Linda Rayor是纽约康奈尔大学昆虫行为的专家，也研究蜘蛛。她说Crews似乎对卡拉奥普蜘蛛惊人的速度很感兴趣。

“I’ve tried catching some of these spiders and they are ridiculously fast,” Rayor told VOA. “I study Aussie huntsman spiders, which are also very, very fast.”
Rayor 告诉VOA说：“我试过捕捉这些蜘蛛，但它们的速度实在太快了。我如今研究澳洲猎人蜘蛛，它们的速度也非常快。”

The karaops spiders are “even zippier,” she said.By that, she means faster.
她说卡拉奥普蜘蛛“精力更加旺盛”。她指的是速度更快。

Robert Raven is the senior curator of spiders at the Queensland Museum in Australia.He says karaops are skilled hunters.
Robert Raven是澳大利亚昆士兰博物馆蜘蛛馆的老馆长。他说卡拉奥普蜘蛛是技术高超的猎手。

The website spiders.us says that most spiders eat insects and other spiders.Spiders larger than karaops have been known to eat small animals, such as rodents, the website reports.
spiders.us网站表示大部分蜘蛛捕食昆虫和其它蜘蛛。比卡拉奥普体型更大的蜘蛛还会捕食小型动物，如啮齿动物。

The website tries to offer information it hopes will show some fears people have of spiders are not based on facts.
该网站试图搜集信息，证明人们对蜘蛛的恐惧有些并没有事实依据。

Rayor, the Cornell University insect expert, says the huntsman spiders she researches are more social than most.
康奈尔大学昆虫专家Rayor表示，她所研究的猎人蜘蛛比大多数蜘蛛社交能力强。

“I am interested in the behavior and physiology that makes living in groups of cannibals possible,” she said.“On a broader scale, spiders are so damned interesting and understudied that they are a behavioral researchers dream.”
“我对食人群生存的行为和心理很感兴趣。在更广的范围内，蜘蛛真的很有趣，它们是行为学研究员的最爱。”

Australia is home to about 10,000 species of spiders.Only a third of the species have been identified so far.
在澳大利亚有超过一万种蜘蛛。只有三分之一的蜘蛛被研究者们发现并命名。

I’m Dan Friedell.
Dan Friedell为您报道。