(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
It may not be the legendary matchup squid vs octopus, but imagine this fight:
sea-dwelling cone snail versus tiny fish!
Who wins? Well, true, the fish can dart away.
But the snail has chemical weapons.
"So they use a whole cocktail of compounds and most of them are neurotoxins and they just completely wipe out the prey's physiology, right, so they prey cannot respond anymore."
Helena Safavi, a biologist at the University of Utah.
She and her colleagues discovered that the cone snail's venom contains not only neurotoxins, but insulin, too—which the snail's prey take in through their gills.
And that insulin overdose causes the fish's blood sugar to plummet, depriving its brain of energy, and inducing a coma.
"And that's what happens when you give people an insulin overdose—you can cause coma and then death depending on the amount of insulin."
They report the findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
If this all sounds like something out of a murder mystery…well, it is.
The paper actually cites the Claus von Bulow trials in the 1980s.
Von Bülow was ultimately found not guilty.
But in this evolutionary struggle between snail and fish…it's now clear who done it.And how.
中文翻译
可能并非传说中的乌贼对决章鱼的恢弘场面，但想象下这样的战斗：
海生鸡心螺对决小鱼!
谁会赢得最终胜利?当然小鱼可以飞奔而逃。
但蜗牛却坐拥化学武器。
“它们会使用整个混合化合物，其中大部分是能够彻底摧毁猎物生理机能的神经毒素，造成猎物无法动弹。”
海伦娜萨法维是犹他大学的一位生物学家。
她和同事们发现鸡心螺的毒液不仅含有神经毒素还含有胰岛素—而猎物通过鳃摄入。
而胰岛素过量会导致鱼类血糖骤降，造成大脑能量被剥夺引发昏迷。
“当人体过量摄入后也会发生这种情况—摄入量不同可能造成昏迷、甚至死亡。”
这项研究已经在《美国国家科学院院刊》上发表。
这是否听起来就像一桩神秘的谋杀案…事实上确有其事。
这篇发表的文章实际上引用的是上世纪80年代克劳斯冯比洛的真实案件。
冯比洛最终被判无罪。
但在蜗牛和鱼之间的这场进化斗争中…我们已对它们的所作所为了如指掌。
译文为可可英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载！
词语解释
1.wipe out 擦净；彻底摧毁
The spill could wipe out the Gulf's turtle population.
这次原油泄漏可能会使波斯湾的海龟灭绝。
This last payment will wipe out your debt to me.
这最后一笔付款将了结你欠我的债务。
2.blood sugar n.血糖
If you skip breakfast, your blood sugar level will drop and you will probably feel light-headed.
如果不吃早餐，血糖含量就会降低，你很可能会觉得晕眩。
Hunger is the body's signal that levels of blood sugar are too low.
饥饿感是身体发出的信号，表示血糖水平太低。
