(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.
Tracking wildlife is a tough job. Take the case of a one-eared leopard named Pavarotti. For this guy: ("Nessun Dorma" clip) "He was a very big beautiful male, and he had a very, very deep, deep roar, and so they named him after Pavarotti."
Kasim Rafiq, a wildlife biologist at Liverpool John Moores University.
"So I used to get up at the crack of dawn, follow his tracks and try and find him. So one day, I went out, and I was looking for him. And his tracks took me off road through this woodland area....and..."
Before he knew it, the wheel of his Land Rover was stuck in a warthog burrow. He wasted several hours getting it out. And then, on the way back to camp, he bumped into some local tour guides and their safari guests, who'd had way better luck spotting Pavarotti.
"Basically, they laughed and they talked to me that they'd seen him that morning."
Rafiq then realized that tourist wildlife sightings might be an untapped source of information about wild animals.
So he and his team worked with a safari lodge in Botswana to analyze 25,000 tourist photographs of wildlife. They used those as sightings of lions, spotted hyenas, leopards, cheetahs and wild dogs. They then compared those data to the estimates they made with traditional wildlife biology tactics: stuff like camera traps, track surveys, and "call-in stations" — where they play sounds of distressed animals in the middle of the night and see who pops by.
It turned out that the estimates from tourist photos were just as good as those gleaned from traditional methods. And the tourists were actually the only ones to see elusive cheetahs — the researchers would have missed the cats without the citizen science data. The results are in the journal Current Biology.
The idea is not to put wildlife researchers out of a job. "The reality is there's so many interesting things we still have to find out about these large carnivores and so many conservation projects that need to be carried out that we don't have the time or resources to do them all."
And tourist photos might help make sure that all the local carnivores are spotted.
Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
参考译文
这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列,我是克里斯托弗·因塔格里塔
追踪野生动物是项艰巨的工作 。以一只名为“帕瓦罗蒂”的独耳猎豹为例 。这就是“帕瓦罗蒂”:(《今夜无人入睡》片段)“它是只体型极为庞大而且非常美丽的雄性猎豹,它的吼叫声非常非常低沉,因此人们为其取名为‘帕瓦罗蒂' 。”
利物浦约翰摩尔大学的野生动物生物学家卡西姆·拉菲克说到 。
“我过去常在黎明时分起床,找到它的足迹,然后跟随足迹并试图找到它 。有一天我出门寻找它 。它的足迹将我带离道路,进入森林地区……”
不知怎的,拉菲克驾驶的路虎车的车轮卡在了疣猪洞穴里 。他花了好几个小时才把车轮弄出来 。之后,他在返回营地的路上遇到了几名当地导游和他们的观兽游客,后者要幸运得多,他们看到了“帕瓦罗蒂” 。
“他们笑着告诉我,他们那天早上看到它了 。”
拉菲克随后意识到,游客野生动物观光可能是关于野生动物的一个尚未开发的信息来源 。
因此,他和团队与博茨瓦纳一家狩猎旅社合作,分析了2.5万张游客拍摄的野生动物照片 。他们将这些照片作为人们对狮子、斑点鬣狗、豹子、猎豹和野狗的目击 。之后,他们将这些数据与他们用传统野生动物生活学方法做出的估计进行了比较,这些方法包括相机陷阱、跟踪调查和“呼叫站”——在那里,他们会在半夜播放痛苦动物的声音,看看谁会突然出现 。
结果表明,从游客照片中得到的估计结果和从传统方法中得到的一样好 。事实上,游客是唯一能看到难以捉摸的猎豹的人——如果没有公民科学数据,研究人员就会错过这些猫科动物 。研究结果发表在《当代生物学》期刊上 。
这个想法并不是要让野生动物研究人员失业 。“现实情况是,关于这些大型食物动物,我们还有很多有趣的事情需要去发现,还有很多需要开展的保护项目,但我们没有时间或资源完成所有这些工作 。”
游客照片可能有助于确保所有当地的食肉动物都被发现 。
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 。
译文为可可英语翻译,未经授权请勿转载!
重点讲解
重点讲解:
1. used to do sth. 过去常常;过去曾;
People used to come and visit him every day.
人们过去每天都来拜访他 。
2. bump into 偶然遇见;意外碰到;
I happened to bu mp into Mervyn Johns in the hallway.
我在走廊里意外碰见了默文·约翰斯 。
3. in the middle of (某件事或某段时间的)中期;
I woke up in the middle of the night and could hear a tapping on the window.
我半夜里醒来,听见有敲窗户的声音 。
4. turn out 原来是;结果发现;
Cosgrave's forecast turned out to be quite wrong.
科斯格雷夫的预测最后证明是大错特错 。