听力文本

This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.
The animal kingdom is a noisy place. There's bird song...
(CLIP: Bird whistle)
...choruses of frogs...
(CLIP: Frog chorus)
...and lots of lesser known sounds, like the ray gun–like sounds of baby alligators hatching and calling for Mom.
(CLIP: Baby alligator sound)
There's lots of videos of them doing this on YouTube if you're curious.
"When I was a kid growing up, I had a pet alligator. It vocalized a lot."
John Wiens, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Arizona.
"So I had this baby alligator when I was a teenager. Sometimes I could hear 'Urh urh urh urh.' And when they grow up, they do bellows and slaps and all sorts of sounds."

Wiens and his collaborator Zhuo Chen wondered: Why did animals start vocalizing in the first place? Well, one hypothesis was that the ability originated in nocturnal animals—cause, you know, sound works a lot better than colors or horns or other visual cues when you can't see.
Wiens and Chen built an evolutionary tree of nearly 1,800 vertebrate species and mapped onto it information on whether each lived by day or night and whether they made sound.
"So one of the things we did then was to do a statistical correlation between the evolution of acoustic communication and whether they were active by day or by night. And we found a very strong relationship. Those that are active at night tend to evolve acoustic communication."
Suggesting that the nocturnal notion was more than just a shot in the dark.
The findings are in the journal Nature Communications.
This ability to vocalize likely arose independently, multiple times, hundreds of millions of years ago—in frogs, mammals, geckos, and birds and crocodilians. And though vocalization might have originated with nocturnal animals, some night dwellers seem to have lost the ability—like pangolins—while others, which evolved to be active by day, retained it—like, of course, you and me.
Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 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M!@-uLm-LF.GEH69%^。
动物王国是个喧闹的地方#z=2nFirPx[v.Sd。这里有鸟鸣……
（音频剪辑：鸟鸣）
蛙声……
（音频剪辑：蛙声）
……还有许多鲜为人知的声音，比如小短吻鳄被孵化和呼唤妈妈时发出的射线枪般的声音3Yg;qV;*gE_poX&9c!0A。
（音频剪辑：短吻鳄宝宝的声音）
如果你感到好奇，YouTube网站上有许多这类视频s!_ZSnYrASuf(。
“我小时候养过短吻鳄当宠物，它总是叫FKos~@k68,]fb。”
亚利桑那大学的进化生态学家约翰·维恩斯说到pL=Rt*w2bbtM%X!S6。
“我是在十几岁的时候养的那只小短吻鳄itQ.c]5k)|A1P。有时我能听到‘呃呃呃’的声音LLx=z%|K=qcZ4-y9hR。它们在成长过程中会发出吼叫和‘啪啪'等各种声音*QPYV)OSpOo6g)C。”
维恩斯及其合作者卓晨想知道：动物最初发出叫声的原因是什么？一种假设认为，这种能力源于夜间行动物，因为在看不见的情况下，声音比颜色、角或其他视觉提示的效果要好得多om9)iy2;C|w。
维恩斯和Chen为近1800种脊椎动物建立了进化树，并标注了每种动物是日行还是夜行，以及是否发声的信息e442US~wIv6*.t+g。
“因此，我们之后所做的，就是在声通讯进化与它们是日间活跃还是夜间活跃这二者之间做统计相关性wrHSAw[)y(ru。我们发现二者间存在非常紧密的关系_Io=K.OrwcWB。在夜间活动的动物往往会进化出声通讯W%++3pkJ,V。”
这表明夜行概念不仅仅是在黑暗中活动)KuY_Y.%no~(nvfTH_aI。
这项研究发表在《自然·通讯》期刊上=CH;@@H~EDQ5(u;N。
这种发声能力很可能在数亿年前独立且多次在青蛙、哺乳动物、壁虎、鸟类和鳄鱼身上产生![SIY|+-PB&~.B。虽然最早发声的可能是夜行动物，但穿山甲等夜行动物似乎已经失去了这一能力，而其它进化为日间活跃的动物，依旧保留着发声能力，当然，就像你我一样B,Tj!h1lVQqJ2ncv6。
谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学5O@1HWQ,Ix。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔.9z,@TZ.T2VqrksPxYUA。

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. grow up 长大成人；成熟；
Children grow up so fast these days.
如今孩子们长得真快oj@&=z^E&#E=jCX_iX。
2. all sorts of 各种各样的；形形色色的；
The new approach had wide applicability to all sorts of different problems.
新方法广泛适用于解决各种各样的问题kz+LTlg81]I@g!L3。
3. in the first place 起初；一开始；
I should never have taken that job in the first place.
我当初就不该接受那份工作1(h*RV@[eG#xkwRTp。
4. at night 晚间；晚上；
These animals only come out at night.
这些动物只在夜晚出来tLzALr,uHZ|K。