評論
打印
Here's one way bats might get their next meal: by eavesdropping on flies having sex.
有一種方法能讓蝙蝠抓到下一頓美餐：竊聽正在交配的蒼蠅。
Bats eat a lot of seemingly undetectable flies. To find out how the winged mammals find the insects, researchers set up a video camera inside a cowshed that was home to a bat colony and lots of bugs.
蝙蝠吃掉的許多蒼蠅都看似很難發現。為了找出這類有翅膀的哺乳動物如何抓捕昆蟲，研究人員在蝙蝠群落腳的一間牛舍里安裝了錄像機。牛舍里也飛舞著許多蚊蟲。
The video showed that bats rely on their echolocation skills to detect flies at a specific time: when they're engaged in rather noisy sex.
攝像機顯示在特定的時候，即蒼蠅在交配發出噪音的時候，蝙蝠依靠回波定位技術探測獵物。
Flies are usually quiet in bat territory and sit on cluttered ceilings in caves where background noise masks the echoes from their movement.
通常蒼蠅在蝙蝠的地盤十分安靜，它們停在牛棚內凌亂的天花板上，在那里背景噪音掩蓋了它們行動的回聲。
But when flies are feeling frisky, males can't help but flutter their wings, emitting a burst of click sounds that the bats pick up on. During more than one thousand sexual encounters caught in the act on video, five percent of the insects were caught in the act by bats. The research is published in the journal Current Biology.
但是當蒼蠅感到興奮時，雄蒼蠅禁不住在依戀中振翼，發出一陣陣敲擊聲，這時便引起了蝙蝠的注意。攝像機拍攝到1000多對蒼蠅發生性交，其中5%對被蝙蝠逮個正著。這一研究發表在《當代生物學》期刊上。
The study shows that ignorance can be safer than carnal knowledge when predators are on the prowl.
這項研究表明當捕食者在虎視眈眈四處徘徊時，無知比感性經驗更安全。
原文譯文屬可可原創，未經允許請勿轉載！
