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Tyger! Tyger! burning bright in the forests of the night. Immortal though those William Blake lines may be, tigers actually used to go pretty much where they wanted, when they wanted. But new research suggests they've become far more the nocturnal creatures of Blake’s poem.
老虎！老虎！火焰閃耀，在黑夜的叢林里熊熊燃燒。盡管威廉·布萊克的詩句可能會永垂不巧。在過去老虎自由自在，可以隨心所欲飛奔在任何地方。然而一項新的研究顯示，老虎變得越來越像布萊克詩中描述的夜行動物。
Why? To keep away from us. Or at least share the landscape with the hairless, upright ape that has ascended to the top of the global food chain—there’s very little we won't hunt down.
為什么？為了遠離人類。抑或是為了跟無毛，直立行走，攀上全球食物鏈頂層，由猿類進化而來的人類分享資源——人類無所不能，幾乎沒有到不了手的獵物。
In Nepal camera traps have revealed that tigers and humans now walk literally the same paths through the forest—just at different times. Instead of roaming at will any hour of day or night, the tigers of this region have become creatures of darkness. When people retreat from the forest after a day of work, the tiger takes over.
在尼泊爾陷阱相機揭示：人類和老虎在穿行森林時，幾乎是走同一條路線——只不過時間不同。這片區域的老虎變成了夜行生物，它們已告別了不論黑夜白天隨意在森林漫步的美好時光。當人們結束一天的工作撤離森林時，老虎這才接管森林。
The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
這項研究發表在《美國國家科學院學報》上。
Finding such an accommodation is vital if the last 3,000 or so remaining tigers worldwide are to be saved, especially as the world gets even more crowded with people. To save the big cat, we may just need to leave the forest when it's night.
尤其在這個人類大爆炸的時代，要想保護全世界僅存的3000多只野生老虎，找到這樣的棲息地至關重要。為了保護“大貓”這個物種，也許在夜晚離開森林就足夠了。
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