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1、 英语演讲稿：乌鸦的智商到底有多高(中英文对照) 英语演讲稿：乌鸦的智商到底有多高(中英文对照) How many of you have seen the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds? Any of you get really freaked out by that? You might want to leave this is a vending machine for the past few days, many of you have been asking, How did you come tothis? How did you get s
2、tarted doing this? It started, as with many great ideas, or many ideas you cant get rid of, anyway, at a cocktail party.这里有多少人看过希区柯克的电影?是不是认为那片子太过离奇了?要是那样的话，你现在可以走了。(笑声) 大家看到的是一台专门为乌鸦设计的自动售货机。 过去几天，人们都在问我同样的问题： “你怎么开始搞这玩意的?有什么吸引你的地方吗?” 说实话，这玩意就像很多伟大的想法， 或者一些你无法在脑中驱散的想法一样， 是从一次鸡尾酒派对产生的。About 10 years
3、 ago, I was at a cocktail party with a friend of mine. We were sitting there, and he was complaining about the crows that were all over his yard and making a big mess. And he was telling me we ought to eradicate these things,kill them, because theyre making a mess. I said that was stupid, maybe we s
4、hould just train them to do something useful. And he said that was impossible.大概十年前，我与一个朋友在一个鸡尾酒派对上， 我们坐在那，他一直在抱怨乌鸦，乌鸦们把他的院子搞得一团糟。 他那时很认真的跟我说，我们得想办法消灭这些鬼东西， 否则我们就不会有好日子过。 我跟他说，那才是坏主意呢， 咱们为何不训练它们，让乌鸦帮我们人类做一点有意义的事情? 他丢给我一句“那不可能”。And Im sure Im in good company in finding that tremendously annoying, whe
5、n someone tells you its impossible. So I spent the next 10 years reading about crows in my spare time.我相信绝对不只我一人觉得这极度恼人当有人告诉你“那不可能”时。于是决定用10年的时间在我的业余时间专门研究乌鸦。And after 10 years of this, my wife said,Youve got to do this thing youve been talking about, and build the vending machine. So I did. But par
6、t of the reason I found this interesting is, I started noticing that were very aware of all the species that are going extinct on the planet as a result of human habitation expansion,and no one seems to be paying attention to all the species that are actually living;theyre surviving. And Im talking
7、specifically about synanthropic species,which have adapted specifically for human ecologies, species like rats and cockroaches and crows.现在10年过去了，我妻子说，“好吧，你也该把它做出来了， 你不是一直说要给乌鸦们做一个自动售货机么?” 于是我就把它做出来了。 但我对这个项目感兴趣还有部分原因是因为 我开始注意到我们人类已经意识到 有很多物种因为人类无止尽的扩张 将会在地球上灭绝。 但貌似没人对那些 还生存在世上的物种有所关心它们都还真正地活着。 这里我指
8、的是那些长期与人共处， 并适应了人类生态系统的动物。 这样的动物包括老鼠、蟑螂、乌鸦。And as I started looking at them, I was finding that they had hyper-adapted. Theyd become extremely adept at living with us. And in return, we just tried to kill them all the in doing so, we were breeding them for parasitism. We were giving them all sorts o
9、f reasons to adapt new ways. So, for example, rats are incredibly responsive breeders. And cockroaches, as anyone whos tried to get rid of them knows, have become really immune to the poisons that were using.而假如你仔细观察的话，你会发现所有的这类动物都已经对人类社会产生了高度的适应性，并且随着继续与人生活在一起，它们的适应性还加变得更强。但反观人类呢，我们只是一直在不断屠杀它们而已。为了
10、做到这点，人类用喂养的方式来让它们寄生于我们我们给了动物们适应新环境的各种理由。比如：老鼠的生育能力变得超强。而蟑螂，逮过蟑螂的人都知道，它们已经不在乎我们的“诱饵”了。So I thought, lets build something thats mutually beneficial; something that we can both benefit from, and find some way to make a new relationship with these species. So I built the vending machine.于是我想，为何不制造出一些能让我
11、们人类和这些“寄生虫”共同受益的东西呢?以此和这些动物建立一种新型的关系，一种互利的关系。从而让人类找到一条与其共处的新路子。这就是我制作动物专用自动售货机的理由。But the story of the vending machine is a little more interesting if you know more about crows. It turns out, crows arent just surviving with human beings; theyre actually thriving. Theyre found everywhere on the plane
12、t except for the Arctic and the southern tip of South America. And in all that area, theyre only rarely found breeding more than five kilometers away from human beings. So we may not think about them,but theyre always around.不过如果你多了解一下乌鸦，这个自动售货机的故事会更有趣。乌鸦们不仅仅是在人类环境中生存得不错事实上，他们活得还很精彩。你在地球上任何一处角落除了两极和
13、南美至南端都可以见得到乌鸦。通常它们的栖息地离人类居所不出5公里。虽然你也许不会想到这一点，可是它们确确实实一直都这么活在我们身边。And not surprisingly, given the human population growth, more than half of the human population is living in cities now. And out of those, nine-tenths of the human growth population is occurring in re seeing a population boom with cro
14、ws. So bird counts are indicating thatwe might be seeing up to exponential growth in their numbers. So thats no great surprise.这也不奇怪，我们的地球上人口暴涨，其中有半数以上居住在城市。除此之外，90%的人口增长就都发生在城市里乌鸦这个种群也在经历同样的发展。所以鸟类的数量在我们看来将会有一个爆炸型的增长，这并没有什么奇怪的。But what was really interesting to me was to find out that the birds wer
15、e adapting in a pretty unusual way. And Ill give you an example of that. This is Betty. Shes a New Caledonian crow. And these crows use sticks in the wild to get insects and what not out of pieces of , shes trying to get a piece of meat out of a tube. But the researchers had a problem. They messed u
16、p and left just a stick of wire in there. And she hadnt had the opportunity to do this before. You see, it wasnt working verywell. So she adapted.但令我感到吃惊的是这些鸟儿竟然学会了通过一些奇特的方式在我们的社会里求得生存。大家看看下面的例子：它的名字是Betty，它是一只New Caledonia(北美地名)的乌鸦。在森林里，它们会用树枝从林木里挑出虫子和其他食物。此时它正尝试用铁线取出瓶子里的那块肉。但是研究者们遇到了一个问题。他们把试验搞砸了，因为只留下了一根线在那里。而Betty以前可没尝试过这样的挑战。你可以看到，它进行得并不顺利。于是它想出了一个新法子。Now, this
