科学美国人60秒 SSS Road Noise Makes Birds' Lives Tougher
时间：2018-12-24 作者：英语课 分类：2016年Scientific American(九)月
[Songbird and traffic noise]
It's hard to be a bird in our human-dominated world.
You can barely hear yourself sing, let along hear the songs of your friends… and you can forget about hearing a predator 1. Noise is almost everywhere. Especially noise from traffic. A whopping 83 percent of the surface of the continental 2 U.S. is within just one kilometer of a road.
Researchers have tried to assess the impact of road noise on animals by, understandably, looking at animals living near noisy roads. The problem is that noisy roads are both noisy, and well, they're roads. It's hard to separate the two.
"And so we figured out a way to have just the noise without any of the other effects of the road, and to do that we ran speakers through a forest where there was no road."
Chris McClure, a biologist at Boise State University and The Peregrine Fund. He and his team built their audio phantom 3 road at a popular stopover site for birds in Idaho as they fly south for the winter.
While the noise kept lots of birds away, some stuck around. But they had trouble putting on enough weight to fuel the next leg of their migratory 4 journey.
"They have to fatten 5 up but they also have to not get eaten by a predator. And those two things are in conflict. Because to eat, they have to look down, which means they aren't looking at predators 6."
And when it's too loud, they can't hear the alarm calls of other birds. So they have to waste time looking for predators instead of foraging 7. The study is in the journal Animal Conservation. [C.J.W. McClure et al., Noise from a phantom road experiment alters the age structure of a community of migrating birds]
By 2050, it's thought that enough new roads will be built to circle the planet more than 600 times. But there's an easy solution to the noise problem.
"Lowering speed limits does a lot."
So next time you're driving through nature, just slow down a little. It’s safer for you and the wildlife. And you can enjoy the view a little longer.
—Jason G. Goldman
- The final part of this chapter was devoted to a brief summary of predator species.本章最后部分简要总结了食肉动物。
- Komodo dragon is the largest living lizard and a fearsome predator.科摩多龙是目前存在的最大蜥蜴，它是一种令人恐惧的捕食性动物。
- A continental climate is different from an insular one.大陆性气候不同于岛屿气候。
- The most ancient parts of the continental crust are 4000 million years old.大陆地壳最古老的部分有40亿年历史。
- I found myself staring at her as if she were a phantom.我发现自己瞪大眼睛看着她，好像她是一个幽灵。
- He is only a phantom of a king.他只是有名无实的国王。
- Many migratory birds visit this lake annually.许多候鸟每年到这个湖上作短期逗留。
- This does not negate the idea of migratory aptitude.这并没有否定迁移能力这一概念。
- The new feed can fatten the chicken up quickly enough for market.新饲料能使鸡长得更快，以适应市场需求。
- We keep animals in pens to fatten them.我们把动物关在围栏里把它们养肥。