剑桥雅思7Test3阅读Passage1原文翻译Ant Intelligence

剑桥雅思7Test3阅读Passage1原文翻译Ant Intelligence，今天中国教育在线就来为大家分析这个问题。

Ant Intelligence

蚂蚁智能

剑桥雅思7 Test 3 Passage 1阅读原文翻译

第1段

When we think of intelligent members of the animal kingdom,the creatures that spring immediately to mind are apes and monkeys.But in fact the social lives of some members of the insect kingdom are sufficiently complex to suggest more than a hint of intelligence.Among these,the world of the ant has come in for considerable scrutiny lately,and the idea that ants demonstrate sparks of cognition has certainly not been rejected by those involved in these investigations.

当我们思考动物界的聪明成员时，立即想到的动物往往是猿和猴子。但事实上，昆虫王国一些成员的社会生活足够复杂，暗示着智力存在的证据。其中，蚂蚁世界最近接受了严格的检验。参与这些调查的人完全没有抵触蚂蚁表现出认知火花的想法。

第2段

Ants store food,repel attackers and use chemical signals to contact one another in case of attack.Such chemical communication can be compared to the human use of visual and auditory channels(as in religious chants,advertising images and jingles,political slogans and martial music)to arouse and propagate moods and attitudes.The biologist Lewis Thomas wrote,‘Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment.They farm fungi,raise aphids*as livestock,launch armies to war,use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies,capture slaves,engage in child labour,exchange information ceaselessly.They do everything but watch television.

‘蚂蚁储存食物，击退袭击者，并在发起攻击时使用化学信号相互联系。这种化学交流可以与人类使用视觉和听觉通道（例如宗教圣歌，广告图像和叮当声，政治口号和军事音乐）进文章来自雅思行比较，以唤起并传播情绪和态度。生物学家路易斯·托马斯（Lewis Thomas）写道：“蚂蚁与人类的相似程度甚至有些尴尬。他们耕种真菌，饲养蚜虫作为牲畜，发动军队进行战争，使用化学喷雾警告和迷惑敌人，俘虏奴隶，使用童工，不断交流信息。他们除了看电视外什么都做。

第3段

However,in ants there is no cultural transmission everything must be encoded in the genes–whereas in humans the opposite is true.Only basic instincts are carried in the genes of a newborn baby,other skills being learned from others in the community as the child grows up.It may seem that this cultural continuity gives us a huge advantage over ants.They have never mastered fire nor progressed.Their fungus farming and aphid herding crafts are sophisticated when compared to the agricultural skills of humans five thousand years ago but have been totally overtaken by modern human agribusiness.

“然而，蚂蚁不存在文化的传播-所有的一切都被编写在基因之中-而人类则相反。新生婴儿的基因只带有基本的本能，随着孩子的成长，他们会从社区中其他人那里学习其他技能。这种文化上的连续性似乎给了我们比蚂蚁更大的优势。它们从来没有掌握过火,也没有进步。与五千年前人类的农业技能相比，它们的真菌和蚜虫养殖操作十分复杂，但这已经被现代人类农业完全超越。

第4段

Or have they?The farming methods of ants are at least sustainable.They do not ruin environments or use enormous amounts of energy.Moreover,recent evidence suggests that the crop farming of ants may be more sophisticated and adaptable than was thought.

他们确实超过了吗？蚂蚁的耕种方法至少是可持续的。他们不会破坏环境或使用大量能源。此外，最近的证据表明，蚂蚁的农作物种植可能比人们想象的更复杂，更具有适应性。

第5段

Ants were farmers fifty million years before humans were.Ants can’t digest the cellulose in leaves–but some fungi can.The ants therefore cultivate these fungi in their nests,bringing them leaves to feed on,and then use them as a source of food.Farmer ants secrete antibiotics to control other fungi that might act as‘weeds’,and spread waste to fertilise the crop.

蚂蚁在人类诞生五千万年前就是农民。蚂蚁不能消化树叶中的纤维素，但是一些真菌可以。因此，蚂蚁在它们的巢穴中培育这些真菌，使它们以叶子为食，然后将其用作食物来源。农民蚂蚁分泌抗生素来控制其他可能跟杂草一样的真菌，并散布垃圾作为作物的肥料。

第6段

It was once thought that the fungus that ants cultivate was a single type that they had propagated,essentially unchanged from the distant past.Not so.Ulrich Mueller of Maryland and his colleagues genetically screened 862 different types of fungi taken from ants’nests.These turned out to be highly diverse:it seems that ants are continually domesticating new species.Even more impressively,DNA analysis of the fungi suggests that the ants improve or modify the fungi by regularly swapping and sharing strains with neighbouring ant colonies.

曾经有人认为，蚂蚁培育的真菌只有一种类型，与遥远的过去相比基本上没有变化。并非如此。马里兰州的乌尔里希·穆勒（Ulrich Mueller）和他的同事们对蚂蚁巢中取出的862种不同类型的真菌进行了基因检测。结果证明它们是高度多样化的：蚂蚁似乎正在不断驯化新物种。甚至更令人印象深刻的是，真菌的DNA分析表明，蚂蚁通过与相邻蚁群定期交换和共享菌株来改善和修正真菌。

第7段

Whereas prehistoric man had no exposure to urban lifestyles–the forcing house of intelligence–the evidence suggests that ants have lived in urban settings for close on a hundred million years,developing and maintaining underground cities of specialised chambers and tunnels.

史前人类没有接触过城市生活方式-，而这是智力出现的重要推动因素，但证据表明，蚂蚁在城市环境中生活了近一亿年，发展并维护着拥有固定用途的房间和隧道的地下城市。

第8段

When we survey Mexico City,Tokyo,Los Angeles,we are amazed at what has been accomplished by humans.Yet Hoelldobler and Wilson’s magnificent work for ant lovers,The Ants,describes a supercolony of the ant Formica yessensis on the Ishikari Coast of Hokkaido.This‘megalopolis’was reported to be composed of 360 million workers and a million queens living in 4,500interconnected nests across a territory of 2.7 square kilometres.

当我们调查墨西哥城，东京，洛杉矶时，我们对人类所取得的成就感到惊讶。然而对蚂蚁爱好者来说，Hoelldobler和Wilson宏伟的作品，The Ants，介绍了Hokkaido Ishikari海岸Formica yessensis蚂蚁的超级巢穴。据报道，这个“大都市”由3.6亿名工人和100万名女王组成，它们居住在4500个相连的巢穴中，占地2.7平方公里。

第9段

Such enduring and intricately meshed levels of technical achievement outstrip by far anything achieved by our distant ancestors.We hail as masterpieces the cave paintings in southern France and elsewhere,dating back some 20,000 years.Ant societies existed in something like their present form more than seventy million years ago.Beside this,prehistoric man looks technologically primitive.Is this then some kind of intelligence,albeit of a different kind?

如此持久而错综复杂的技术成就远远超过了我们遥远的祖先。我们赞扬2万年前法国南部和其他地区的洞穴壁画。而蚂蚁社会在七千万多年前就以他们现在的形式存在。除此之外，史前人在技术上看起来很原始。尽管类型不同，这是某种智力的表现吗？

第10段

Research conducted at Oxford,Sussex and Zürich Universities has shown that when desert ants return from a foraging trip,they navigate by integrating bearings and distances,which they continuously update in their heads.They combine the evidence of visual landmarks with a mental library of local directions,all within a framework which is consulted and updated.So ants can learn too.

牛津大学，苏塞克斯大学和苏黎世大学进行的研究表明，当沙漠蚂蚁从觅食之旅中返回时，它们通过整合方位和距离来导航，并不断在大脑中更新。他们将视觉地标证据与大脑中储存的本地方向相结合，所有这些都在一个经过查询和更新的框架内进行。所以蚂蚁也可以学习。

第11段

And in a twelve-year programme of work,Ryabko and Reznikova have found evidence that ants can transmit very complex messages.Scouts who had located food in a maze returned to mobilise their foraging teams.They engaged in contact sessions,at the end of which the scout was removed in order to observe what her team might do.Often the foragers proceeded to the exact spot in the maze where the food had been.Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent the foraging team using odour clues.Discussion now centres on whether the route through the maze is communicated as a‘left-right’sequence of turns or as a‘compass bearing and distance’message.

在长达十二年的研究项目中，里亚布科和雷兹尼科娃发现了证据，证明蚂蚁可以传递非常复杂的信息。在迷宫中找到食物的侦察兵返回，动员他们的觅食队。它们进行接触会议。随后，侦察员被移除，以观察其团队接下来的行为。觅食者常常走到迷宫中放置食物的确切地点。研究人员采取了精心的预防措施，以防止觅食团队使用气味线索。现在讨论的中心在于穿过迷宫的路径究竟是通过左右转弯序列进行交流的，还是通过方向与距离信息来传达的。

第12段

During the course of this exhaustive study,Reznikova has grown so attached to her laboratory ants that she feels she knows them as individuals–even without the paint spots used to mark them.It’s no surprise that Edward Wilson,in his essay,‘In the company of ants’,advises readers who ask what to do with the ants in their kitchen to:‘Watch where you step.Be careful of little lives.’

在这项详尽的研究过程中，雷兹尼科娃深深地被其实验室的蚂蚁所吸引，以至于她觉得自己认识其中的每一只-即使没有用来标记它们的油漆斑点。爱德华·威尔逊（Edward Wilson）在其论文“在蚂蚁的陪伴下”建议那些询问如何处理厨房中蚂蚁的读者：“注意脚下，小心这些微小的生命”。