看到死亡的乌鸦的脑子里在想什么?

看到死亡的乌鸦的脑子里在想什么?

Crows and their relatives engage in distinctive, sometimes eerie, reactions to encountering dead animals, particularly other members of their own species. For the first time we know which parts of the brain are responsible for this, the closest we have yet come to understanding their thinking, and perhaps the origins of our own responses to the deaths of others.

乌鸦和它们的亲戚在遇到死去的动物，特别是它们自己物种的其他成员时，会有一种独特的，有时甚至是怪异的反应。这是我们第一次知道大脑的哪个部分负责这件事，这是我们迄今为止最接近理解它们的思维方式，或许也是我们对他人死亡的反应的起源。

Stephen Luntz

To find this out, Dr Kaeli Swift of the University of Washington injected crows with a radioactive sugar that gets drawn to the most active parts of the brain and showed them images of either dead crows or dead sparrows, and played them various sounds. She then anesthetized them and placed them in a PET scanner where the radioactive material indicates which parts of the brain have been most used since the injection. All the crows made full recoveries.

为了找到答案，华盛顿大学的Kaeli Swift博士给乌鸦注射了一种放射性糖，这种糖会吸引乌鸦大脑最活跃的部分，然后给它们看死乌鸦或死麻雀的图像，并给它们播放各种声音。然后，她对他们进行了麻醉，并将他们置于PET扫描仪中，在PET扫描仪中，放射性物质显示出注射后他们大脑的哪些部位使用得最多。所有的乌鸦都完全康复了。

“In response to observations of a dead crow, crows show significant activity in areas associated with higher-order decision-making, but not in areas associated with social behaviors or fear learning,” Swift reports in Behavioural Brain Research.

斯威夫特在《行为大脑研究》中写道:“通过对一只死乌鸦的观察，乌鸦在与高阶决策相关的区域表现出显著的活动，而与社会行为或恐惧学习无关。”

On her blog, Swift explains the work. She starts by pointing out crows’ reactions to the deaths of their fellows is different from most other animals, and often very complex. “Crows don’t ignore their dead, they don’t reflexively flee from their dead and they don’t just go about carrying out undertaking behaviors without a second thought.”

在她的博客上，斯威夫特解释了这项工作。她首先指出，乌鸦对同伴死亡的反应不同于大多数其他动物，而且往往非常复杂。“乌鸦不会忽视它们的尸体，它们不会条件反射地逃离它们的尸体，它们不会不假思索地到处活动。”

Instead, on finding an unfamiliar dead crow, a live one might sound an alarm call, bringing a mob of others who make a lot of noise for 15-30 minutes before dispersing. On other occasions, that look identical to the human eye, the same crow will behave quite differently. We have no idea of the reasons for these varying reactions, but Swift has previously indicated she thinks the crows are using the death as an opportunity to learn about threats.

相反，在发现一只不熟悉的死乌鸦时，一只活乌鸦可能会发出警报，引来一群吵吵闹闹15-30分钟后才散去。在其他情况下，看起来与人眼完全相同的乌鸦，其行为也会大不相同。我们不知道这些不同反应的原因，但斯威夫特之前曾表示，她认为乌鸦是利用死亡的机会来了解威胁。

Swift’s investigation of the funerals performed by the far more intelligent crows began even earlier. She attracted some fame thanks to the extraordinary masks she wore so she could see crows’ reactions, and for revealing that when crows witness a person handling a dead crow they treat them as a threat for weeks afterwards.

斯威夫特对聪明得多的乌鸦葬礼的调查甚至更早就开始了。她因为戴着特殊的面具来观察乌鸦的反应而一举成名。她还透露，当乌鸦看到一个人在处理一只死乌鸦时，它们会在几周后将其视为威胁。

Swift has in the past shown that crows do everything from shouting at deceased members of their species to engaging in necrophilia, sometimes collectively. Even more oddly, some of this behaviour is restricted to springtime.

斯威夫特过去的研究表明，乌鸦会做任何事情，从对同类中死去的成员大喊大叫到恋尸癖，有时还会集体行为。更奇怪的是，其中一些行为仅限于春季。

If you’re puzzled as to why anyone would conduct positron emission tomography (PET) tests on birds to view their brains’ response to seeing death, we refer you to this. The haunting video of turkeys walking around a dead cat left millions asking, “What are they thinking?”

如果你不明白为什么有人会对鸟类进行正电子发射断层扫描(PET)测试来观察它们看到死亡时的大脑反应，我们建议你参考这个。这段火鸡在死猫周围走动的视频让数百万人不禁发问:“它们在想什么?”

The scans Swift performed don’t explain the diversity of responses, but they do show that for the crows, the sight of a dead member of their species stimulates the part of the brain used in making complex decisions, rather than instinctive reactions. We don’t know what the crows are thinking, but at least we know they are thinking.

斯威夫特所做的扫描并不能解释反应的多样性，但它们确实表明，对于乌鸦来说，看到同类中死去的成员会刺激它们大脑中用来做复杂决定的部分，而不是本能反应。我们不知道乌鸦在想什么，但至少我们知道它们在想什么。