听力课堂TED音频栏目主要包括TED演讲的音频MP3及中英双语文稿,供各位英语爱好者学习使用。本文主要内容为演讲MP3+双语文稿:关于死亡,乌鸦带给我们的启发,希望你会喜欢!
【演讲者及介绍】Kaeli Swift
Kaeli Swift想知道关于乌鸦的一切,包括它们能教给我们关于认知和社会行为的进化。
【演讲主题】乌鸦教会我们的关于死亡的事
What crows teach us about death
【中英文字幕】
翻译者Nicole Jin 校对者psjmz mz
Whether we want to or not, humans spend a great deal of time considering death. And it's possible we've been doing so since shortly after homo sapiens first began roaming the landscape. After all, the first intentional human burial is thought to have occurred around 100,000 years ago. What might those early people have been thinking as they took the time to dig into the earth, deposit the body and carefully cover it up again? Were they trying to protect it from scavengers or stymie the spread of disease? Were they trying to honor the deceased? Or did they just not want to have to look at a dead body?
无论我们想不想, 人类往往会花很多时间 考虑死亡这件事。 而且这样的想法很可能 在智人首次在陆地上迁移后不久 就已经出现了。 毕竟,据说人类 第一个有意举行的葬礼 发生在十万年前。 早期人类花时间 在地上挖一个洞, 把一具尸体放到洞中, 再小心地用土覆盖上去的时候, 他们到底在想些什么? 他们是在防止食腐动物破坏尸体, 还是在防止疾病传播? 他们在缅怀逝者吗? 还是他们只是不想看到遗体?
Without the advent of a time machine, we may never know for sure what those early people were thinking, but one thing we do know is that humans are far from alone in our attention towards the dead. Like people, some animals, including the corvids, the family of birds that houses the crows, ravens, magpies and jays, also seem to pay special attention to their dead. In fact, the rituals of corvids may have acted as the inspiration for our own. After all, it was the raven that God sent down to teach Cain how to bury his slain brother Abel. But despite this clear recognition by early people that other animals attend to their dead, it's only fairly recently that science has really turned its attention towards this phenomenon. In fact, a formal name for this field -- comparative thanatology -- wasn't first introduced until 2016. In this growing field, we are beginning to appreciate what a rich place the natural world is with respect to how other animals interact with their dead, and it's in this growing body of knowledge that that time machine to our early ancestors might be possible.
在时光机器出现之前, 我们可能永远不知道 当时人们是怎么想的, 但我们可以肯定的一点是, 重视死亡的不止是人类。 跟人类相似,有的动物, 比如柯维鸟科, 像乌鸦、渡鸦、喜鹊和松鸦, 也很关注它们的死者。 其实,柯维鸟家庭的仪式 可能启发了 人类自己的仪式。 毕竟,是上帝派乌鸦下来教该隐 怎么埋葬他过世的弟弟,亚伯的。 尽管古人对其他动物处理死者 有这种清晰的认知, 但这些现象在最近 才引起科学的注意。 实际上,这个学科的正式名称—— “比较死亡学”—— 直到 2016 年才被引入。 在这个发展中的领域, 我们开始意识到地球上 不同动物在对待死者 这个主题上的多样性, 并且这些逐渐积累的知识 可以让我们对祖先 有更多的了解。
So what are we learning in this growing field? Well, right now we can split our understanding into two main groups. In the first, we have animals that display stereotyped, predictable behaviors towards their dead, and for whom much of what we understand about them comes from experimental studies. This group includes things like the social insects -- bees and ants and termites -- and for all of these animals, colony hygiene is of critical importance, and so as a result these animals display rigorous undertaking behaviors in response to corpses. For example, they may physically remove carcasses from the colony. They may consume them. They may even construct tombs. We see similar hygiene-driven responses in some colony-living mammals. Rats, for example, will reliably bury cage-mates that have been dead for 48 hours.
那么我们在这个领域学到了什么? 我们可以先把 我们的知识分成两大类。 第一,是那些对死者表现出 刻板、可预测行为的动物, 我们对它们的了解大多来自 实验研究。 这些群体包括社会类昆虫—— 比如蜜蜂、蚂蚁,还有白蚁—— 对所有这些动物来说, 群体卫生至关重要, 因此,这些动物对死尸表现出了 严格的责任行为。 例如,它们可能会把死尸 从群居中移走, 也可能吃掉它们。 甚至会为死去的同伴建造坟墓。 我们在一些生活在聚居区的哺乳动物身上 也看到了类似的卫生驱动反应。 例如,老鼠会很负责地埋葬 去世 24 小时的笼中同伴。
In our other group, we have animals that display more variable, perhaps more charismatic behaviors, and for whom much of what we understand about them comes from anecdotes by scientists or other observers. This is the animals whose death behaviors I suspect might be more familiar to folks. It includes organisms like elephants, which are well-known for their attendance to their dead, even in popular culture. In fact, they're even known to be attracted to the bones of their deceased. It also includes animals like primates, which display a wide variety of behaviors around their dead, from grooming them to prolonged attention towards them, guarding them, even the transportation of dead infants. And that's actually a behavior we've seen in a number of animals, like the dolphins for example.
在另一些群体中,动物的行为 则表现得更加多样化, 或者更具魅力, 我们对它们的了解 多来自科学家 或其他观察者的趣闻轶事。 我猜人们对这种动物 对待死者的行为可能更为熟悉。 这包括大象这样的生物, 它们以悼念死者而闻名, 即使在流行文化中。 实际上,它们甚至会被 死者的尸骨所吸引。 这也包括灵长类动物, 它们对死者也表现出了 非常多样化的行为。 从为它们梳毛 到长时间关注它们, 守卫它们, 甚至携带死婴行走。 我们在很多动物身上 都看到过类似的行为, 比如海豚。
You may remember the story of Tahlequah, the orca in the resident J pod in the Puget Sound, who during the summer of 2018 carried her dead calf for an unprecedented 17 days. Now, a story like that is both heartbreaking and fascinating, but it offers far more questions than it does answers. For example, why did Tahlequah carry her calf for such a long period of time? Was she just that stricken with grief? Was she more confused by her unresponsive infant? Or is this behavior just less rare in orcas than we currently understand it to be?
你可能还记得 Tahlequah 的故事, 它是普吉特湾 J 族中的 一头逆戟鲸。 2018 年夏天, 它托着她死去的幼崽 度过了史无前例的 17 天。 这样的故事 让人心碎而又着迷, 但它引出的问题远远多于答案。 比如,为什么Tahlequah 要携带它死去的幼崽 如此长的时间? 她是如此伤心吗? 她是因为自己的婴儿 不能反应而困惑吗? 还是说这种行为在逆戟鲸中 并不像我们现在 所理解的那样罕见?
But for a variety of reasons, it's difficult to do the kinds of experimental studies in an animal like an orca, or many of these other large mammals, that might elucidate those kinds of questions. So instead, science is turning to an animal whose behaviors around death we've been thinking about since BCE: the crows.
但因为种种原因, 我们很难在逆戟鲸 或其他大型哺乳动物身上进行 这类有可能回答 这些问题的实验研究。 因此,科学把目光转向一种动物, 我们从公元前就开始思考 它们对待死者的行为: 那就是乌鸦。
Like insects and primates, crows also seem to pay special attention to their dead. Typically, this manifests as the discovering bird alarm calling, like you can see in this photo, followed by the recruitment of other birds to the area to form what we call a mob. But it can be a little different than that too. For example, I've had people share with me seeing prolonged silent vigils by crows in response to deceased or dying crows. I've even had people tell me of witnessing crows place objects like sticks and candy wrappers on or near the bodies of dead crows. And this mix of observations puts these birds in a really important place in our scheme, because it suggests on the one hand they might be like the insects, displaying these very predictable behaviors, but on the other hand we have this handful of observations that are more difficult to explain and feel a bit more like what we see in some of the mammals like primates and elephants. And like those animals, crows share an extremely large relative brain size and the kinds of dynamic social lives that might invite more complexity in how they respond to their dead.
跟昆虫和灵长类动物类似, 乌鸦也对死者特别关注。 最典型的表现就是 发出鸟类的警鸣, 和这张照片中的画面类似, 随后是召唤其他鸟来到这个区域, 形成了我们所说的“乌合之众”。 但实际场景也可能 跟照片有点不同。 举个例子,有人跟我分享说看到 乌鸦长时间对垂死或死去的乌鸦 沉默守候的情景。 有人还告诉我,乌鸦会把 树枝和糖纸放到 死去乌鸦的身上或身旁。 这些不同的观察让这种鸟 在我们的计划上占有重要地位, 因为这意味着,一方面, 它们可能跟昆虫一样, 表现出非常可预测的行为, 但在另一方面, 我们的有些观察 很难得到合理的解释, 感觉有点像我们看到的 一些灵长类动物和 大象这类哺乳动物。 并且跟这些动物一样, 乌鸦大脑的体积也相对更大, 并且这种动态的社会生活 可能会让它们 对待死者的方式更加复杂。
So I wanted to try to understand what was going on when crows encounter a dead crow, and what this might teach us about the role of death in their world, and possibly the worlds of other animals as well, even those early versions of ourselves.
所以我想搞清楚当乌鸦 遇到死去的同伴时, 到底会发生什么, 以及这能否告诉我们,死亡到底 在它们的世界中扮演着什么角色, 并且可能事关其他动物, 甚至还有我们的早期版本。
There's a number of different ways that we could explain why crows might be attracted to their dead. For example, maybe it's a social opportunity, a way for them to explore why that individual died, who they were and what impact this is going to have on the neighborhood moving forward. Maybe it's an expression of grief, like our own contemporary funerals. Or maybe it's a way that they learn about danger in their environment. While all of those explanations are worth pursuing, and certainly not mutually exclusive, they're not all testable scientific questions. But that idea that dead crows might act as cues of danger, that is. So as a graduate student, I wanted to explore that question, particularly with respect to two ideas. The first was whether they might be able to learn new predators, specifically people, based on their association with dead crows. And the second was if they might learn places associated with where they find crow bodies.
有很多理由可以用来解释 乌鸦为什么会被死者吸引。 例如,这也许是个社交契机, 一个让它们探讨死者为什么死亡, 死者是谁, 这会对社区的发展产生 什么影响的方式。 也许这是一种悲伤的表达, 就像我们现在的葬礼一样。 或者这可能是它们试探 环境是否危险的一种方式。 所有这些解释都是值得探索的, 并且当然不是相互排斥的, 它们都不是可以 进行测试的科学问题。 但死去的乌鸦可能意味着危险这一点, 是可以进行测试的。 作为一名研究生, 我很想探究这个问题, 尤其是其中两点。 第一点是,它们能否 习得谁是新的天敌, 特别是人类, 基于他们和死乌鸦的联系。 第二点是,它们能否习得 发现死乌鸦位置的能力。
So to do this, I would go out into some unsuspecting Seattle neighborhood and I would start to feed a breeding pair of crows over the course of three days, and this provided a baseline for how quickly the crows would come down to a food pile, which, as you'll see in a minute, was really important. Then, on the fourth day, we would have our funeral.
为了实现这些,我前往了 一些毫无戒备的西雅图社区, 开始在三天的时间中 投喂一对正在繁殖的乌鸦, 这为乌鸦多快到达 食物堆提供了一个基准, 各位马上就会看到,这点非常重要。 然后,第四天, 我们会举行葬礼。
This is Linda. Linda is one of seven masks whose job was to stand there for 30 minutes with her little hors d'oeuvre plate of dead crow while I documented what happened. Most importantly, though, her job was to come back after a week, now without the dead crow, so that we could see if the birds would treat her just like any old pedestrian, or if, instead, they would exhibit behaviors like alarm calling or dive bombing that would indicate that they perceived her as a predator. Now, given that we already knew crows were capable of learning and recognizing human faces, it may come as no surprise that the majority of crows in our study did treat the masks that they saw handling dead crows as threats when they saw them over the course of the next six weeks.
这是琳达。 琳达是被放置在实验场地 30 分钟的七个面具人之一, 端着一只死乌鸦, 而我则记录了之后发生的事情。 最关键的是, 她的工作是一周后再一次出现, 但不再端着死乌鸦, 这样我们就可以观察鸟儿们 是像对待路人那样对待她, 还是相反,它们会发出报警呼叫 或俯冲轰炸等行为, 把她视为捕食者。 现在我们已知, 乌鸦有学习能力, 并可以识别人类面孔, 那么我们研究的大多数乌鸦 在未来的 6 周中 把端着死乌鸦的面孔 视为威胁就不让人惊讶了。
Now, if you're sitting there thinking, alright, give me a break, look at that face, it is terrifying, anyone would treat that as a threat if they saw it walking down the street, know that you are not alone. As it turns out, a lot of the folks whose houses we did these experiments in front of felt the same way, but we'll save that for another time. So you may be comforted to know that we did control tests to make sure that crows don't share our preconceived bias against masks that look a bit like the female version of Hannibal Lecter.
如果你们现在正在想, 得了吧, 看看这个面孔,多可怕呀, 如果人们走在街上看到她, 都会将其视为威胁, 不是只有你会这样看。 结果,让我们在他们的家门口 进行这个实验的人中, 很多人都有同样的感觉, 但这就是另一个话题了。 好消息是, 我们做了对照测试, 以确保乌鸦不会像我们一样,对有点像 汉尼拔·莱克特(小说中的食人医师)的 女性版面孔抱有偏见。
Now, in addition to finding that crows were able to make associations with people based on their handling of dead crows, we also found that in the days following these funeral events, as we continued to feed them, that their willingness to come down to the food pile significantly diminished, and we didn't see that same kind of decline in our control groups. So that suggests that, yes, crows can make associations with particular places where they've seen dead crows. So together, what that tells us is that while we certainly shouldn't discount those other explanations, we can feel pretty confident in saying that for crows, attention to their dead might be a really important way that these animals learn about danger.
那么,除了发现乌鸦可以 对处理死乌鸦的人 产生联系之外, 在这些葬礼事件后仍然 继续喂养它们的日子里, 我们还发现, 它们飞到食物堆的意愿显著减少, 但我们的对照组并没有 同样水平的减少。 所以这表明,没错,乌鸦可以 与看到死乌鸦的地方产生联系。 那么这一系列结果表明, 我们显然不该忽视其他解释, 我们可以充满信心地说, 对乌鸦而言,关注死者 可能是这些动物试探危险环境的 非常重要的方式。
And that's a nice, tidy little narrative on which to hang our hats. But in life and death, things are rarely so neat, and I really came face to face with that in a follow-up experiment, where we were looking at how crows respond to dead crows in the absence of any kind of predator. And suffice it to say, we found that in these cases, the wakes can get a little more weird.
这是一个逻辑严谨的小故事, 很有说服力。 但对于生与死, 事情很少如此简单, 在接下来观察 捕食者不在场时 乌鸦对死者做何反应的实验中, 我直击了这个问题。 这样说吧,我们发现 在这些案例中, 乌鸦会变得有些奇怪。
So this is what that experimental setup looks like. You can see our stuffed dead crow alone on the sidewalk, and it's been placed on the territory of a pair.
这是实验设置的样子。 你可以看到行人道上的乌鸦标本, 它被放在一对乌鸦的领地上。
That is the alarm call by one of those territorial birds, and it's coming into frame. Pretty soon, its mate is going to join it. And so far, this is all very usual. This is what crows do. OK, right now it's getting a little less usual. Not everyone here might be familiar with what bird sex looks like, so if you are not, this is what it looks like. You're basically seeing a confluence of three behaviors: alarm, as indicated by the alarm calling; aggression, as indicated by the very forceful pecking by both one of the copulatory birds and one of the excited bystanders; and sexual arousal.
这是其中一只领地鸟 发出的警告, 它开始进入了画面。 很快,它的配偶加入进来。 到目前为止,这些行为都很常见。 这些是乌鸦的行为。 好吧,现在有些不太正常了。 并非每个人都熟悉 乌鸦交配的样子, 如果你不熟悉,大概就是这样子。 基本上你看到的是 三种行为的混合: 警报,类似报警呼叫; 攻击性,体现在交配的鸟儿 强有力的啄食行为上, 以及一个兴奋的旁观者; 还有性兴奋。
Clearly, this is startling, and interesting to think about and talk about. But if our goal is to understand the big picture of how animals interact with their dead, then the most important question we should ask is, is this representative? Is this something that's happening consistently? And that's why being able to do systematic studies with crows is so valuable, because after conducting hundreds of these trials, where I was placing these dead crows out on the sidewalks on the territories of hundreds of different pairs, what we found was that, no, it's not. Contact of any kind, whether it was sexual, aggressive or even just exploratory, only occurred 30 percent of the time.
显然,这很让人吃惊, 很容易引起思考和讨论。 但我们的目标是理解 动物如何与它们的死者 互动的整体情况, 那我们该问的最重要问题是, 这具有代表性吗? 这是会持续发生的事情吗? 这就是为何对乌鸦 进行系统研究 是如此有价值, 因为在进行数百次这些实验, 把死乌鸦放在数百对不同的 乌鸦领地的路旁后, 我们发现,不是的, 这些都并非是持续的行为。 任何形式的接触, 不管是交配、攻击, 甚至只是探究, 发生的几率只有 30%。
So given that this wasn't representative, this was the minority, we may be tempted to just dismiss it as irrelevant, odd, creepy, weird crow behavior. But what may surprise you is that behaviors like aggression or even sexual arousal aren't all that rare, and certainly aren't constrained to just crows. Because while the popular narrative when it comes to animal death behaviors tends to focus on affiliative behaviors like grooming or guarding, that is far from the complete list of what even our closest relatives do around their dead. In fact, we've documented behaviors like biting, beating and even sex itself in a wide variety of animals, including many primates and dolphins.
所以鉴于这些行为 不具有代表性, 只是少数情况, 我们可能会忽略它 为不相关的、奇怪的, 令人毛骨悚然的乌鸦行为。 但可能会让你惊讶的是, 攻击性, 甚至性兴奋, 都并不罕见, 当然也不仅限于乌鸦。 因为当谈到动物 对待死者的行为时,主流叙事 倾向于关注梳毛或守卫 这些友好的行为, 但这些行为与 我们的近亲对待死者的方式 依然相去甚远。 事实上,我们记录到了 各种各样的动物, 包括许多灵长类动物 和海豚在内的 诸如咬、打,甚至性本身的行为,
So where does this leave us in our understanding of animals and their death rituals? Well, for crows, it suggests that, like insects, they may have a strong adaptive driver in their interest in their dead. In this case, it might be danger learning, and that might have acted as the inspiration for our own rituals as well. But when we look more closely, we see that there's no one simple narrative that can explain the vast array of behaviors we see in crows and many other animals. And that suggests that we are still far from completing that time machine. But it's going to be a really fascinating ride.
那么这对我们理解动物 和它们的死亡仪式 提供了什么启示呢? 对乌鸦来说,这意味着, 像昆虫一样,它们对死者的兴趣中 有强烈的适应性驱动。 在这个案例中, 它可能是习得危险, 这可能也是 我们人类仪式的 灵感来源。 但当我们更仔细地观察, 就会发现,并不存在 一个简单的叙事, 能够解释我们在乌鸦 和很多其他动物上 看到的大量多样化行为。 这也意味着,我们离 完成时间机器还为时过早。 但这将会是一段 非常令人着迷的旅程。
Thank you.
谢谢。