每个人都需要一个朋友。即使是鲨鱼

每个人都需要一个朋友。即使是鲨鱼

Sharks are often maligned as Hollywood monsters, the lone wolves lurking in the deep, hunting for prey. (Cue Jaws theme song).

鲨鱼经常被人诬蔑为好莱坞的怪物，孤独的狼潜伏在深海中，捕食猎物。(提示：《大白鲨》主题曲)。

But that caricature of sharks is increasingly out of step with what scientists are learning about the animals. Instead, they say, some species of sharks are social creatures who return day after day to a group of the same fellow sharks.

但这种鲨鱼的夸张描述与科学家对这种动物的了解越来越不一致。相反，他们说，有些种类的鲨鱼是群居动物，它们日复一日地回到同一群鲨鱼中。

"They form these spatially structured social groups where they hang out with the same individuals over multiple years," says Yannis Papastamatiou, who runs the Predator Ecology and Conservation Lab at Florida International University.

佛罗里达国际大学捕食者生态与保护实验室的负责人亚尼斯·帕帕斯塔玛蒂奥说:“它们形成了这些空间结构的社会群体，在那里它们与相同的个体交往多年。”

Papastamatiou's team studied gray reef sharks populating the waters off Palmyra Atoll, a sunken island ringed by coral reefs, in the central Pacific Ocean between the Hawaiian Islands and Fiji. They attached small location transmitters to 41 sharks, which allowed them to track the animals' movements around the reef. They also outfitted two sharks with small video cameras on their fins, to get what Papastamatiou calls a shark's-eye view of their daily lives.

帕帕斯塔玛蒂奥的团队研究了生活在巴尔米拉环礁附近海域的灰礁鲨。巴尔米拉环礁是位于夏威夷群岛和斐济之间的太平洋中部一个珊瑚礁环绕的沉没岛屿。他们在41条鲨鱼身上安装了小型定位发射器，这样就可以追踪鲨鱼在珊瑚礁周围的活动。他们还在两只鲨鱼的鳍上安装了小型摄像机，以获得帕帕斯塔玛蒂奥所说的鲨鱼视角下的日常生活。

After tracking the sharks for four years, the researchers found that the same groupings of sharks — ranging from a couple up to as many as 20 — frequently returned to the same parts of the reef over and over again. They also found that some of the groups stuck together for the duration of the study — longer than previous studies have observed.

在跟踪这些鲨鱼四年之后，研究人员发现，同一群鲨鱼，从一对到多达20只——经常一次又一次地回到珊瑚礁的同一区域。他们还发现，在整个研究过程中，一些群体成员粘在一起，比之前的研究观察到的时间还要长。

The findings appear this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the Royal Society's journal for biological research.

这一发现发表在本周的《英国皇家学会学报B》上，这是英国皇家学会的生物研究杂志。

The sharks might be motivated to stay together, Papastamatiou says, because it makes hunting for food easier.

帕帕斯塔玛蒂奥说，鲨鱼可能会有动机呆在一起，因为这样更容易猎食。

"If we hang out together and I see something, then you can come and try and take advantage of that," he says. "And alternatively, if you see something, then I can try and take advantage of that."

他说:“如果我们一起出去玩，我看到了一些东西，你就可以过来捞点好处。”“或者，如果你看到了什么，我也可以试着捞点好处。”

He emphasizes that the sharks don't cooperatively hunt, but says that as long as the group isn't too large — which would raise competition and conflict — socializing appears to benefit the sharks. And that may be one of the factors that led to sociality in the species.

他强调，鲨鱼不会合作捕猎，但他说，只要群体不是太大(那样会增加竞争和冲突)社交活动似乎对鲨鱼有利。这可能是导致该物种社会性的因素之一。

David Shiffman, who studies shark ecology and conservation at Arizona State University, says he was surprised to learn the sharks stuck together for so long.

在亚利桑那州立大学研究鲨鱼生态和保护的大卫·希夫曼说，他很惊讶地发现这些鲨鱼长时间粘在一起。

"I mean, I don't have a lot of friends I do that with," he jokes.

“我的意思是，和我一起做这种事的朋友不多，”他开玩笑说。

Sharks are smart creatures, Shiffman says. In addition to knowing where to grab a bite by watching their peers, he says, some species of sharks also can learn to solve simple puzzles, just by watching other sharks solve them. Given their intelligence and social abilities, he says perhaps it's time to drop prejudices about sharks.

鲨鱼是聪明的生物，希夫曼说。他说，除了通过观察同伴来知道去哪里捕食之外，一些种类的鲨鱼还可以通过观察其他鲨鱼来学习解决简单的难题。考虑到它们的智慧和社交能力，他说也许是时候放下对鲨鱼的偏见了。

"It turns out that they are a lot smarter than most people think, and they have more complex social behavior and more complex ability to process their environment and learn and change," Shiffman says.

“事实证明，它们比大多数人认为的要聪明得多，它们的社会行为更复杂，处理环境、学习和改变的能力也更复杂，”希夫曼说。