關於鳥的英語文章閱讀
鳥信仰是中國原始社會先民的主要信仰之一。在原始社會,東夷、百越、荊楚等民族都信奉鳥圖騰,對鳥類抱有特殊的崇拜和信仰。本文是關於鳥的英語文章，希望對大家有幫助!
Fossil feathers
羽毛化石
Not just for the birds
並非鳥類獨有
A trove of fossils sheds light on the evolution of feathers
珍貴羽毛化石的發現能夠更好地闡釋羽毛的進化過程
THE fossil record is, faMously, full of holes.
衆所周知，化石記錄總是漏洞百出。
One such lacuna has been the absence of well-preserved feathers from the Cretaceous-the period between 145m and 65m years ago that ended with the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.
一個漏洞就是由於人們無法找到白堊紀時期保存完好的羽毛，因而該時期羽毛化石的記錄一直處於空白狀態。白堊紀是距今1.45億年到6500萬年的一段時期，末期發生了導致恐龍消失的物種大滅絕。
Now, this gap has been partly filled.
如今，這段空白得到了部分填充。
In this week's Science, a team led by Ryan McKellar from the University of Alberta report the discovery of eleven feathers preserved in amber from the latter part of the Cretaceous, about 70m-85m years ago.
本週，瑞安?麥凱樂領導的研究小組在《科學》雜誌上發表報告稱，他們發現了11種白堊紀後期(距今約7000至8500萬年)封存在琥珀裏的羽毛。
Intriguingly, not all of them seem to come from birds.
有趣的是，這些羽毛並不都屬於鳥類。
The origin of feathers is a mystery.
羽毛的起源一直是個謎。
The earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx, lived during the Jurassic, the period before the Cretaceous.
人類所熟知的最古老鳥類始祖鳥生活在白堊紀時期之前的侏羅紀時期。
But fossils from China suggest the precursors of feathers-simple, filament-like structures possibly used for insulation-evolved in land-lubbing dinosaurs and were only later adapted for flight.
中國出土的化石表明羽毛的前身呈簡易的絲狀結構，可能具有隔離熱量的功用，這些簡易絲狀羽毛在陸地恐龍身上不斷進化，直至後來才具備了飛行功能。
The top picture shows similar filaments discovered by Dr McKellar and his team, suggesting flightless dinosaurs sporting such protofeathers were still around in the late Cretaceous.
上圖所示爲麥凱樂博士及其研究小組發現的類似絲狀的羽毛，表明長有這些原生羽毛的“非鳥”恐龍在白堊紀後期仍然存活着。
Not all the feathers found by Dr McKellar were so primitive, though.
不過，McKellar博士發現的羽毛並不都是遠古時代的。
The second picture shows one similar in shape to those sported by modern birds.
第二幅圖顯示的羽毛形狀與現代鳥類羽毛相似。
Modern feathers consist of thousands of fibres held together by tiny hooks.
現代鳥類羽毛由成千上萬束靠細鉤聚攏在一起的纖維構成。
The details of that design can be tweaked to change a feather's characteristics, offering waterproofing, insulation, streamlining and so on.
通過改進羽毛構造的細節可改變它的特性，如防水、隔熱、流線造型等功能。
The third picture shows feathers that have just such a specialisation: coiling reminiscent of that seen in the feathers of modern divers.
第三幅圖顯示的羽毛就具備這樣的特殊功能：螺旋造型與現代潛鳥的羽毛相似。
Such coiling allows a feather to absorb water, which streamlines and insulates the owner.
這種螺旋形狀的羽毛能夠吸水，並使該鳥類身形更加精巧同時起保溫作用。
These feathers, then, presumably adorned a diving bird-perhaps Hesperornis, a flightless North American diver from precisely this period.
這些羽毛想必當時是歸潛鳥所有——也許是“黃昏鳥”，一種恰好生活在這一時期不會飛翔的北美潛鳥。
The final picture shows pigmentation preserved in a fossil feather.
最後一幅圖顯示了封存在羽毛化石裏的色素沉着。
Different feathers have different patterns of colour, suggesting that Cretaceous dinosaurs-flying or otherwise-used their feathers for display.
不同的羽毛有不同的顏色樣式，這表明白堊紀時期的會飛恐龍和陸地恐龍都利用羽毛來炫示自己。
Charles Darwin once said that contemplating a peacock's tail made him sick, such was the difficulty of explaining its complexity.
查爾斯?達爾文曾說過研究孔雀尾讓他有頭暈的感覺，可見想解釋清楚其複雜性有多難了。
Dr McKellar's finds suggest, at least, that that complexity began to evolve a long time ago.
不過，麥凱樂博士的發現至少表明這種複雜性在很久以前就開始進化了。
關於鳥的英語文章篇二禽虐與氣候變化 鳥類受害
Malaria among birds is becoming more prevalent
鳥類中的瘧疾感染越來越多
MOSQUITOES, which carry malaria parasites, like the warm and wet conditions that are expectedto become more common with climate change.
攜帶瘧原蟲的蚊子喜歡溫暖潮溼的環境，由於氣候變化的影響這種環境可能會越來越普遍。
This has led many to reason that malarial infections will increase.
因此很多人推論，瘧疾感染將會增加。
Yet studies run into the unreliability of modelling future climatic effects and sometimes ignorechanges in land use and health care.
但是很多研究遇到了未來氣候效應模型不可靠的問題，而且有時忽視了土地使用和健康保健方面的變化。
However, a new analysis of the spread of avian malaria shows that for the birds, at least,there is a real worry.
然而，一項新的對禽虐傳播的分析顯示，至少對於鳥類而言，真正令人擔憂的狀況已經出現。
Laszlo Garamszegi, of the Do?ana Biological Station in Spain, studied patterns of malarialinfections in birds to avoid confounding human factors in determining the epidemiology of aclosely related parasite.
在對一種有密切關係的寄生蟲進行流行病學鑑定時，爲避免混入人爲因素，西班牙多尼亞納生物站的喇撒?噶母賽棘研究了在鳥類中瘧疾感染的模式。
He looked at 43 previous studies that had carefully screened 3,000 bird species for malaria indifferent locations over the past 70 years.
他察看了以前的43份研究。這些研究仔細鑑別了過去70年來在不同地區的3000中鳥類感染瘧疾的情況。
He found that an increase in global temperatures of 1°C was accompanied by a two-tothreefold increase in the average prevalence of malaria in birds.
他發現，全球氣溫每增加1°C，鳥類平均瘧疾患病率隨之增加兩到三倍。
The most dramatic increases took place during the past 20 years.
最急劇地增加是發生在過去的20年間。
Dr Garamszegi's work, published in Global Change Biology, found that the house sparrow(Passer domesticus) showed a malaria prevalence that was less than 10% before 1990 whenworldwide temperatures were cooler, but in recent years nearly 30% were infected.
噶母賽棘博士的論文發表在《全球變化生物學》雜誌上，他發現，家雀(Passer domesticus)的瘧疾患病率在1990年以前不到10%，那時全球氣候比較涼爽，但是在最近的一些年裏幾乎30%被感染。
The great tit (Parus major) presented a similarly worrying increase, with less than 3% infectedwith malaria before 1995 but closer to 15% in recent studies.
大山雀(Parus major)的患病率有類似令人擔憂的增加，1995年之前不到3%，而最近接近15%。
The blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla), a migrant bird common in Europe that breeds in gardens, oncehad virtually no avian malaria but a study in 1999 showed nearly 4% had the disease.
黑頭鶯在歐洲一種常見的候鳥，它們生活在很多公園裏，實際上它們曾經並沒有禽虐感染，但是1999年的一項研究顯示，幾乎4%的黑頭鶯感染了這種疾病。
The effects of warming on avian malaria were not universal.
氣候變暖對禽虐的影響並不普遍。
Birds in Asia, North America and South America suffered much less change in their levels ofinfection during warm years than did birds dwelling in Africa and Europe.
亞洲、北美和南美的鳥類，在氣候變暖的若干年裏，其感染率的變化較小，而生活在非洲和歐洲的鳥類則受影響較大。
Such trends may not have any relevance to the malaria parasites that infect humans.
這種趨勢與感染人類的瘧原蟲可能沒有任何關係。
But avian malaria is already ravaging the native birds of Hawaii and it is now wreaking havoc inNew Zealand, says Dr Garamszegi.
但是禽虐已經毀掉了夏威夷的本地鳥類，它目前在新西蘭正造成着巨大的破壞，噶母賽棘博士說。
Human beings may be able to mitigate the spread of malaria, but birds will need the help ofconservationists if some species are to survive.
人類也許已經使瘧疾的傳播減緩，但是如果某些鳥類要倖存下來，就需要環境保護主義者們的幫助。
關於鳥的英語文章篇三Birds' magnetic sense
鳥類的磁性感知能力
Columbarian Columbuses
禽類新發現
Birds can navigate by the Earth's magnetic field. How they do it is still a mystery
鳥類能夠利用地球磁場導航。機理尚不明確
WHERE would people be without magnetic compasses?
人類沒有指南針會怎樣?
The short answer is: lost.
很簡單：迷失方向。
By giving human beings a sixth sense—an ability to detect the hitherto invisible magnetic fieldof the Earth—the compass proved one of the most important inventions ever.
指南針給了人類第6感，使人能辨別地球無形的磁場，成爲最重要的發明之一。
It let sailors navigate without sight of the night sky.
海員不用觀察夜空便可以辨識方向。
And that led to the voyages of discovery, trade and conquest which created the political geography of the modern world.
人們用它進行海上探索，海上交易，攻城掠地，進而開創了現代世界的政治版圖。
Imagine, then, what animals which had their own, built-in compasses could achieve.
有些動物有自己內嵌的指南系統。可以想象得出這些動物的能力。
They might spend their summers doing the English Season in Glyndebourne or Henley, and then overwinter in the warmth of Mombasa.
它們可以在戈林德伯恩或亨利鎮消暑，享受自己的英格蘭夏日。然後在溫暖的蒙巴薩島過冬。
They might strike out, like intrepid pioneers, from Angola to Anchorage.
它們可以像無畏的開拓者一樣，從安哥拉獨闖安克雷奇。
They might even, if truly gripped by wanderlust and a hatred of the darkness, live in near-perpetual daylight by migrating from Pole to Pole.
假如它們爲旅行所牽絆，爲黑暗而煩惱，它們會穿梭於兩極之間，過着永遠有光亮的生活。
And that is just what some birds do.
以上這些只是鳥類能力的一部分。
Swallows travel between Europe and Africa. Northern wheatears fly from Africa to Alaska, and back.
家燕在歐洲和非洲之間遷徙。石棲鳥在非洲和阿拉斯加之間遷徙。
Arctic terns each year make the journey from one end of the planet to the other.
每年，北極燕鷗都會從地球的一端飛到另一端。
And they can do it, at least in part, because they do have a magnetic sense denied to humans.
它們能這麼做的原因之一便是鳥類可以感知磁性，而人類不行。
The most familiar avian navigation trick is that pulled off by homing pigeons.
人類最爲熟知的鳥類導航技巧就是通過研究信鴿而得到的。
As a consequence pigeons have often found themselves at the sharp end of investigations about how bird navigation in general, and magnetic sense in particular, actually work.
鴿子便處在了人類研究的尖端。人們用它研究鳥類整體的導航機能，用它特別研究磁性感應機制。
That pigeons have such a sense was shown more than 40 years ago, by William Keeton of Cornell University, in upstate New York, who attached magnets to pigeons to see if they could still home.
鴿子顯示出此種能力是在40年前。當時，紐約州北部康乃爾大學的William Keeton把磁體系在鴿子身上，觀察它們是否能夠回家。
They could not, though birds fitted with non-magnetic dummies managed perfectly well.
結果是它們不能，但是那些帶有仿磁體的鴿子卻回家。
Since then, experiments on other species have shown magnetic sensitivity is common among birds. What these experiments have not shown, however, is how the birds manage it.
此後的實驗表明，磁性感知能力是鳥類共有的，但並沒有解釋是如何操作的。
See it? Hear it? Smell it?
視覺?聽覺?嗅覺?
There are two theories.
理論上的說法有兩種。
One is that the magnetic sensors are grains of magnetite, a form of iron oxide which, as its name suggests, is easily magnetised.
一種是鴿子具有磁感應器，這是一種以氧化鐵形式存在的磁鐵礦粒子。顧名思義，這種物質極易磁化。
The other is that the Earth's magnetic field affects a particular chemical reaction in the retina in a way that reaches into the arcane depths of quantum mechanics.
另一種說法認爲，地球磁場能對視網膜裏特定的化學反映產生影響，在某種程序上可以達到神祕量子力學的深度。
The magnetite hypothesis concentrates on birds' beaks.
磁鐵礦假說的焦點是鳥類的喙。
Magnetite grains are common in living things, and are known to be involved in magnetic sensing in bacteria. In birds they are particularly abundant in the beak.
磁鐵礦粒子是生物共有的，廣泛存在於鳥的喙中。
So last year David Keays of the Institute of Molecular Pathology, in Vienna, dissected the beaks of nearly 200 unfortunate pigeons, to find out more.
去年，維也納分子病理學研究所的David Keays對將近200只鴿子進行了解剖，以期得到更多發現。
What he discovered was not encouraging.
但是，他發現的並不令人鼓舞。
There were, indeed, lots of magnetite grains.
大量鐵磁礦粒子確實存在。
But he had expected they would congregate in some sort of specialised sensory cell akin to the taste buds of the tongue or the hair cells of the ear.
他原以爲鐵磁礦粒子會聚集成爲專門的感覺細胞，類似於舌頭上的味蕾和內耳毛細胞。
Instead, he found that the beak's magnetite is mostly in macrophages.
但是，他發現，喙部的鐵磁礦主要以巨噬細胞的形式存在，
These are cells whose job is to wander around amoeba-like, chewing up bacteria and debris from other body cells as they go.
這些細胞的職能是以遊離細胞的形式對細胞殘片及病原體進行噬菌。
Not, then, likely candidates as magnetic sensors.
因此，巨噬細胞不可能具有磁感應功能。
Other experiments, though, do suggest the beak is involved.
其它的實驗也包含了對喙的研究。
The nerve that connects it to the brain is known as the trigeminal.
聯結喙與腦的神經叫三叉神經。
When Dominik Heyers and Henrik Mouritsen of Oldenburg University, in Germany, cut the trigeminals of reed warblers the birds' ability to detect which way was north remained intact.
德國奧爾登堡大學的Dominik Heyers和Henrik Mouritsena切斷了葦鶯的三叉神經，保留了它們辨別北方的能力。
They did, however, lose their sense of magnetic dip.
然而，這些鳥卻失掉了磁傾角的感應力。
Dip indicates latitude, another important part of navigation.
磁傾角可以指示緯度，是導航的重要組成部分。
To confuse matters further, some people accept Dr Keays's interpretation of what is going on in the beak,
Keays對鳥喙解釋使情況更加複雜。但有些人還是接受了他的說法。
but think that the relevant magnetite grains are elsewhere—in the hair cells of the ear, which are also rich in iron oxide.
但是這些人認爲鳥身體的其它部位也存在磁鐵礦粒子—內耳毛細胞。氧化鐵也富含這種粒子。
If they are right, then from the birds' point of view they are probably hearing the magnetic signal.
假如這些人的假定正確，從鳥的角度來看，它們可能聽得到磁信號。
The main alternative to the nasal-magnetite hypothesis, though, is not that birds hear magnetic fields, but that they see them.
鼻腔內存在磁鐵礦的假說 並不是鳥類可以聽到磁場，而是能看到磁場。
One line of evidence for this is that part of a bird's brain, called cluster N, which gets its input directly from the eyes, seems to be involved in magnetic sensing.
關於此的證明是，鳥大腦中有一部分叫cluster N，可以直接得到眼部輸送的信息，好像跟磁場感應有聯繫。
Experiments Dr Mouritsen's team conducted on robins showed that destroying cluster N destroys a bird's north-detecting sense, and other experiments, on meadow pipits, show that cells in cluster N are far more active when the birds are using their magnetic sense than when they are not.
博士Mouritsen研究團隊對知更鳥進行了實驗，得出推斷。實驗顯示破壞知更鳥的cluster N，也就破壞了它們識別北方的能力。研究團隊又對草地鷚進行了實驗。實驗顯示，鳥類使用磁感應能力的時候，cluster N細胞異常活躍。
The problem with this idea is that birds' eyes do not have magnetite in them.
此種假說的問題在於鳥類的眼部沒有磁鐵礦。
If they do house magnetism detectors, those detectors must be something else.
假如它們真的起到了磁探測器的作用，那麼肯定另有他物。
That something, according to a hypothesis advanced by Klaus Schulten, who works at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a type of retinal protein called a cryptochrome.
在伊利諾斯大學香檳分校工作。據Schulten，這種他物是一種名爲cryptochrome的尿視黃醇蛋白。
When hit by light, a cryptochrome produces pairs of molecules called free radicals that are electrically neutral but have unpaired electrons in them.
當受到光照時，就產生名爲自由基的分子對。這種自由基呈電中性，其中含有未配對電子。
Electrons are tiny magnets, so they tend to attract each other and pair up in a way that neutralises their joint magnetic fields.
電子就是微小的磁性體。因此，當它們的聯合磁場中合之時，電子就會相互吸引，就會形成組對。
Unpaired electrons, however, remain magnetic, and thus sensitive to the Earth's field.
但是，那些不成對電子仍具磁性，對地球磁場很敏感。
Moreover, because the unpaired electrons in the free radicals were originally paired in the molecule that split to form the radicals, quantum mechanics dictates that these electrons remain entangled.
因爲自由基中的那些不成對電子最初存在於分裂成爲自由基分子之中，量子力學規定這些電子依然是絞纏的。
This means that however far apart they move, what happens to one affects the other's behaviour.
也就是說，無論雙方離得有多遠，一方的行爲會影響另一方。
Calculations suggest the different ways the two radicals feel the Earth's field as they separate is enough to change the way they will react with other chemicals—including ones that trigger nerve impulses, and that, via entanglement, they can transmit this information to each other, and thus affect each other's reactions.
此種假設表明，當兩種自由基分離時，它們感知地球磁場的相反作用足夠能夠改變它們與其它化學物質相互反應的方式――包括那些能產生神經脈衝的化學物質。同時，通過絞纏，它們彼此能互相信息，從而產生相互影響。
This, the calculations indicate, would be enough for a bird's brain to interpret the magnetic field.
此種假設表明，這足可以讓鳥腦識別磁場。
It would probably see a pattern of spots before its eyes, which would remain stationary as it scanned its head from side to side.
鳥眼可能會看到眼前有某種樣式的斑點圖案，當鳥類對其識別之時，眼睛是固定的。
And some birds do, indeed, scan their heads this way when assessing the direction of magnetic north.
其實，當鳥類辨別地磁北極之時，確實能夠用此法掃描頭部。
It is possible, of course, that both hypotheses are right, and that birds have two magnetic senses, with one perhaps concentrated on north detection and the other on detecting dip.
當然，兩種假說都有正確的可能。鳥類也有可能有兩套磁感應能力，一種集中在北方，另一種集中於磁傾角。
But there is something particularly poetic about the idea that even part of this mysterious sixth sense depends on a still-more-mysterious quantum effect—one that Einstein himself described as spooky action at a distance.
這種神祕的第六感覺依賴於更加神祕的量子力學效應。對此還有一種詩意般的解釋，即愛因斯坦自己說的鬼魅般的超距作用。
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