2020年12月六级第3套仔细阅读 Passage 2 原文翻译及答案解析

Imagine that an alien species landed on Earth and, through their mere presence, those aliens caused our art to vanish, our music to homogenize, and our technological know-how to disappear. That is effectively what humans have been doing to our closest relatives—chimps (大猩猩).

设想一个外星物种降落在地球上，并且仅仅通过它们的存在，这些外星人就使我们的艺术消失、我们的音乐同质化、我们的技术知识消失。这实际上就是人类对我们最近的亲属——黑猩猩（大猩猩）一直在做的事情。

Back in 1999, a team of scientists led by Andrew Whiten showed that chimps from different parts of Africa behave very differently from one another. Some groups would get each other's attention by rapping branches with their knuckles (指关节) while others did it by loudly ripping leaves with their teeth. The team identified 39 of these traditions that are practiced by some communities but not others—a pattern that, at the time, hadn't been seen in any animal except humans. It was evidence, the team said, that chimps have their own cultures.

早在1999年，由Andrew Whiten领导的科学家团队表明，来自非洲不同地区的黑猩猩行为差异很大。一些群体通过用指关节敲击树枝来吸引彼此的注意，而其他群体则通过用牙齿大声撕裂叶子来做到这一点。该团队识别了39种这样的传统，这些传统在一些社区中实行，但在其他社区中没有——这种模式在当时除了人类外，在任何动物中都没有见过。团队说，这是黑猩猩拥有自己文化的证据。

It took a long time to convince skeptics that such cultures exist, but now we have plenty of examples of animals learning local traditions from one another.

说服怀疑论者相信这种文化的存在花了很长时间，但现在我们有大量动物从彼此学习当地传统的例子。

But just when many scientists have come to accept the existence of animal cultures, many of those cultures might vanish. Ammie Kalan and her colleagues have shown, through years of intensive fieldwork, that the very presence of humans has eroded the diversity of chimp behavior. Where we flourish, their cultures wither. It is a bitterly ironic thing to learn on the 20th anniversary of Whiten's classic study.

但就在许多科学家开始接受动物文化的存在时，许多这些文化可能正在消失。Ammie Kalan和她的同事通过多年的密集实地调查表明，人类的存在已经侵蚀了黑猩猩行为的多样性。在我们繁荣的地方，它们的文化枯萎。在Whiten经典研究的20周年纪念日了解到这一点，是一件苦涩而讽刺的事情。

'It's amazing to think that just 60 years ago, we knew next to nothing of the behavior of our sister species in the wild,' Whiten says. 'But now, just as we are truly getting to know our primate (灵长类) cousins, the actions of humans are closing the window on all we have discovered.'

‘想到仅仅60年前，我们对野生姐妹物种的行为几乎一无所知，这令人惊讶，’Whiten说。‘但现在，就在我们真正开始了解我们的灵长类表亲时，人类的行动正在关闭我们所发现的一切的窗口。’

'Sometimes in the rush to conserve the species, I think we forget about the individuals,' says Cat Hobaiter, a professor at the University of St. Andrews. 'Each population, each community, even each generation of chimps is unique. An event might only have a small impact on the total population of chimps, but it may wipe out an entire community—an entire culture. No matter what we do to restore habitat or support population growth, we may never be able to restore that culture.'

‘有时候在急于保护物种时，我认为我们忘记了个体，’圣安德鲁斯大学教授Cat Hobaiter说。‘每个种群、每个社区，甚至每一代黑猩猩都是独一无二的。一个事件可能对黑猩猩的总种群影响很小，但它可能消灭整个社区——整个文化。无论我们做什么来恢复栖息地或支持种群增长，我们可能永远无法恢复那种文化。’

No one knows whether the destruction of chimp culture is getting worse. Few places have tracked chimp behavior over long periods, and those that have are also more likely to have protected their animals from human influence.

没有人知道黑猩猩文化的破坏是否在加剧。很少有地方长期跟踪黑猩猩的行为，而那些确实跟踪的地方也更可能保护了它们的动物免受人类影响。

Obviously conservationists need to think about saving species in a completely new way—by preserving animal traditions as well as bodies and genes. 'Instead of focusing only on the conservation of genetically based entities like species, we now need to also consider culturally based entities,' says Andrew Whiten.

显然，保护主义者需要以一种全新的方式思考拯救物种——通过保护动物传统以及身体和基因。‘ instead of focusing only on the conservation of genetically based entities like species, we now need to also consider culturally based entities,’Andrew Whiten说。