SSS 2008-06-02
时间：2019-01-08 作者：英语课 分类：Scientific American(六)月
This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I am Karen Hopkin. It will just take a minute.
Picture a sloth 1 and what do you see? Some slow-moving, hairy beasts just hanging around, maybe even catching 2 some Zs, and that’s just your husband. OK, seriously. We've all seen films of three-toed sloths 3,odd-looking creatures that spend their days hanging upside down in the rain forest canopy 4. They move so slowly that mossy looking algae 5 actually grow on them. And legend has it they sleep like 16 hours a day. But researchers from Germany and the US have found that sloth might not be the slugabeds we think. Using an equipment designed to monitor the brain wave of animals in the wild, the scientists found the sloth actually spend less then ten hours a day asleep in the trees. The results appear in the current issue of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. Why the discrepancy 6? While the earlier estimate comes from work done with animals in captivity 7. And maybe in the sloths' sleep lab. There is not much to do besides snooze. In the wild ,on the other hand, the animals need to keep an eye open for potential predators 8, like snakes or birds, and they also spend time foraging 9 for food, because nobody bringing a sloth any breakfast in bed.
Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I am Karen Hopkin.
- Absence of competition makes for sloth.没有竞争会导致懒惰。
- The sloth spends most of its time hanging upside down from the branches.大部分时间里树懒都是倒挂在树枝上。
- There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
- Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。
- Mummies of pleistocene ground sloths, with original skin, hair, tendons and claws have been found. 还发现了保存原有皮肤，毛发，腱和爪的更新世时期地面树懒的木乃伊。
- He was inspired by fossils of armadillos and sloths. 犰狳和树懒化石让他获得了灵感。
- The trees formed a leafy canopy above their heads.树木在他们头顶上空形成了一个枝叶茂盛的遮篷。
- They lay down under a canopy of stars.他们躺在繁星点点的天幕下。
- Most algae live in water.多数藻类生长在水中。
- Algae grow and spread quickly in the lake.湖中水藻滋蔓。
- The discrepancy in their ages seemed not to matter.他们之间年龄的差异似乎没有多大关系。
- There was a discrepancy in the two reports of the accident.关于那次事故的两则报道有不一致之处。
- A zoo is a place where live animals are kept in captivity for the public to see.动物园是圈养动物以供公众观看的场所。
- He was held in captivity for three years.他被囚禁叁年。
- birds and their earthbound predators 鸟和地面上捕食它们的动物
- The eyes of predators are highly sensitive to the slightest movement. 捕食性动物的眼睛能感觉到最细小的动静。 来自《简明英汉词典》