科学美国人60秒 SSS 狐狸“变”成狗-英语课

时间：2019-01-20 作者：英语课 分类：2017年科学美国人(五)月

英语课

Selective Breeding Molds Foxes into Pets 狐狸“变”成狗

Want to make a dog? Well, wolves evolved into dogs at least once. But it turns out you can also make what’s basically a dog by starting with wild foxes. Select the ones that do not seem to want to tear the researcher’s face off and mate them to produce the next generation.

想要“制造”狗吗?狼经过至少一次的交配就可以演变成狗。但是结果表明，你也可以让一只野生的狐狸演变成狗。选择那些比较温顺的，不会将研究人员的脸剥皮的狐狸，与狗进行交配，就可以产生下一代。

“Within five or six generations of this selecting the calmest animals, they had animals that were wagging their tails when Lyudmila would approach them, that were licking her hand when she put it into the cage.”

经过5、6次这样选择最温顺的动物，研究人员选择那些Lyudmila靠近后，会摇尾巴，将它们放入笼子里会舔他的手的动物。

University of Louisville evolutionary 1 biologist Lee Dugatkin, talking about Lyudmila Trut of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Siberia.

路易斯维尔大学进化生物学家Lee Dugatkin和西伯利亚细胞学和遗传学研究所的Lyudmila Trut进行了讨论。

“And this is strictly 3 as a result of genetic 2 selection. These animals are not trained to do this, they don’t learn, there’s no mechanism 4 in the experiment for them to learn anything, what you’re looking at is the result of genetic selection.”

“这是严格基因选择的结果，这些动物并没有经过训练来做这些，它们没有学习，在这次实验中没有任何的机制让这些动物去学习。你们所看到的都是基因选择的结果。”

Trut started this fox domestication 5 experiment in the late 1950s at the age of 25 and is still running it today. She and her team are approaching their 60th generation of foxes. But they saw profound changes early on.

Trut在25岁，20世纪50年代的时候，就开始了驯化狐狸的实验,现在实验仍在进行。她和团队们正在接触第60代狐狸。但是在早期他们看到了狐狸巨大的变化。

“Within five generations of selection they had these animals that were extraordinarily 6 docile 7 towards humans. And then slowly but surely, so many of the other traits that we see in domesticated 8 animals, also began to appear in these tame foxes...they tend to have floppy 9 ears and curly tails and they tend to have much more juvenalized facial characteristics.”

在第五代的选择中，这些动物对人类都非常的温顺。然后慢慢地，驯化的动物的一些其他的特征也开始在这些驯服的狐狸中出现…它们耷拉着耳朵，卷曲着尾巴，有很多明显的面部特征。

Trut and Dugatkin are the co-authors of the new book How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) about this long-term study. They also wrote an article about the fox experiment in the May issue of Scientific American. An in-depth discussion with Dugatkin is available as a Science Talk podcast on our Web site.

Trut和Dugatkin合著的一本新书《如何驯服一只狐狸(并塑造一只狗狗)》，这本书介绍了这个长期的研究。她们写的关于狐狸实验的文章也会出版在5月份的《科学美国人》期刊上。想要与Dugatkin进行深入的讨论，那么就来科学美国然网上上的科学讨论播客节目吧。