美国国家公共电台 NPR A Slimy Discovery: New Fossil Found Of Jawless, Backless Hagfish
时间:2019-03-04 作者:英语课 分类:2019年NPR美国国家公共电台1月
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
You might want to set aside your cornflakes for a moment now. Ed Yong writes in The Atlantic about a substance he says, quote, "looks revolting but is also one of nature's more wondrous 1 substances, unlike anything else that's been concocted 2 by either evolution or engineers." Ed Yong, science writer for The Atlantic, joins us now. What are you celebrating here?
ED YONG: Hi. I am celebrating the slime produced by a type of fish called the hagfish. So the hagfish is, you know, a 2-foot long creature that lives in the deep ocean. It looks a bit like an eel 3, but it's not. It has no backbone 4. It has no jaws 5. And, most tellingly, it has the ability to produce incredible amounts of this very, very weird 6 and unusual slime.
SIMON: I guess we could both make a lot of jokes about how similar it is to members of the U.S. Senate, but (laughter)...
YONG: Can neither confirm nor deny that.
SIMON: Slime. A teaspoon 7 of slime at first, but it really multiplies, doesn't it?
YONG: So a hagfish will release about less than a teaspoonful 8 of the slime from the glands 9 on its side. But in, like, less than half a second, that teaspoonful will expand into liters of slime. If you put a hagfish in a bucket, at first, it'll look like these thin wisps of, like, white, cloudy stuff have been released from its flanks. And then, if you stick your hand in and swirl 10 it around, you'll just be pulling out, like, handfuls of this stuff. It's almost like the entire bucket will have converted into slime.
SIMON: But this is what they do to protect themselves?
YONG: Right, it's a defensive 11 measure. They release it when they're attacked or when they're stressed.
SIMON: Because a lot of predators 12 might say, ha-ha-ha, no backbone, no teeth? I know what I'm having for lunch.
YONG: Right, exactly. They often get bitten and attacked. But when they do, they instantly release this massive cloud of slime which is very, very good at infiltrating 13 nooks and crannies, including the mouths and gills of predators. So there have been these incredible videos of sharks biting hagfish and then just recoiling 14, their mouths and gills full of slime and just gagging and being forced to retreat.
SIMON: Sharks essentially 15 saying, I'm sorry (laughter). I'm not a Spielberg shark. They don't pay me enough to swallow slime.
YONG: I think it's more like they're saying, (vocalizing).
SIMON: (Laughter) Now, hagfish slime is in the news because of a new fossil, right?
YONG: So partly, yes.
SIMON: A newly discovered fossil.
YONG: A newly discovered fossil. The fossil is interesting because the evolutionary 16 relationships of hagfish to other fish have long been controversial. Like, a lot of scientists have thought of them as very primitive 17 creatures, like some sort of transition from a kind of worm-like thing to a fish-like thing. But this new fossil helps us understand that it looks like hagfish are vertebrates. They are part of the backbone lineage. They just seem to have lost a lot of the traits that we have, things like complex eyes and bones and taste buds. So rather than being this weird, evolutionary throwback, they're actually very, very well-adapted animals to the somewhat grim and grotesque 18 life that they live at the bottom of the ocean, feeding on corpses 19, sliming things that might want to eat them.
SIMON: Oh, boy, does that sound - ah, what a life that sounds like.
YONG: (Laughter) Right. But I tell you what, I was serious when I said that it's one of evolution's marvels 20. I think very rarely do you see a substance with this combination of properties produced by an animal that most people have never heard of.
SIMON: Ed Yong covers science for The Atlantic. Thanks so much for being with us.
YONG: Thanks for having me.
- The internal structure of the Department is wondrous to behold.看一下国务院的内部结构是很有意思的。
- We were driven across this wondrous vast land of lakes and forests.我们乘车穿越这片有着湖泊及森林的广袤而神奇的土地。
- The soup was concocted from up to a dozen different kinds of fish. 这种汤是用多达十几种不同的鱼熬制而成的。
- Between them they concocted a letter. 他们共同策划写了一封信。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- He used an eel spear to catch an eel.他用一只捕鳗叉捕鳗鱼。
- In Suzhou,there was a restaurant that specialized in eel noodles.苏州有一家饭馆,他们那里的招牌菜是鳗鱼面。
- The Chinese people have backbone.中国人民有骨气。
- The backbone is an articulate structure.脊椎骨是一种关节相连的结构。
- The antelope could not escape the crocodile's gaping jaws. 那只羚羊无法从鱷鱼张开的大口中逃脱。
- The scored jaws of a vise help it bite the work. 台钳上有刻痕的虎钳牙帮助它紧咬住工件。
- From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来,他好像有点怪。
- His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。
- Add a teaspoonful of mixed herbs. 加入一茶匙混合药草。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- Add a teaspoonful of curry powder. 加一茶匙咖喱粉。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- The car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust.汽车在一股粉红色尘土的漩涡中颠簸着快速前进。
- You could lie up there,watching the flakes swirl past.你可以躺在那儿,看着雪花飘飘。
- Their questions about the money put her on the defensive.他们问到钱的问题,使她警觉起来。
- The Government hastily organized defensive measures against the raids.政府急忙布置了防卫措施抵御空袭。
- 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》
- Be vigilant against the danger of enemy agents infiltrating the government and boring from within. 要警惕敌特渗入政府内部进行暗中破坏。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
- The metastatic melanoma is seen here to be infiltrating into the myocardium. 图示转移性黑色素瘤浸润到心肌。 来自互联网
- Some of the energy intended for the photon is drained off by the recoiling atom. 原来给予光子的能量有一部分为反冲原子所消耗。 来自辞典例句
- A second method watches for another effect of the recoiling nucleus: ionization. 探测器使用的第二种方法,是观察反冲原子核的另一种效应:游离。 来自互联网
- Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
- She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。
- Life has its own evolutionary process.生命有其自身的进化过程。
- These are fascinating questions to be resolved by the evolutionary studies of plants.这些十分吸引人的问题将在研究植物进化过程中得以解决。
- It is a primitive instinct to flee a place of danger.逃离危险的地方是一种原始本能。
- His book describes the march of the civilization of a primitive society.他的著作描述了一个原始社会的开化过程。
- His face has a grotesque appearance.他的面部表情十分怪。
- Her account of the incident was a grotesque distortion of the truth.她对这件事的陈述是荒诞地歪曲了事实。
- The living soldiers put corpses together and burned them. 活着的战士把尸体放在一起烧了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- Overhead, grayish-white clouds covered the sky, piling up heavily like decaying corpses. 天上罩满了灰白的薄云,同腐烂的尸体似的沉沉的盖在那里。 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说