Earth and Sky:Electric Fish 发电鱼
时间：2018-12-07 作者：英语课 分类：(科普英语)Earth and Sky
英语课
Electric Fish 发电鱼
One way that Harold Zakon and his team find fish to study is to put electrical detectors 1 into the bottom of murky 2 streams in Venezuela. This works because certain fish emit pulses of electricity. Discover electric fish -- on today's Earth and Sky.
DB: This is Earth and Sky. You won't feel a shock. In fact, it takes a special instrument to detect the electric pulses made by a group of fish known as "weakly electric fish".
JB: Unlike eels 3, which zap their prey 4 with electricity, weakly electric fish use electricity to navigate 5 and locate objects -- and other fish. Harold Zakon studies them at the University of Texas at Austin.
Harold Zakon: ... each species has a different pattern, each of the sexes within a species and each individual. If they approached another fish, they could detect its discharge and determine what species, sex and individual it was. If it was a member of their own species, they might even recognize it.
DB: The electrical pulses of these fish might provide some insight into the workings of the human brain. That's because human brains also work electrically. But electrical discharges made by fish are easier to study than the electricity in the brain.
Harold Zakon: You always have to crack the brain and stick an electrode in. Here, the animals just emit this signal, and we can watch these changes and infer what's going on in the membranes 6 of their cells, just from their behavior.
JB: There's more about electric fish and human brains at today's show at earthsky.org. Thanks to the National Science Foundation -- where discoveries begin. We're Block and Byrd for Earth and Sky.
1 detectors
探测器( detector的名词复数 )
- The report advocated that all buildings be fitted with smoke detectors. 报告主张所有的建筑物都应安装烟火探测器。
- This is heady wine for experimenters using these neutrino detectors. 对于使用中微子探测器的实验工作者，这是令人兴奋的美酒。 来自英汉非文学 - 科技
2 murky
adj.黑暗的，朦胧的；adv.阴暗地，混浊地；n.阴暗；昏暗
- She threw it into the river's murky depths.她把它扔进了混浊的河水深处。
- She had a decidedly murky past.她的历史背景令人捉摸不透。
3 eels
abbr. 电子发射器定位系统（=electronic emitter location system）
- Eels have been on the feed in the Lower Thames. 鳗鱼在泰晤士河下游寻食。
- She bought some eels for dinner. 她买回一些鳗鱼做晚餐。
4 prey
n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨
- Stronger animals prey on weaker ones.弱肉强食。
- The lion was hunting for its prey.狮子在寻找猎物。