动物去哪了?野生动物运动轨迹都能告诉我们什么

编者注:

用各种科学手段记录动物的运动,本新闻其实是对一本书的推介,书籍信息如下:Where the Animals Go is published by Penguin.

新闻来自the Guardian。

英语部分为编者翻译,编者英语四级水平,如有错误,纯属必然,欢迎指正,共同进步。


Award-winning geographer Dr James Cheshire and designer Oliver Uberti take us to the forefront of the animal tracking revolution, mapping the movements of animals on land, sky and sea – from Peru’s elusive jaguars to ant activity in a colony.

著名地理学家James Cheshire博士和设计师Oliver Uberti将我们带到动物追踪革命的最前沿:绘制动物在陆地、天空和海洋运动的轨迹,从秘鲁神出鬼没的美洲虎到小小的殖民地蚂蚁。

The elephants who crossed the railroad

穿过铁路的大象

In March 2016, Save the Elephants and the Kenya Wildlife Service collared 10 elephants to assess how the animals were adapting to a new railway bisecting Tsavo national park. They wanted to see if the elephants would use a series of underpasses that the construction company had been persuaded to include. Within 30 days, half of them had. Highly adaptable individuals have even been recorded passing through drainage culverts as small as three metres wide.

2016年3月,拯救大象和肯尼亚野生动物服务中心挑选了10头大象,用来评估动物如何适应贯穿察沃国家公园的新的铁路。他们想看看大象是否会使用建筑公司被要求建设的一系列地下通道。结果表明,在30天内有一半大象通过这些通道,适应性高的大象甚至被记录到可以通过只有三米宽的排水涵洞。

The albatrosses circling Antarctica

环绕南极飞行的信天翁

Between breeding seasons, grey-headed albatrosses take sabbaticals. Tracking data from light loggers has revealed three distinct behaviours: “residents” stay near their breeding area in the southwest Atlantic; “shorter-distance migrants” fly to the Indian Ocean and back; and “circumpolar migrants” round the entire Southern Ocean, sometimes twice. By the time a migrant reaches the Kerguelen Islands, strong tailwinds make it easier to continue circling Antarctica than to turn back and fly into the wind.

在繁殖季节之间,灰头信天翁需要休息。来自光记录仪的跟踪数据揭示了三种不同的行为模式:“定居者”停留在西南大西洋的繁殖区附近; “短途旅行者”飞往印度洋并返回;“极地旅行者”则围绕整个南大洋飞行,有时会环绕两次,当一只这样的信天翁到达Kerguelen群岛时,强大的顺风使得其更容易继续围绕南极洲盘旋,而不是逆风飞回去。

The jaguars taking selfies

自拍的美洲虎

About 20 years ago, scientists began using motion-activated camera traps to spot the elusive cats in study areas the size of Manhattan. From these sightings, they derived population estimates. Then in 2011, a GPS-collared jaguar in Peru showed that jaguars can have ranges 10 times the size of Manhattan. That meant prior camera-trap studies likely overestimated jaguar densities because their coverage areas were too small. In 2014, researchers installed 89 cameras across 650 square kilometres of Peruvian Amazon to get the full picture.

大约在20年前,科学家们开始使用触发相机来观察和曼哈顿差不多大小的研究区域中行踪不定的美洲虎。从这些照片中,他们估算了种群数量。然而在2011年秘鲁的一只使用全球定位系统追踪的美洲虎表明,其活动范围可能是曼哈顿的10倍。这意味着之前的触发相机研究可能高估了美洲虎的密度,因为其覆盖范围太小。 2014年,研究人员在650平方公里的秘鲁亚马逊地区安装了89台摄像机,以全面了解情况。

The seals who map the Southern Ocean

为南大洋绘图的海象

Remote sensing tells us not only where animals go, it can also tell us about the environment an animal is moving through. To date, GPS-tagged elephant seals – with foraging dives as deep as 1,500m – have collected more than 500,000 measurements of sea temperature and ocean salinity around Antarctica and under ice shelves. Their continual data streams keep oceanographers up-to-date on the changing climate, while educating us about their daily lives.

遥感不仅告诉我们动物们去了哪里,它还可以告诉我们动物所处的环境。迄今为止,带有GPS标记的海象(其觅食潜水深度可达1,500米)已经收集了超过500,000个南极洲和冰架下的海水温度和盐度数据。他们源源不断的为海洋学家提供关于气候变化的最新信息,同时也向我们介绍他们的日常生活。

The vultures spiralling overhead

盘旋飞翔的秃鹰

Because large birds are less able to sustain flapping flight, vultures must find sources of warm, rising air to make their extended daily searches for food. Wearing devices known as “daily diaries” that record location, air pressure, humidity, temperature, light level, speed, acceleration, and bearing, griffon vultures are teaching us how they stay aloft. Here we show just 3.5 minutes of flight above a village in southern France.

由于大型鸟类不太能够持续拍打翅膀飞行,因此秃鹰必须找到温暖的上升气流以便每天进行长时间的食物搜寻。用过佩戴可以记录位置、气压、湿度、温度、光照水平、速度、加速度的“日常记录”仪器,格里芬秃鹰正在教我们如何停留在高处。在这里,我们展示了其在法国南部一个村庄上方3.5分钟的飞行记录。

How baboons move as one

行动如一的狒狒

When baboons disagree on where to forage, they don’t split up; with leopards around, it is safer to stick together. So how does a troop settle a dispute? To find out, researchers in Kenya fitted 25 olive baboons with GPS collars set to record one position every second for four weeks. From more than 20m data points, they found a pattern. When the angle of disagreement between paths is small, the troop compromises and follows a middle path. If the angle is large, majority rules.

当狒狒们在觅食地点不能达成统一时,他们不会走散,因为周边有很多豹子,他们聚集在一起会更安全。那么狒狒们如何解决争议呢?为了找到答案,肯尼亚的研究人员为25只橄榄狒狒安装了GPS项圈,每周记录一次,持续四周。从超过2000万个数据中,他们发现了一种行为模式。当路径之间的分歧角度很小时,狒狒们会妥协并遵循中间路径。如果分歧角度很大,则少数服从多数。

The ants that change jobs

更换工作的蚂蚁

After gluing tiny barcodes to carpenter ants and filming them in an artificial nest for 40 days, researchers discovered distinct roles in ant society. Young ants start as nurses, tending to the queen’s brood, before becoming nest cleaners and, finally, foragers in old age. In the absence of central command, ants use age and spatial segregation to delegate tasks.

将微小的条形码粘在木匠蚂蚁上并在人工巢中拍摄40天后,研究人员可以区分蚂蚁社会中的不同角色。年轻的蚂蚁往往从照料开始,先是照顾蚁后的巢,然后成为蚁巢清洁工,老年时则成为觅食者。在没有中央指挥的情况下,蚂蚁使用年龄和空间隔离来委派任务。


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