【揽瓜阁3.0】Day12 2020.07.31【自然科学-生物】 - ChaseDream

揽瓜阁俱乐部第三期

Day12 2020.07.31

【自然科学-动物】

Why we need sharks: the true nature of the ocean's 'monstrous villains'

（856字精读必做篇）

Each day, as the sun sets over the coral-fringed Raja Ampat Islands in Indonesia, an underwater predator stirs. As predators go, it’s not especially big or ferocious – an arm’s length from head to tail, with a snuffling, moustachioed snout.

What’s unique is that it doesn’t so much swim along the seabed as walk. Using its four fins as legs, and twisting its spine like a lizard, it can emerge from the water and hold its breath for an hour, strutting across the exposed reef and clambering between tide pools to find prey.

It’s a walking shark, and far from the stereotypical view of these baleful beasts, it tells an alternative story of how sharks look and live. Biologists recently confirmed there are nine species of walking sharks. They are the ocean’s newest sharks – probably only 9m years old as a group, with the two youngest species splitting apart less than 2m years ago – challenging the long-held notion that sharks are ancient and unchanging. They are not evolutionary survivors from bygone eras, but animals that continue to adapt.

The walking sharks themselves are just a fraction of the immense diversity of sharks. There are bramble sharks and gollumsharks, night sharks and shy sharks, clouded angelsharks and splendid lanternsharks; there are fat catsharks, mouse catsharks, frog, cow and weasel sharks. In all, more than 500 elasmobranch species are alive today. One in 10 shark species are bioluminescent: they light up in the dark. Another is so small you could tuck it in a pocket, and it has little pockets of its own – filled, for an unknown reason, with glowing goo. Some sharks puff up to look bigger and scarier than they really are.

But if all you knew about sharks you learned from Hollywood, you’d think they were aquatic horrors. Sharks have a film genre all their own: there are movies about ghost sharks and zombie sharks, sharks that squirt acid, killer sharks that swim through sand or snow, and a staggering six instalments of the Sharknado film franchise.

Even more problematic is when the more believable films depict sharks as monstrous villains: in 2016, The Shallows featured a female surfer being brutally attacked by a vengeful great white, leading a group of marine scientists to write an open letter to Columbia Pictures warning that the movie was a dangerous mischaracterization that could keep the tide of public opinion turned against sharks.

In reality, sharks are overfished in their millions. They aren’t adapted to being prey, rather than predator: sharks grow slowly, spending ages as teenagers before reaching maturity; they lay few eggs and give birth to few pups, not enough to replenish dwindling populations. Those that stay alive can spend decades, even centuries, absorbing man-made pollutants and plastics. Individual sharks have seen their world become hotter and more acidic in their lifetime. The upshot of all this is bleakly predictable. At last count, a quarter of all sharks and their flattened cousins, the rays, were found to be threatened with extinction.

Sharks matter to humanity. Much is lost when they vanish from the seas. “There’s a lot we can learn from sharks,” says Jasmin Graham, shark biologist and project coordinator of MarSci-Lace at Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida, where researchers are investigating how sharks quickly heal wounds and how they evolved immunity to many diseases. “If they’re not here, then that evolutionary history, that information, is lost.”

Sharks matter not just because they can be useful for humans, however, but entire ocean ecosystems. “Lots of shark species have been shown to be keystone predators,” says Graham. “They maintain balance in ecosystems and keep things in order, removing weaker, sicker prey and stopping any single species from exploding in numbers and taking over.” One study comparing remote islands in the Central Pacific showed that when sharks are fished out, coral reefs can become dominated by small fish and overrun by algae. “We don’t understand until we lose the species how important it was,” says Graham.

We need to talk about sharks. Though no sharks have yet gone the way of the dodo, plenty of species are lined up for imminent extinction. And the loss of sharks is not just about species blinking out, but a diminishment from their former abundance. Just like the erasing of native fauna from the continents – of bears and wolves, tigers and lions, koalas and kakapos – so the oceans are now losing their sharks. The only difference is that their dying out mostly goes unnoticed.

For years, scientists and conservationists have been saying that sharks have more to fear from humans than we have from them. Pick whichever statistic you like best of things far more likely to kill you: a toppling vending machine, a falling coconut. Still there’s this lingering idea that sharks are dangerous, vindictive and brutal.

These majestic animals are doing much worse worldwide than they were back in 1975 when Jaws was released. They need all the positive publicity they can get. New stories need to be told about sharks – the big ones and small ones, the ones that walk and glow, and all the other things they can be.

Source: The Guardian

【自然科学-生物】

Why Some Birds Are Likely To Hit Buildings

（331字 2分28秒精听必做篇）

先做精听再核对原文哦~

About a billion birds die from flying into buildings each year in North America. Suspicions have been that birds may perceive the open areas behind glass as safe passageways. Or they may mistake the reflected foliage for the real thing.

Researchers would like to reduce collisions, which requires a solid understanding about what makes a bird more or less likely to die by smacking into a building in the first place.

“There was, and still is, relatively little known at a broad scale. Most studies are at one small study site.”

Jared Elmore, a graduate student in natural resource ecology and management at Oklahoma State University. He and his colleagues used a previously created data set of building collisions for birds at 40 sites throughout Mexico, Canada and the U.S.

The first finding was obvious: bigger buildings with more glass kill more birds. But the details were more noteworthy.

“We found that life history predicted collisions. Migrants, insectivores and woodland-inhabiting species collided more than their counterparts.”

Most migratory species travel at night, when lights near buildings can distract or disorient them. And Elmore thinks that insect-eating birds might be attracted to buildings because their insect prey is attracted to the lights. He suspects that woodland species get fooled by the reflections of trees and shrubs in the windows. The results are in the journal Conservation Biology.

By understanding which birds are more likely to collide with buildings, researchers can perhaps determine the best way to modify buildings, or their lighting, to help prevent such accidents. And by knowing risks, along with migration timing and behavior, building managers can better anticipate when birds are at their greatest danger—and modify lighting strategies accordingly.

Elmore’s next project will use radar to help predict bird migrations.

“I think that would maybe go a long way in terms of providing information to people, to the public, to building managers, on when they can get the most bang for their buck in terms of lights-out policies.”

Source: Scientific American

【笔记格式要求】

精读笔记格式要求：

1.总结文章中心大意

2.总结分论点或每段段落大意

3.摘抄印象深刻或者觉得优美的句子

4.总结文章中的生词

5.记录阅读时间、总结时间、总时间

精听笔记格式要求：

1.逐句听写整篇文章

2.对照原文修改听写稿，标记出错原因

3.总结文章中心大意

4.总结精听过程中的生词

5.记录听写时间、总结时间、总时间

这里也给大家两点学习小建议哦~

精读：如遇到读不懂的复杂句，建议找出句子主干，分析句子成分，也可以尝试翻译句子来帮助理解~

精听：建议每句不要反复纠结听，如果听 5 遍都没听出来，那就跳过，等完成后再回听总结原因，时间宝贵，不要过于执着哦~

揽瓜阁俱乐部，自「language」一词谐音而来，是一个为帮助大家提升英语语言能力而建立的学习小团队。在这里，我们将定时发布涵盖各类话题的外刊语料，供大家练习听、读。同时还设置了严格的打卡机制，督促大家克服懒惰坚持学习。

同时我们也招募volunteer协助维护团队，确保学习活动顺利开展~大家一起营造积极向上的学习氛围~

想要提升英语能力的小伙伴，快快添加微信（theTOEFL）报名加入吧，大家一起观尽天下新鲜事，览遍四海热议瓜～

精读 Why we need sharks: the true nature of the ocean's 'monstrous villains

鲨鱼并不像电影及人类想象中的那么恐怖凶残，鲨鱼中有一种“走路鲨”，与常见的刻板印象完全不同。鲨鱼对人类和生物链条具有重要作用，需要得到关注和正确的宣传，以防灭绝。

1-4：科普鳄鱼。在印度某小岛上，生活着“走路鲨”。与刻板印象不同的是，这种鲨鱼仅有人类胳膊的长度，喜欢走路不喜欢游泳。科学家证实这类鲨鱼一共有9种，大约在两百万至九百万年前形成新物种——冲击了一直以来以为鲨鱼物种是古老且不变的观念。文章介绍了几类走路鲨的特点。

5-7:纠正错误印象。电影里通常把鲨鱼描绘为嗜血残暴的吃人怪物，然而事实并非如此，甚至有科学家写信要求电影公司不要塑造不正确鲨鱼的形象。在现实世界里，鲨鱼被过度捕捞，生长速度缓慢，也饱受环境污染的折磨，有四分之一的鲨鱼及其近亲遭受灭绝的威胁。

8-9:描述鲨鱼重要性。鲨鱼能帮助人类了解如何快速治愈伤口以及它们如何进化出对多种疾病的免疫力；同时，它们能保持海洋生物平衡，防止某物种过度繁殖。

10-12:行为呼吁。需要关注鲨鱼不被过度捕捞而灭绝；鲨鱼也并不可怕，致人死亡率不比被椰子砸中更高；鲨鱼需要正确的公众宣传和科普。

monstrous 丑恶的; 道德败坏的; 骇人的; 巨大的; 丑陋的

villains (小说、戏剧等中的) 主要反面人物，反派主角，坏人; 恶棍; 坏蛋; 罪犯

predator 捕食性动物; 实行弱肉强食的人(或机构); 剥削者; 掠夺者

ferocious 凶猛的; 残暴的; 猛烈的

snuffling (因感冒或哭泣) 鼻子呼哧出声，抽鼻子; 哧哧地嗅

snout (猪等动物的) 口鼻部，吻; (人的) 鼻子; 吻状突出

strut 趾高气扬地走; 高视阔步

baleful 威吓的; 凶恶的; 恶意的

bygone 很久以前的; 以往的

bramble 黑莓灌木

Aquatic 水生的; 水栖的; 水的; 水中的; 水上的

squirt (使) 喷射; 喷; (用…) 向…喷射；小矮子; 小屁孩; 无名小辈;

instalment (分期付款的) 一期付款; (报章连载小说的) 一节; (电视连续剧的) 一集

replenish 补充; 重新装满

Dwindle (逐渐) 减少，变小，缩小

flatten 变平; 把…弄平; 摧毁，推倒，弄倒(建筑物、树木等); 轻易击败

linger 继续存留; 缓慢消失; 流连; 逗留; 徘徊; 花很长时间做(某事); 磨蹭; 持续看(或思考

vindictive 想复仇的; 报复性的; 怀恨的

the loss of sharks is not just about species blinking out, but a diminishment from their former abundance

通读 9.2min 总结38min 共计 47.8min

snout n.(动物) 口鼻

bramble n.黑莓灌木

aquatic a.水中的，水生的;

vindictive a.报复的，恶意的

majestic：宏伟的，壮丽的