考研英語美文賞讀（36）：螞蟻自然行為的背后 我們能學(xué)到什么

　　摘要：考研英語作為一門考研公共課，雖然大家都學(xué)了英語十幾年，卻仍經(jīng)常有總分過線掛在英語上的情況，因此英語復(fù)習(xí)不單單是單詞、做題。閱讀作為考研英語的大頭，僅僅做考研真題或許沒法滿足你的閱讀量，因此幫幫之后會不定時推出一篇英文美文，這些文章都與考研英語閱讀同源，多讀必有好處。

　　?Fire ants tunnels got excavated efficiently by only a small percentage of the group doing most of the work， thus avoiding pileups in tight spaces.

　　當(dāng)火蟻挖掘隧道時，它們采用“能者多勞”、“少人多干”的方針，從而避免了在狹小空間的“交通堵塞”的問題，極大地提高了工作效率。

　　Freeloaders. They just sit around while their hard-working colleagues get things done. But might freeloaders actually be necessary for society to function efficiently？ The answer could be yes—at least when it comes to fire ants and their efforts to dig nests underground.

　　無事可干的螞蟻們呢？當(dāng)它們的“同事”忙的熱火朝天時，它就坐在一旁，啥也不干。但是否，這些“無所事事”者對社會的有效運轉(zhuǎn)至關(guān)重要呢？也許答案是肯定的，至少，當(dāng)火蟻挖掘地下巢穴時“無所事事”非常重要。

　　“Fire ants are quite common in Georgia and in fact most of the bottom third of the U.S.， having come here in the ’30s from South America.”Daniel Goldman， a physicist at Georgia Tech.

　　“火蟻在喬治亞州非常普遍，實際上美國大約三分之一的火蟻，是在上世紀(jì)30年代從南美洲來到這里的。”喬治亞理工學(xué)院的物理學(xué)家丹尼爾·戈德曼說到。

　　Fire ants are highly social organisms. So， Goldman and his colleagues wanted to know how individual ants knew what to do without a central leader issuing orders.

　　火蟻是高度社會化的生物。 因此，戈德曼和他的同事想知道，當(dāng)沒有中央領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人發(fā)布命令時，個體螞蟻怎么去做任務(wù)？

　　To find out， Goldman’s team labeled individual fire ants with paint and then watched them dig their slender tunnels—barely wide enough for two workers.

　　為了找到答案，戈德曼的團隊用油漆標(biāo)記了個體火蟻，然后觀察它們挖掘細長的隧道——隧道寬度幾乎容不下兩只螞蟻。

　　Turns out， just 30 percent of the ants did 70 percent of the labor. “I was surprised that we ended up with so few workers actually doing the work at any one time.”

　　事實證明，只需要30％的螞蟻能夠完成70％的勞動量。 “我很驚訝于結(jié)果，自始至終，只有這么少的‘工人’一直在挖掘隧道。”

　　A quarter of the ants never even entered the tunnel. Others crawled inside， but left without excavating a single grain of dirt.

　　有四分之一的螞蟻甚至都沒有進入隧道。另有一些螞蟻雖然爬了進去，但沒有挖掘出一粒泥土。

　　These idling and retreating behaviors ensured the crowded tunnels did not get clogged with insect traffic， which would grind the construction process to a halt.

　　這些看上去“消極怠工”和“打退堂鼓”的行為實際上卻避免了隧道口的“交通擁堵”，否則挖掘工程可能會隨時中斷。

　　And when the scientists removed the five hardest-working ants from the colony， others immediately jumped in to compensate—with no reduction in the group’s productivity.

　　而當(dāng)科學(xué)家從挖掘地現(xiàn)場拿走了5只最“勤勞苦干”的螞蟻時，其他螞蟻立刻“補上工位”，這完全沒有降低全隊的挖掘進度。

　　Seems that it doesn’t matter which ants are working or freeloading at a given time， as long as there is some division of labor to keep the tunnels flowing smoothly. The findings are the journal Science.

　　我們似乎得出這樣一個結(jié)論，即只要合理分工，保證隧道口的暢通無阻，挖掘期間誰工作誰怠工則無足輕重。研究結(jié)果刊登在《科學(xué)》雜志上。

　　Goldman’s team also modelled the ants’ nest-building on computers. And the most efficient excavation happened in the simulations where the electronic ants behaved similarly to their live counterparts.

　　戈德曼的團隊用計算機模擬了螞蟻筑巢的過程。 模擬結(jié)果得出，在最有效的挖掘情況下模擬螞蟻的表現(xiàn)與其真實同類相類似。

　　The study could have implications for robotics. Imagine groups of robots sent to search rubble for disaster survivors. Or nanobots coursing through our bodies to diagnose illness and deliver targeted medical treatment. Such robot swarms will need to avoid getting jammed up in tight spaces. It might be necessary to program them so some just sit back and watch their comrades work.

　　該研究可能對機器人發(fā)展產(chǎn)生影響。 我們可以想象一下，當(dāng)一群機器人在殘垣斷壁的現(xiàn)場去尋找災(zāi)難幸存者時；或者當(dāng)納米機器人通過我們的身體來診斷疾病并提供有針對性的醫(yī)療時，它們需要避免在狹小的空間中被卡住。這時，按照上述結(jié)果，我們可以對它們設(shè)定一定的程序，讓其中的一些機器人只是靜靜地看著它的同伴去工作。

　　(全文共408個詞)

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　　（實習(xí)小編：咕咚）