新高级阅读前（双语）91（944）

PASSAGE NINETY-ONE

Embryonic learning

1.Before birth, babies can tell the difference between loud sounds and voices. They can even distinguish their mother’s voice from that of a female stranger. 

2.But when it comes to embryonic learning, birds could rule the roost. As recently reported in The Auk:

3.Ornithological Advances, some mother birds may teach their young to sing even before they hatch. 

4.New-born chicks can then imitate their mom’s call within a few days of entering the world.

5.This educational method was first observed in 2012 by Sonia Kleindorfer, a biologist at Flinders University in South Australia, and her colleagues. 

6.Female Australian superb fairy wrens were found to repeat one sound over and over again while hatching their eggs. 

7.When the eggs were hatched, the baby birds made the similar chirp to their mothers—a sound that served as their regular “feed me! ” call. 

8.To find out if the special quality was more widespread in birds, the researchers sought the red-backed fairy wren, another species of Australian songbird. 

9.First they collected sound data from 67 nests in four sites in Queensland before and after hatching. 

10.Then they identified begging calls by analyzing the order and number of notes. 

11.A computer analysis blindly compared calls produced by mothers and chicks, ranking them by similarity. 

12.It turns out that baby red-backed fairy wrens also emerge chirping like their moms. 

13.And the more frequently mothers had called to their eggs, the more similar were the babies’ begging calls. 

14.In addition, the team set up a separate experiment that suggested that the baby birds that most closely imitated their mom’s voice were rewarded with the most food.

15.This observation hints that effective embryonic learning could signal neurological strengths of children to parents. 

16.An evolutionary inference can then be drawn.“As a parent, do you invest in quality children, or do you invest in children that are in need?”

17.Kleindorfer asks. “Our results suggest that they might be going for quality.”

第九十一篇

胚胎学习

1.在出生前，婴儿就能分辨出大声和说话声的区别。它们甚至能分辨出母亲的声音和陌生女性的声音。

2.但在胚胎阶段，鸟类可以主宰一切。正如《海雀》杂志最近报道的那样:

3.鸟类学的进步，一些鸟妈妈甚至在幼鸟孵化之前就教会它们唱歌。

4.新生的雏鸟在出生后的几天内就能模仿妈妈的叫声。

5.2012年，南澳大利亚弗林德斯大学的生物学家索尼娅·克莱恩多弗和她的同事首次发现了这种教育方法。

6.研究人员发现，澳大利亚超级细尾鹩莺在孵蛋时，会一遍又一遍地重复一种声音。

7.当蛋孵出来的时候，雏鸟会发出和妈妈类似的唧唧声，这是它们经常发出的“喂我!”的声音。

8.为了弄清楚这种特殊的品质是否在鸟类中更为普遍，研究人员寻找了另一种澳大利亚鸣禽，红背仙女鹪鹩。

9.首先，他们收集了昆士兰州四个地点67个巢穴孵化前后的声音数据。

10.然后，他们通过分析音符的顺序和数量来识别乞求的叫声。

11.一项计算机分析盲目地比较了母鸟和雏鸟发出的叫声，根据相似性对它们进行排名。

12.事实证明，红背鹪鹩宝宝也会像妈妈一样鸣叫。

13.母亲呼唤蛋的频率越高，婴儿的乞求叫声就越相似。

14.此外，研究小组还进行了一项单独的实验，该实验表明，模仿妈妈声音最接近的雏鸟会得到最多的食物奖励。

15.这一观察结果暗示，有效的胚胎学习可以向父母发出儿童神经系统优势的信号。

16.这样就可以得出一个进化的推论。“作为家长，你是投资于高质量的孩子，还是投资于有需要的孩子?”

17.克莱恩多弗问道。“我们的研究结果表明，他们可能会追求质量。”