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鸟类羽毛发出的警戒音

萌宠菠菠乐园
2024-10-30 23:56

Feathers Help This Bird Sound the Alarm

鸟类羽毛发出的警戒音

The crested pigeon, found in Australia, has a modified wing feather that helps produce an alarm signal sound to warn other birds when there's trouble.

在澳大利亚发现的物种冠鸠，翅膀上有一种特别的羽毛可以发出警戒信号，告诉同伴这里有危险。

播音/撰文安妮•斯尼德（Annie Sneed）

翻译许楠

审校潘磊

Feathers are not just for flight. They keep birds warm, become part of their nests, and help them attract mates. And for one Australian bird, feathers even help produce an important sound—an alarm.

羽毛不仅仅用于飞行，还能帮助鸟类维持体温，是筑巢材料，也帮它们吸引伴侣。对于澳大利亚的一种鸟类来说，羽毛还能产生一种非常重要的声音——警戒音。

“People had long noticed that these birds produced these loud whistles.”

“人们很早以前就注意到，这种鸟可以发出很响的哨音。”

Trevor Murray, a postdoctoral researcher at the Australian National University.

来自澳洲国立大学的博士后特雷沃·默里（Trevor Murray）这样说道。

“My supervisor Rob Magrath in collaboration with May Hingee thought that they were used as an alarm. So they did some playbacks and they could show quite strongly that if you play back these sounds to other birds, they flee straightaway. So what I was really interested in was following up on that research and finding out how they produce the sound, whether it is actually a signal, and whether it’s a reliable signal.”

“我的导师罗布·马格拉斯（Rob Magrath）与梅·欣吉（May Hingee）合作。他认为，这种哨音被用作警报。所以他们录制下这些声音并且确定地表示，如果向其他的鸟播放这些声音，它们会直接逃走。因此我很有兴趣跟进这项研究，了解鸟类如何产生这种声音——这是否真的是一种信号甚至这是否是一种可靠的信号。”

The team focused their experiment on specific feathers in the crested pigeon’s wing. “We were able to target the eighth primary feather, which is unusually narrow—it’s about half the width of the surrounding feathers. And then we also removed, on different sets of birds, we also removed those neighboring feathers, the ninth primary feather and the seventh primary feather...and we were able to see…that the eighth primary feather, when it was missing, the high note had completely disappeared. So the eighth primary feather produced that high note and the ninth primary feather, it turns out, actually produced the low note.”

研究团队将重心放在了冠鸠翅膀的特殊羽毛上。“我们将目标锁定在第八初级飞羽。它非同寻常的窄——只有周围羽毛的一半宽。然后我们把鸟分成了不同的组，将其中一组的第八初级飞羽摘除，还将其他组别的相邻羽毛，即第七和第九初级飞羽摘除……可以观察到，当第八初级飞羽摘除后，高音完全消失。第八初级飞羽用来产生高音，另外第九初级飞羽则被证明可以产生低音。”

And if the birds are fleeing from danger, they produce a louder and higher tempo whistle than they do during a normal takeoff. The study is in the journal Current Biology. [Trevor G. Murray, Jochen Zeil and Robert D. Magrath, Sounds of Modified Flight Feathers Reliably Signal Danger in a Pigeon]

如果这种鸟正在逃离危险，它们会发出比正常起飞时更响且调更高的哨音。该研究成果发表于《现代生物学》（Journal Current Biology）[Trevor G. Murray, Jochen Zeil and Robert D. Magrath, Sounds of Modified Flight Feathers Reliably Signal Danger in a Pigeon]

Murray and his colleagues did another experiment where they used the recordings they made to observe the reactions of other crested pigeons. “And from this experiment we were able to see that the eighth primary feather, the unusual feather, was actually crucial for signaling alarm. When that eighth primary feather was missing, they very rarely responded. They almost never fled. Whereas when the neighboring feather that produces the other part of the sound, that ninth primary, they actually fled just as much as to normal alarms. This shows us that this unusual primary feather is crucial for signaling alarm, and together that suggests that it has evolved to communicate with its flock mates.”

So that birds of a feather can flee together.

—Annie Sneed

默里和他的同事们还利用录制下来的声音做了另一个实验，观察其他冠鸠对该声音的反应。“通过这个实验我们可以了解到，第八初级飞羽是一枚独特的羽毛，是发出警戒信号的关键。当第八初级飞羽缺失时，这些冠鸠很少有反应——几乎都没有逃走。然而当其它能够产生部分哨音的相邻羽毛（即第九初级飞羽）缺失时，它们则会和听到正常的警戒音时一样飞走。这告诉我们，这枚特殊的初级飞羽对警戒信号非常重要。它是进化来用于鸟群中的同伴交流的”

——安妮•斯尼德