So, people are more afraid of insects than they are of dying. (Laughter) At least, according to a 1973 "Book of Lists" survey which preceded all those online best, worst, funniest lists that you see today. Only heights and public speaking exceeded the six-legged as sources of fear. And I suspect if you had put spiders in there, the combinations of insects and spiders would have just topped the chart. Now, I am not one of those people. I really love insects. I think they're interesting and beautiful, and sometimes even cute. (Laughter) And I'm not alone. For centuries, some of the greatest minds in science, from Charles Darwin to E.O. Wilson, have drawn inspiration from studying some of the smallest minds on Earth. Well, why is that? What is that keeps us coming back to insects? Some of it, of course, is just the sheer magnitude of almost everything about them. They're more numerous than any other kind of animal. We don't even know how many species of insects there are, because new ones are being discovered all the time. There are at least a million, maybe as many as 10 million. This means that you could have an insect-of-the-month calendar and not have to reuse a species for over 80,000 years. (Laughter) Take that, pandas and kittens! (Laughter)
看來,人們害怕昆蟲, 比害怕死亡還要厲害。 起碼,根據《排行榜之書》1973年的調查, 當時仍無今天各樣最佳、 最劣、最滑稽等在綫調查 衹有高度和公衆演講, 比六條腿的東西更令人毛骨悚然。 我頗信,如果把蜘蛛也考慮在内的話, 蜘蛛兼昆蟲一定越占恐懼榜首無疑。 不過,我倒不像他們。 我喜歡昆蟲。 我覺得昆蟲有趣、很美、 有時甚至很萌。 (笑聲) 不衹我一個人這樣想哦。 許多世紀以來,科學界很多偉大的思想家, 從達爾文到威爾遜, 都從地球上最微小的心思得到啓發。 是什麽原因呢? 什麽原因讓人們一再關注昆蟲呢? 有些原因來自昆蟲的幾乎每一方面的量度。 這些量度比任何其他動物都大。 我們甚至還不知道究竟有多少種昆蟲, 因爲一直都不斷有新發現。 現在知道至少1百萬,也許有1千萬之多。 就是說,你可以搞個年曆, 每月介紹一種昆蟲, 即使不用重複介紹,也可以夠用80,000年。 (笑聲) 熊貓小貓的,靠邊站吧。 (笑聲)
More seriously, insects are essential. We need them. It's been estimated that 1 out of every 3 bites of food is made possible by a pollinator. Scientist use insects to make fundamental discoveries about everything from the structure of our nervous systems to how our genes and DNA work. But what I love most about insects is what they can tell us about our own behavior. Insects seem like they do everything that people do. They meet, they mate, they fight, they break up. And they do so with what looks like love or animosity. But what drives their behaviors is really different than what drives our own, and that difference can be really illuminating. There's nowhere where that's more true than when it comes to one of our most consuming interests -- sex.
更重要的是,昆蟲不可缺。 我們很需要牠們。 據估計,每3口食物中, 有兩口來自授粉昆蟲的工作。 科學家們利用昆蟲得出種種 對事物的根本發現。 從神經系統到基因和DNA是如何工作的等等, 我最喜歡昆蟲的一面是牠們使我們 對自己的行爲有了深刻的理解。 人們做的東西,昆蟲幾乎都做。 牠們邂逅、交配、打鬥、分離。 而牠們做的方式也摻有 看來像是愛或恨的東西。 但是,驅動牠們行徑的和 驅動我們行徑的是不同的東西。 這種不同能顯耀出很多道理。 而最能説明這個問題的 恰恰是我們最感興趣的 ---- 性!
Now, I will maintain. and I think I can defend, what may seem like a surprising statement. I think sex in insects is more interesting than sex in people. (Laughter) And the wild variety that we see makes us challenge some of our own assumptions about what it means to be male and female. Of course, to start with, a lot of insects don't need to have sex at all to reproduce. Female aphids can make little, tiny clones of themselves without ever mating. Virgin birth, right there. On your rose bushes. (Laughter) When they do have sex, even their sperm is more interesting than human sperm. There are some kinds of fruit flies whose sperm is longer than the male's own body. And that's important because the males use their sperm to compete. Now, male insects do compete with weapons, like the horns on these beetles. But they also compete after mating with their sperm. Dragonflies and damselflies have penises that look kind of like Swiss Army knives with all of the attachments pulled out. (Laughter) They use these formidable devices like scoops, to remove the sperm from previous males that the female has mated with. (Laughter) So, what can we learn from this? (Laughter) All right, it is not a lesson in the sense of us imitating them or of them setting an example for us to follow. Which, given this, is probably just as well. And also, did I mention sexual cannibalism is rampant among insects? So, no, that's not the point. But what I think insects do, is break a lot of the rules that we humans have about the sex roles. So, people have this idea that nature dictates kind of a 1950s sitcom version of what males and females are like. So that males are always supposed to be dominant and aggressive, and females are passive and coy.
我將堅持這樣一種意想不到的説法, 並且不是沒有道理的: 我認爲昆蟲的性行 比人類的性行有意思多啦。 (笑聲) 能看見的五花八門的品種 就足以讓我們質疑 一向對何謂雌雄的想當然的想法了。 自然,首先地,很多昆蟲 根本無需性行就能繁殖。 雌蚜蟲不用交配就能 複製很小很小的自己。 處女誕兒,十足無疑地, 就在你家的玫瑰枝上。 (笑聲) 而那些有交配行爲的呢? 牠們的精子都比人的精子要多姿多彩。 有種果蠅,其精子比雄蟲自己的身體還要長。 關鍵是因為雄蟲要用其精子來競技。 雄性昆蟲自然有用武器來競鬥的, 例如這些甲殼蟲用雙角。 但是也有在交配之後用其精子來競鬥的。 蜻蜓和豆娘蟲的陰莖 跟瑞士小刀一樣, 都帶各色配件,能拔鞘而出。 牠們用這些攻無不勝的像勺子的器具 能把雌蟲之前與之交配的 雄蟲的精子都刮掉。 (笑聲) 那麼,從這些我們能學到什麼呢? (笑聲) 倒不是說這裡有什麼我們 應該模仿牠們什麼, 或者牠們給了個什麼 榜樣我們去跟, 幸虧也不需要這樣做。 還有,剛才我提到過 昆蟲當中非常流行性吞噬的嗎? 我只想說,昆蟲在性行方面 打破很多人們自以為是的性別角色的常規。 我們人仍持有想法,仍停留在 50年代的電視喜劇裡看到的、 大自然決定男人 / 女人的行為之說。 就是,男人永遠是應該強勢、侵犯的, 而女人永遠是被動、羞答答的。
But that's just not the case. So for example, take katydids, which are relatives of crickets and grasshoppers. The males are very picky about who they mate with, because they not only transfer sperm during mating, they also give the female something called a nuptial gift. You can see two katydids mating in these photos. In both panels, the male's the one on the right, and that sword-like appendage is the female's egg-laying organ. The white blob is the sperm, the green blob is the nuptial gift, and the male manufactures this from his own body and it's extremely costly to produce. It can weigh up to a third of his body mass. I will now pause for a moment and let you think about what it would be like if human men, every time they had sex, had to produce something that weighed 50, 60, 70 pounds. (Laughter) Okay, they would not be able to do that very often. (Laughter) And indeed, neither can the katydids. And so what that means is the katydid males are very choosy about who they offer these nuptial gifts to. Now, the gift is very nutritious, and the female eats it during and after mating. So, the bigger it is, the better off the male is, because that means more time for his sperm to drain into her body and fertilize her eggs. But it also means that the males are very passive about mating, whereas the females are extremely aggressive and competitive, in an attempt to get as many of these nutritious nuptial gifts as they can. So, it's not exactly a stereotypical set of rules. Even more generally though, males are actually not all that important in the lives of a lot of insects. In the social insects -- the bees and wasps and ants -- the individuals that you see every day -- the ants going back and forth to your sugar bowl, the honey bees that are flitting from flower to flower -- all of those are always female. People have had a hard time getting their head around that idea for millennia. The ancient Greeks knew that there was a class of bees, the drones, that are larger than the workers, although they disapproved of the drones' laziness because they could see that the drones just hang around the hive until the mating flight -- they're the males. They hang around until the mating flight, but they don't participate in gathering nectar or pollen. The Greeks couldn't figure out the drones' sex, and part of the confusion was that they were aware of the stinging ability of bees but they found it difficult to believe that any animals that bore such a weapon could possibly be a female. Aristotle tried to get involved as well. He suggested, "OK, if the stinging individuals are going to be the males ..." Then he got confused, because that would have meant the males were also taking care of the young in a colony, and he seemed to think that would be completely impossible. He then concluded that maybe bees had the organs of both sexes in the same individual, which is not that far-fetched, some animals do that, but he never really did get it figured out. And you know, even today, my students, for instance, call every animal they see, including insects, a male. And when I tell them that the ferocious army-ant soldiers with their giant jaws, used to defend the colony, are all always female, they seem to not quite believe me. (Laughter) And certainly all of the movies -- Antz, Bee Movie -- portray the main character in the social insects as being male. Well, what difference does this make? These are movies. They're fiction. They have talking animals in them. What difference does it make if they talk like Jerry Seinfeld? I think it does matter, and it's a problem that actually is part of a much deeper one that has implications for medicine and health and a lot of other aspects of our lives. You all know that scientists use what we call model systems, which are creatures -- white rats or fruit flies -- that are kind of stand-ins for all other animals, including people. And the idea is that what's true for a person will also be true for the white rat. And by and large, that turns out to be the case. But you can take the idea of a model system too far. And what I think we've done, is use males, in any species, as though they are the model system. The norm. The way things are supposed to be. And females as a kind of variant -- something special that you only study after you get the basics down. And so, back to the insects. I think what that means is that people just couldn't see what was in front of them. Because they assumed that the world's stage was largely occupied by male players and females would only have minor, walk-on roles. But when we do that, we really miss out on a lot of what nature is like. And we can also miss out on the way natural, living things, including people, can vary. And I think that's why we've used males as models in a lot of medical research, something that we know now to be a problem if we want the results to apply to both men and women. Well, the last thing I really love about insects is something that a lot of people find unnerving about them. They have little, tiny brains with very little cognitive ability, the way we normally think of it. They have complicated behavior, but they lack complicated brains. And so, we can't just think of them as though they're little people because they don't do things the way that we do. I really love that it's difficult to anthropomorphize insects, to look at them and just think of them like they're little people in exoskeletons, with six legs. (Laughter) Instead, you really have to accept them on their own terms, because insects make us question what's normal and what's natural. Now, you know, people write fiction and talk about parallel universes. They speculate about the supernatural, maybe the spirits of the departed walking among us. The allure of another world is something that people say is part of why they want to dabble in the paranormal. But as far as I'm concerned, who needs to be able to see dead people, when you can see live insects? Thank you. (Applause)
但事實並不是這樣的。 拿螽斯來說吧, 牠們是蟋蟀和蚱蜢同類 其雄蟲對交配物件非常挑剔, 原因是,交配時牠們不單是移交精子 牠們還給雌蟲一種叫聘禮的東西。 這圖上看到的是兩隻螽斯在交配 兩圖上的雄蟲都是右邊那隻, 而那劍狀的附肢是雌蟲的產卵器官。 白斑是精子,綠斑就是聘禮, 那聘禮是雄蟲用自己的身體 做材料產出來的, 成本非常昂貴。 其重量高達雄蟲體重的三分一。 我且稍息,讓在坐的想想: 如果人類的男性每次性交之前 都得先生產一塊 50 、 60 、 70 磅 重的東西,會是什麼情形? (笑聲) 肯定就是,他們一定不能頻繁性交。 (笑聲) 事實上,螽斯也不行。 因此就意味著, 螽斯雄蟲非常挑剔, 不會隨便把聘禮 送給不經挑剔的雌蟲。 這聘禮是非常營養豐富的, 雌蟲在交配當中和之後都會進食之。 因此聘禮越大,雄蟲越佔便宜, 因為這意味著其精子有更多的時間 灌進雌蟲體內,授精給她的卵子。 然而,這也等於說雄性在交配方面挺被動的。 而雌性則極為先聲奪人、各不相讓。 一心就為搞到儘量多的 那些營養豐富的聘禮。 這情形和一貫的俗規有出入了。 一個更普遍的現象是, 雄性在很多昆蟲的生活並不是最重要的。 在社群類昆蟲裡 --- 蜜蜂、土蜂、螞蟻等 你每天都能見到的那幾種---- 如在你的糖罐進進出出的螞蟻, 花叢中飛來飛去的蜜蜂, 這些全都是雌性的。 一千多年來人們都無法 理解這種狀況, 古代希臘人知道蜜蜂裡 有一綱類,雄峰,比工蜂要大。 雖然希臘人看不慣雄峰的懶散, 牠們總是圍著蜂窩轉, 轉到婚飛為止, 人家是雄峰嘛,就乾等到婚飛啦, 從來不參與採集花蜜和花粉。 希臘人搞不清楚雄峰的性別, 部分原因是給一特點弄糊塗了: 就是,明知蜜蜂有螫針能力, 但又難以相信持有如此武器的 竟然會是雌性的動物。 亞裏斯多德也摻合上了。 他猜測: "好吧, 如果帶螫針的是雄的..." 說到這,他也糊塗了, 因為照此論下去,那些在蜂群裡 照顧幼蜂的也是雄的啦。 這讓他認為是完全不可能的事。 然後他就下結論說蜜蜂大概是一身兩性的, 雖然這說法不盡荒唐, 因為有些動物的確如此。 但也說明他最後還是沒弄清楚。 即便是現在, 我的學生也是每看到一動物, 包括昆蟲,都謂之為雄的。 當我告訴他們說 那些兇神惡煞的軍蟻, 頭鱷碩大、捍衛蟻群的, 全是雌的, 學生們都半信半疑。 加上所有的電影, 螞蟻電影、蜜蜂電影----- 裡面的主角都給扮成是雄的。 這又怎麽樣啦? 能說明什麼問題呀? 電影嘛,編的而已。 不就是會說人話的動物嘛。 就算只只都象傑瑞宋飛地 能說會道,有問題嗎? 我認為有問題。 而且是個根源非常深的問題, 是個能影響到我們的醫療、 衛生、生活多方面的問題。 各位知道科學家都使用規摹系統, 裡面的生物 -- 白鼠 / 果蠅等 -- 是相當於 所有其他動物 (包括人) 的替身來的。 基本的原理是,符合人的道理 也適用於白鼠身上。 而大多數時候,結果出來也符合事實。 但也有把這個假設用過頭了的時候。 而我認為用過頭了的一點是 我們把雄性,任何物種的雄性, 都當成是規摹系統, 視雄性為常規,視之為 " 萬事就該如此 " 。 而雌性呢,則被視為是變異的,特別的, 你得先把基本規律定了,才以此研究雌性。 回到昆蟲這話題上。 我認為人們還沒有搞清楚 眼前到底發生了什麼事情。 人們假定了佔據世界的 大致上全是雄性, 而雌性的角色只是次要的、跑龍套的而已。 沿用這種想法的話, 我們會遺漏很多自然界真貌。 也會遺漏對自然界、生物 (包括人) 的 如何各異的這方面的認識。 正因如此,很多醫療研究 用的都是雄性規摹, 現在知道問題就來了, 研究結果沒法同時 既適用於男性,又適用於女性。 我愛昆蟲的最後一點是 很多人會為之驚恐喪膽的。 就是,牠們腦袋很小, 被普遍覺得認識能力低。 牠們行為複雜,卻不具備複雜的腦袋。 因此我們無法當牠們是小人, 牠們做事方法並不像人一樣的。 讓我喜歡的一點是, 我們很難把昆蟲擬人化, 很難看著牠們,然後把牠們 當作是人的外骨骼,帶六足。 反而,你得以牠們的本身 固有的面目來看待牠們。 昆蟲讓我們的質疑 什麼是常規、什麼是自然的。 各位知道,人們喜歡 編寫故事,談論並存世界。 人們揣測超自然的東西, 逝者之靈在我們當中徜徉什麼的。 異域世界的魅力源自 我們都想 試試非自然到底是怎麽回事。 而我卻認為, 完全毋需穿視死人的能力, 能目睹活生生的昆蟲就夠了。 謝謝。 (掌聲)