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万物简史(MP3+中英字幕) 第528期:丰富多彩的生命(24)

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Most living things are small and easily overlooked. In practical terms, this is not always a bad thing. You might not slumber quite so contentedly if you were aware that your mattress is home to perhaps two million microscopic mites, which come out in the wee hours to sup on your sebaceous oils and feast on all those lovely, crunchy flakes of skin that you shed as you doze and toss. Your pillow alone may be home to forty thousand of them. (To them your head is just one large oily bon-bon.) And don't think a clean pillowcase will make a difference. To something on the scale of bed mites, the weave of the tightest human fabric looks like ship's rigging.

大多数生物很小,容易被忽略。实际上,这不总是一件坏事。要是你知道你的床垫是大约200万个只有在显微镜下才看得见的螨虫的家园,它们在凌晨一两点钟钻出来,一小口一小口地喝着你的皮脂,美美地吃着你在打盹儿或翻身时掉下来的又香又脆的皮屑,你也许不会睡得那么香。光你的枕头上就可能生活着4万个微生物。(对于它们来说,你的头只是一块油汪汪的大软糖。)别以为换了个干净枕套会起什么作用。在床上螨虫大小的东西看来,人类织得再紧密的物品看上去也只是像船上的索具。
螨虫

Indeed, if your pillow is six years old — which is apparently about the average age for a pillow — it has been estimated that one-tenth of its weight will be made up of "sloughed skin, living mites, dead mites and mite dung," to quote the man who did the measuring, Dr. John Maunder of the British Medical Entomology Center. (But at least they areyour mites. Think of what you snuggle up with each time you climb into a motel bed.) These mites have been with us since time immemorial, but they weren't discovered until 1965. We are actually getting worse at some matters of hygiene. Dr. Maunder believes that the move toward low-temperature washing machine detergents has encouraged bugs to proliferate. As he puts it: "If you wash lousy clothing at low temperatures, all you get is cleaner lice."

要是你的枕头已经用了六年——这显然大约是一个枕头的平均寿命——据估计,用一位计算过的人的话来说,它十分之一的分量来自“脱下来的皮屑、活的螨虫、死的螨虫和螨虫的屎”。那个人是英国医学昆虫学中心的约翰·蒙德博士。(但是,至少它们是你身上的螨虫。想像一下,每次你爬进一家旅馆的床铺,你会跟什么依偎而睡。)这些螨虫自古以来就和我们在一起,但是直到1965年才被发现。实际上,我们的有些卫生条件越来越差。蒙德博士认为,使用低温洗衣机洗涤剂的趋势,已经鼓励了虫子的繁殖。他指出:“要是在低温下洗脏衣服,你得到的是比较干净的虱子。”
If creatures as intimately associated with us as bed mites escaped our notice until the age of color television, it's hardly surprising that most of the rest of the small-scale world is barely known to us.
要是像床里的螨虫这样的与我们关系密切的动物直到彩色电视时代才引起我们的注意,我们对大多数别的小生物几乎不了解,这是不足为怪的。

重点单词   查看全部解释    
scale [skeil]

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n. 鳞,刻度,衡量,数值范围
v. 依比例决

 
shed [ʃed]

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n. 车棚,小屋,脱落物
vt. 使 ...

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mattress ['mætris]

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n. 床垫

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quote [kwəut]

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n. 引用
v. 引述,举证,报价

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weave [wi:v]

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n. 编法,织法,编织
v. 编织,组合,编排

 
oily ['ɔili]

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adj. 油的,油滑的,油腔滑调的

 
fabric ['fæbrik]

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n. 织物,结构,构造
vt. 构筑

 
proliferate [prə'lifəreit]

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v. 增殖,增生,使 ... 激增,使 ... 扩散,迅

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slumber ['slʌmbə]

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n. 睡眠,微睡,休止状态 v. 睡觉,打盹,静止,休眠

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toss [tɔs]

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n. 投掷,震荡
v. 投掷,摇荡,辗转

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