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Christine Drea on birth control, lemurs and how animals smell 

EarthSky

Christine Drea: You’re actually mucking about with very important social signals. All of a sudden, Betty doesn’t smell like Betty anymore. We don’t even know who she smells like. This is weird!

克里斯汀•迪亚：事实上，大家仍在胡乱地处理一些相当重要的社会信号。突然，贝蒂散发出的体味不再像是她的了，到底像谁的，我们对此却一无所知。这也太奇怪了吧！

Dr. Christine Drea is an animal behaviorist at Duke University. She’s talking about her study – the first of its kind – that analyzed the impact of a form of birth control on the chemicals that make up an animal’s unique scent. In this case, the animals were lemurs – a type of primate related to monkeys and apes. Drea’s study showed that birth control dramatically altered the way the lemurs smell.

克里斯汀•迪亚博士，美国杜克大学的动物行为学家，她正谈论着自己的一项研究，即分析避孕节育对构成动物独特气味的化学成分所产生的影响，这也是同类研究中的首例。在此项案例中，被实验的动物是狐猴，这是一种与猴子，猿有关的灵长目动物。迪亚的研究结果显示节育能显著改变狐猴释放气味的方式。

Christine Drea: It’s exactly like a fingerprint. It’s called a scent signature. So we have these in the pattern of our skin. And we have it in our voice. We have it in our scent.

克里斯汀•迪亚：它是一种气味识别特性，像极了我们的指纹，只不过指纹是以皮肤的形式存在的。当然，我们的声音，体香也具有一定的识别性。

Female lemurs in Drea’s study were given the contraceptive DepoProvera.

在研究中，迪亚还给雌性狐猴注射了起到避孕作用的醋甲孕酮。

Christine Drea: It not only affected the chemical signals of fertility but it also obliterated the signals of an animal’s individual identity. It’s their kinship. It’s their genetic quality. All of that gets either completely lost, or scrambled or subdued in some way.

克里斯汀•迪亚：这不仅影响了某些能诱发多产的化学信号，也截断了某些能显示动物个体特性的信号。如此便形成了一种亲缘关系，也是种遗传性质。然而这种遗传性质要么完全丧失，要么乱成一团，要么以某种方式减弱。

Drea suggested that when an animal’s scent is “off”, confusion in mate selection can result. She added that it’s some possibility to apply her research to humans.

迪亚还提到，动物气味信号的“关闭”还会导致配偶选择上的混乱，并且有可能将此项研究运用到人类身上。

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