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Finches Seek Out Sick Dining Companions

When you’re looking for a table in a crowded cafeteria, you probably give wide berth to the family that sounds like it’s sharing a big dish of whooping cough. Well, not if you’re a house finch, particularly a male. Because a study in the journal Biology Letters [by Karen M. Bouwman and Dana M. Hawley at Virginia Tech; see HGw7] shows that male finches actually prefer feeding near males who are visibly ill.


要是你要在人满为患的餐厅找个位子,那你肯定会离那些有百日咳症状的人们远远的。但如果你是只雀,尤其还要是只雄雀,估计就不会这么干了。为什么呢?《生物学通讯》杂志上的一篇文章中写道:实际上,雄雀比较喜欢和看上去病怏怏的雄性同类一起抢食。


Finches don’t get whooping cough. But they are susceptible to infection with something called Mycoplasma gallisepticum, a bug that leaves them lethargic and sporting a bad case of conjunctivitis, otherwise known as pinkeye. The disease is quite contagious and can be passed from one finch to another while dining beak-to-beak. All the more reason, you’d think, for healthy birds to avoid sitting next to someone with crusty red peepers. Yet male house finches, when given a choice, opt to break breadcrumbs with males who are obviously under the weather.


雀类不会得百日咳,不过它们很容易感染鸡败血支原体。感染了这个,雀类就会昏昏欲睡,精神不振,还伴随着严重的结膜炎症,也就是红眼病。红眼病是接触传染的,雀类嘴碰嘴抢食时就很容易相互传染。你肯定会想,这样一来,健健康康的小鸟们就更不会呆在有着凶恶的红眼的同类身边啦。但是,雄雀不一样,它们还就喜欢呆在“病人”身边进食。


Why risk catching a nasty infection when all you really want to catch is a quick bite? Because males infected with Mycoplasma tend to be less aggressive. So eating with the infirm means you’re more likely to wind up with seed in your beak than a beak in your eye.

只是为了抢点东西吃吃嘛,干嘛还要去冒被传染的危险呢?原来,感染了支原菌的雄雀攻击性大大减弱了,怪不得了。这样一来,和这些“病人”在一起抢饭吃,成功的几率可是大大增加,吃在嘴里可要比看在眼里强得多了啊!


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