時差N小時:鳥類并不笨頭笨腦

Neuroscientists' opinions about the brains of birdshave changed.

神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)科學(xué)家關(guān)于鳥類大腦的傳統(tǒng)觀念發(fā)生了轉(zhuǎn)變。

In humans and other mammals,the roof of theforebrain has evolved into the cerebral cortex, astructure responsible for flexiblelearning andreasoning.

人類和其他哺乳動物的前腦頂層已經(jīng)進(jìn)化為大腦皮層，這一結(jié)構(gòu)主管彈性學(xué)習(xí)和推理能力。

Early neuroanatomists thought that the forebrainroof was small and simple in birds, with itsforebraininstead being dominated by structures in its base, called the basal ganglia.

早期的神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)科學(xué)家認(rèn)為鳥類的前腦頂層在大腦中面積小，構(gòu)造簡單，且并非由大腦基底部名為基底神經(jīng)節(jié)的結(jié)構(gòu)組成。

Without anelaborate forebrain roof, it seemed that birds couldn't be very smart.

因此，鳥類并不擁有復(fù)雜精妙的前腦頂層，這似乎決定了鳥類智商有限。

Recent research shows that birds are a lot smarter than scientists once thought.

最近的研究表明鳥類要比科學(xué)家想象的聰明得多。

To give just afew examples, the New Caledonian crow can manufacture and use tools.

例如，新喀里多尼亞烏鴉會制作和使用工具。

The African grey parrotcan learn to classify objects into categories, and the Florida scrub jaystores food in dozens ofcaches and can remember their locations for future use.

非洲灰鸚鵡能學(xué)會對東西進(jìn)行分類，佛羅里達(dá)灌叢鴉會將食物存儲在不同的地方，并且能記住位置，以備將來之需。

It turns out that neuroanatomists had it all wrong about bird forebrains.

結(jié)果是神經(jīng)解剖學(xué)家 對鳥類前腦的研究完全錯誤。

During more than 300 million years of separate evolution, the forebrain roofs of birds and ofmammals each grew largerand more elaborate, but in different ways.

在3億多年各自的進(jìn)化過程中，鳥類和哺乳動物的前腦頂層分別以不同的方式變大變精。

The roof of a bird's forebrain is so different from thecerebral cortex of a mammal that theneuroanatomists had confused most of it with enlargedbasal ganglia.

鳥類的大腦頂層與哺乳動物的大腦皮層差別如此之大以至于神經(jīng)解剖學(xué)家 將其與增大的基底神經(jīng)節(jié)基本都弄混了。