头条号视频“吸血鬼树”何处吸取养分？盘点2019年最怪异10项科学研究

美国趣味科学网站近日盘点了2019年最怪异的10项科学研究：尼斯湖水怪、吸血鬼树、冷冻粪便、变形糊糊……科学家们深入探究了这些怪异现象背后的科学真相，一起来了解一下吧。

寻找尼斯湖水怪的DNA

According to popular lore, the legendary Loch Ness monster has supposedly lived in a deep Scottish lake for more than 1,000 years. But according to a study conducted this year, Loch Ness seems to be devoid of any signs of "monster DNA." Geneticists drew more than 250 water samples from the vast lake and examined the bits of DNA floating within each. The survey uncovered genetic traces of more than 3,000 species living in and around Loch Ness, including fish, deer, pigs, bacteria and humans. But the team found no evidence of giant reptiles or aquatic dinosaurs, or even massive sturgeons or catfish that could be mistaken for a mysterious lake monster. However, they did uncover an abundance of eels, so it may be possible (though highly improbable) that "Nessie" was actually an overgrown eel.

根据流行的传说，传奇的尼斯湖水怪已经在苏格兰的深湖里生活了1000多年。但今年进行的一项研究显示，尼斯湖里似乎并没有任何“水怪DNA”存在的迹象。遗传学家从这个巨大的湖泊中提取了250多个水样，并对每个样本中漂浮的DNA片段进行了检测。这项调查发现了生活在尼斯湖及周边地区的3000多个物种的基因痕迹，包括鱼、鹿、猪、细菌和人类。但研究团队并没有发现巨型爬行动物或水生恐龙，甚至没有发现可能被误认为神秘水怪的大型鲟鱼或鲶鱼存在的迹象。不过，他们的确发现了大量鳗鱼，因此“尼斯湖水怪”有可能（虽然可能性不大）其实是一条长得太大的鳗鱼。

be devoid of：缺乏，没有

用粪便做的刀？

Many scholars are familiar with the strange story of an Inuit man who, upon being stranded during a storm, fashioned a knife from his own frozen poop and used it to butcher a dog. Although the tale is famous among anthropologists, none have attempted to craft their own blade from frozen fecal matter — until this year, that is, when a team of researchers took a hack at crafting their own poop knives. The lead study author, Metin Eren, adopted an "Arctic diet" for eight days to supply the needed raw materials, which the team then froze and shaped into blades with metal files. But when the team attempted to carve up a pig hide with their new knives, the blades only left brown streaks along the meat.

许多学者都熟知一个关于因纽特人的奇怪故事。故事中的一名因纽特人在暴风雪中被困，他用自己被冻成冰的粪便做了一把刀，然后用它宰杀了一条狗。虽然这个故事在人类学家当中流传甚广，但从来没有人尝试过用冷冻粪便来制作刀具——直到今年，一个研究团队尝试了打造自己的粪便刀。研究报告的第一作者梅廷·埃伦经过了为期8天的“北极饮食”来提供所需的“原材料”，然后研究团队将这些“原材料”冷冻起来，再用金属锉刀把它制作成刀的形状。但是，当这支团队尝试用他们新做的刀来切一块猪皮时，却只在肉上留下了棕色的印子。

fashion [ˈfæʃn]：vt.做成…的形状

file [faɪl]：n.锉刀

hide [haɪd]：n.兽皮

吃蝾螈的植物

The carnivorous northern pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea) traps unwary insects in its goblet-shaped leaves and digests the bugs for their nutrients. But earlier this year, scientists were shocked to find pitcher plants chowing down on salamanders as well. A team of researchers sampled several hundred pitcher plants in Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park and found that about 20% of the plants contained at least one juvenile salamander, while many plants captured several of the amphibians at once. The salamanders drowned, starved or were cooked to death in the acidic pitcher fluid and, once dead, decomposed in about 10 days. The ravenous plants may gobble up as much as 5% of the bog's juvenile salamander population each year, the team estimated.

瓶子草这种北方的肉食性捕虫草能用它的杯状叶片捕捉到不够小心的昆虫，并消化这些昆虫以吸取它们的营养。但今年早些时候，科学家们惊讶地发现瓶子草也能吞食蝾螈。一组研究人员对加拿大安大略省省立阿尔贡金公园内的数百株瓶子草进行了采样，结果发现有大约20%的瓶子草里捕获了至少一只幼年蝾螈，而且有不少瓶子草同时捕获了好几只。蝾螈在瓶子草的酸性液中被淹死、饿死或被“煮”死，而一旦死亡，它们的身体会在大约10天内分解。研究团队估计，爆文平台，这种贪婪的植物每年可能会吞食该沼泽内5%的幼年蝾螈。

carnivorous [kɑːˈnɪvərəs]：adj.食肉的；肉食性的

你的舌头能像鼻子一样闻气味

No, this doesn't mean you should stop and lick the flowers — but our senses of taste and smell may be even more entangled than we once thought. In a study published in April, scientists exposed lab-grown human taste cells to odor molecules and found that the cells reacted to scents in the same way that the smell-sensing cells in our nasal passages do. When an odor molecule touched down on one of the taste cells, the chemical plugged into a receptor on the cell's surface. In the body, the interaction between the odor and receptor would normally trigger a chain reaction inside the cell, causing it to shoot off a message to the brain.

头条号视频“吸血鬼树”何处吸取养分？盘点2019年最怪异10项科学研究
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