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This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Karen Hopkin.
这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是凯伦·霍普金。
Some things are so adorable, we say they’re cute as a bug’s ear.
有些东西太可爱了，我们会用“cute as a bug’s ear”来形容他们的可爱。
Of course, bugs don’t have ears.
当然，虫子没有耳朵。
But a new study shows that orb-weaving spiders can use their webs to detect sounds.
但一项新的研究表明，圆网蜘蛛可以利用它们结的网来探测声音。
The findings are unfurled in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
这项研究结果发表在《美国科学院院报》期刊上。
Any animal that makes sounds is likely to have an ear.
任何能发出声音的动物都可能长有耳朵。
Ron Hoy studies neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University in Ithaca.
罗恩·霍伊在位于伊萨卡的康奈尔大学研究神经生物学和行为学。
--Ranging all the way from tiny crickets, and flies that are even smaller than crickets, all the way through to humans of course.
——从小小的蟋蟀，到比蟋蟀还小的苍蝇，一直到人类可能都是如此。
It’s also pretty interesting that a great many animals don’t have eardrums. But they still hear.
有趣的是，很多动物都没有耳膜。但它们仍然能听到。
That’s Ron Miles.
这是罗恩·霍伊的发言。
The two Rons, here.
这里有两个罗恩。
Ron Miles, who’s been collaborating with Ron Hoy for 30 years, is an engineer at Binghamton University--
与罗恩·霍伊合作了30年罗恩·迈尔斯是宾汉姆顿大学的一名工程师。
--An hour’s drive away from Cornell.
——这所大学距康奈尔大学有一小时车程。
Critters lacking eardrums receive audio input very fine hairs.
不长耳膜的小动物用非常细的毛发接收音频输入。
If you look at spiders and insects, they’re covered with hairs.
如果你观察蜘蛛和其他昆虫，它们身上都覆盖着毛发。
Because these whispy little filaments can float freely in the breeze, they’re great at sensing the air currents that comprise sound waves.
因为这些微小细丝可以在微风中自由漂浮，它们非常擅长感知由声波组成的气流。
We were kind of wondering, you know, how would you make something that could sense sound the way that some of these small animals do.
我们想知道如何制造出像这些小动物那样能够感知声音的东西。
A possibility appeared during an afternoon stroll.
下午散步时出现了一种可能性。
So my graduate student, Jian Zhou, he was walking in our campus nature preserve one day and he noticed when the wind blew, if you look at a spider web, it moves with the wind.
我的研究生周健，有一天，他在校园自然保护区散步，注意到当风吹过的时候，如果观察蜘蛛网，会发现它会随风移动。
And he thought maybe a fine spider web or spider silk could act as a sound sensor.
他想，也许一张精细的蜘蛛网或蜘蛛丝可以充当声音传感器。
To find out, the researchers coaxed a spider into giving them a bit of silk--
为了找到答案，研究人员诱使一只蜘蛛给了他们一点蜘蛛丝——
And we played sound at a little strand of spider silk and found that when the silk is very thin, it moves with the air in a sound field amazingly well over a wide range of frequencies, from 1 hz to 50 khz.
我们在一根细小的蛛丝上播放声音，发现当蛛丝很薄时，它会与声场中的空气一起运动，频率范围很广，从1赫兹到50千赫。
So we knew then that the spider silk was sort of an ideal sound sensor.
所以我们知道了蜘蛛丝是一种理想的声音传感器。
That was eye-opening for the researchers.
这让研究人员大开眼界。
But is it ear-tickling for the spiders?
但蜘蛛会觉得耳朵痒吗?
So we set out to try to figure out if the spiders were actually able to hear sound using their web.
我们开始尝试弄清楚蜘蛛是否真的能够通过结的网听到声音。
And this was a hard question to answer.
这是一个很难回答的问题。
