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　　Small creatures with fast metabolisms see the worldlike an action replay.FLIES live shorter lives than elephants. Of that there is no doubt. But from a fly’s point of view,does its life actually seem that much shorter? This, in essence, was the question asked byKevin Healy of Trinity College, Dublin, in a paper just published in Animal Behaviour. His answeris, possibly not.

　　小生物可能擁有快速代謝系統(tǒng)，眼中的世界就像慢動(dòng)作回放。蒼蠅的壽命比大象短。這是毫無(wú)疑問(wèn)的。但是從蒼蠅的角度來(lái)說(shuō)，它的生命真的有那么短暫?jiǎn)?這是都柏林圣三一學(xué)院的Kevin Healy在《動(dòng)物行為》上發(fā)表的論文中提出的問(wèn)題的本質(zhì)所在。他的回答可能是否定的。

　　Subjective experience of time is just that—subjective. Even individual people, who can comparenotes by talking to one another, cannot know for certain that their own experience coincideswith that of others. But an objective measure which probably correlates with subjectiveexperience does exist. It is called the critical flicker-fusion frequency, or CFF, and it is thelowest frequency at which a flickering light appears to be a constant source of illumination.It measures, in other words, how fast an animal’s eyes can refresh an image and thus processinformation.

　　對(duì)時(shí)間的主觀經(jīng)驗(yàn)就是主觀的。即使是能與彼此交談對(duì)照時(shí)間的人類也不能確定他們跟別人的經(jīng)驗(yàn)相同。但是，客觀的測(cè)量與主觀的經(jīng)驗(yàn)確實(shí)有關(guān)系。這就是所謂的臨界閃爍融合頻率，簡(jiǎn)稱CFF，這是閃爍的光作為照明固定光源的最低頻率。換句話說(shuō)，測(cè)量動(dòng)物眼睛刷新圖像的速度然后處理信息。

　　For people, the average CFF is 60 hertz (ie, 60 times a second). This is why the refresh-rate ona television screen is usually set at that value. Dogs have a CFF of 80Hz, which is probably whythey do not seem to like watching television. To a dog a TV programme looks like a series ofrapidly changing stills.Having the highest possible CFF would carry biological advantages, because it would allow fasterreaction to threats and opportunities. Flies, which have a CFF of 250Hz, are notoriouslydifficult to swat. A rolled up newspaper that seems to a human to be moving rapidly appears tothem to be travelling through treacle.

　　對(duì)人類來(lái)說(shuō)，平均的CFF是60赫茲(即，每秒六十次)。這是通常設(shè)置的電視屏幕刷新率。狗狗眼睛的刷新率是80赫茲，這可能是它們不看電視的原因。對(duì)狗來(lái)說(shuō)，電視節(jié)目看起來(lái)像一系列快速變化的幻燈片。有最快速的CFF會(huì)擁有生物學(xué)優(yōu)勢(shì)，因?yàn)檫@意味著面對(duì)威脅或者機(jī)會(huì)時(shí)會(huì)有更快的反應(yīng)速度。蒼蠅的CFF是250赫茲，很難被拍死。在人類看來(lái)迅速落下的一卷報(bào)紙?jiān)谏n蠅看來(lái)就想是慢動(dòng)作。

　　Mr Healy reasoned that the main constraints on an animal’s CFF are its size and its metabolicrate. Being small means signals have less far to travel in the brain. A high metabolic ratemeans more energy is available to process them. A literature search, however, showed that noone had previously looked into the question.Fortunately for Mr Healy, this search also showed that plenty of people had looked at CFF in lotsof species for other reasons. Similarly, many other people had looked at the metabolic rates ofmany of the same species. And size data for species are ubiquitous. All he had to do,therefore, was correlate and repurpose these results. Which he did.

　　Healy先生推斷，動(dòng)物CFF的主要限制來(lái)自于其體型及其新陳代謝速度。體型小意味著大腦中信號(hào)傳遞速度快。高代謝率意味著更多的能量處理信息。然而，一個(gè)文獻(xiàn)檢索顯示之前沒人研究過(guò)這個(gè)問(wèn)題。幸運(yùn)的是，對(duì)Healy先生來(lái)說(shuō)，很多人為了別的原因也研究了許多物種的CFF。同樣的，許多人也研究了許多上述物種的新陳代謝速率。物種體型大小的數(shù)據(jù)到處都是。這么一來(lái)，他需要做的就是關(guān)聯(lián)并重新利用這些結(jié)果。他這么做了。

　　To simplify matters he looked only at vertebrates—34 species of them. At the bottom end ofthe scale was the European eel, with a CFF of 14Hz. It was closely followed by the leatherbackturtle, at 15Hz. Tuataras clocked in at 46Hz. Hammerhead sharks tied with humans, at 60Hz,and yellowfin tuna tied with dogs at 80Hz. The top spot was occupied by the golden-mantledground squirrel, at 120Hz. And when Mr Healy plotted his accumulated CFF data against bothsize and metabolic rate (which are not, it must be admitted, independent variables, as smallanimals tend to have higher metabolic rates than large ones), he found exactly thecorrelations he had predicted.

　　為了簡(jiǎn)化問(wèn)題，他只看34種脊柱動(dòng)物。CFF最低的是歐洲鰻鱺，只有14赫茲。緊隨其后的是棱皮龜，有15赫茲。錘頭鯊跟人類一樣，是60赫茲，黃鰭金槍魚跟狗一樣是80赫茲。的是地鼠，有120赫茲。當(dāng)Healy先生將他的CFF數(shù)據(jù)跟體型和新陳代謝速率聯(lián)系起來(lái)，他發(fā)現(xiàn)了相關(guān)性完全符合其預(yù)測(cè)。(必須承認(rèn)，體型和新陳代謝速率不是獨(dú)立的變量，小動(dòng)物的新陳代謝速率比大型動(dòng)物更快)

　　The upshot is that his hypothesis—that evolution pushes animals to see the world in theslowest motion possible—looks correct. Flies may seem short-lived to people, but from adipteran point of view they can thus live to a ripe old age. Remember that next time you try(and fail) to swat one.

　　他的假設(shè)是進(jìn)化可能讓動(dòng)物更慢的速度看世界，結(jié)果看起來(lái)這個(gè)假設(shè)是對(duì)的。蒼蠅對(duì)人類來(lái)說(shuō)似乎很*，但是從蒼蠅的角度來(lái)說(shuō)，它們能活得很長(zhǎng)。記得下次拍死一個(gè)，可能拍不到哦。