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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作回放。蒼蠅的壽命比大象短。這是毫無疑問的。但是從蒼蠅的角度來說，它的生命真的有那么短暫嗎?這是都柏林圣三一學(xué)院的Kevin Healy在《動物行為》上發(fā)表的論文中提出的問題的本質(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.

　　對時間的主觀經(jīng)驗(yàn)就是主觀的。即使是能與彼此交談對照時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，測量動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.

　　對人類來說，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。對狗來說，電視節(jié)目看起來像一系列快速變化的幻燈片。有最快速的CFF會擁有生物學(xué)優(yōu)勢，因?yàn)檫@意味著面對威脅或者機(jī)會時會有更快的反應(yīng)速度。蒼蠅的CFF是250赫茲，很難被拍死。在人類看來迅速落下的一卷報紙?jiān)谏n蠅看來就想是慢動作。

　　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，動物CFF的主要限制來自于其體型及其新陳代謝速度。體型小意味著大腦中信號傳遞速度快。高代謝率意味著更多的能量處理信息。然而，一個文獻(xiàn)檢索顯示之前沒人研究過這個問題。幸運(yùn)的是，對Healy先生來說，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，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.

　　為了簡化問題，他只看34種脊柱動物。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，他發(fā)現(xiàn)了相關(guān)性完全符合其預(yù)測。(必須承認(rèn)，體型和新陳代謝速率不是獨(dú)立的變量，小動物的新陳代謝速率比大型動物更快)

　　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)化可能讓動物更慢的速度看世界，結(jié)果看起來這個假設(shè)是對的。蒼蠅對人類來說似乎很*，但是從蒼蠅的角度來說，它們能活得很長。記得下次拍死一個，可能拍不到哦。