Humans appear well equipped to recognize the alarm calls of other animals—perhaps because sounds of distress tend to have higher frequencies. Karen Hopkin reports.

人类似乎天生就能识别其他动物警戒性的叫声——或许因为焦虑的叫声通常带有更高的频率。

撰文/播音 凯伦·霍普金（Karen Hopkin）

翻译 张清越

审校 潘磊

What does panic sound like? <> Like that, for sure. But also like this < >. And this <>. But maybe you already knew that. Because a new study shows that humans are actually good at identifying vocalizations that are  emotionally intense…even when those outcries come from other species. The findings are communicated in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

传达出惊恐的声音是什么样的？或许来自《辛普森一家》里辛普森爸爸，也可能像来自小猪，山雀……但是你总能识别出来。一个新的研究显示，人类在辨识带有强烈情感的叫声方面很有一套，哪怕这些声音来自其他物种。《皇家学会学报》发表了这一发现。

It was Charles Darwin who first mused about the evolution of emotional expression. 

As he wrote in the Descent of Man: 

思考关于情绪表达的演化，查尔斯·达尔文是第一个。他在《人类的由来》里写道：

"All the air-breathing Vertebrata necessarily possess an apparatus for inhaling and expelling air.... When the primeval members of this class were strongly excited and their muscles violently contracted, purposeless sounds would almost certainly have been produced."

“所有呼吸着空气的脊椎动物都有一个用来吸气和吐气的器官…当它们隶属同种的远古祖先强烈地兴奋起来时，他们的肌肉会剧烈收缩，一些无意义的声音顺理成章地被制造出来。”

Now, if producing those seemingly purposeless noises turned out to be beneficial…by warning others of predators, summoning protection, or enticing a mate…the behavior would persist and, over time, become selected for.

如果发出那些看似无目的的声音对生存是有益的——比如，可以警告捕食者、召唤同伴的保护、或者吸引配偶……那么这种行为就会延续下去，而且随着时间的推移成为自然选择中被保留的行为。

Of course, for that to happen, the meanings behind those utterances would have to be clearly understood. To explore this question, researchers asked 75 volunteers to listen to vocalizations produced by nine different species, from black-capped chickadees to American alligators. The recordings included sounds made by animals when they were relatively relaxed…like this hourglass tree frog <>…or in some way excited…say, reacting to an aggressor or competing for a mate, like this hourglass tree frog <>. 

当然，这一切的前提是这些叫声背后的意义能够清楚地被其他个体理解。为了探究这一问题，研究人员要求75名志愿者聆听从黑冕山雀到美洲短吻鳄等9种不同物种发出的叫声录音。这些录音包括在动物们相对放松时的声音，比如沙漏树蛙平静时发出的低沉声音；或者在动物们比较兴奋时发出的声音，像是在面对侵略者或争夺配偶时发出的声音，比如沙漏树蛙发出的高声鸣叫。

The listeners were then asked to identify which of the paired recordings from each species represented a sound of distress or “emotional arousal.”

志愿者们又被要求识别各个物种发出的两种声音中的哪一种是痛苦的或“处在情绪兴奋状态”时的叫声。

The result?

结果如何呢？

“We found that, yes, humans recognize higher levels of emotional intensity in species which span across all of these classes.”

“我们发现，人类的确能够识别几乎所有纲目的动物所发出的情绪强度较高的声音。”

Piera Filippi of the University of Aix-Marseille in France and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, who led the study.

法国艾克斯-马赛大学和荷兰马普心理语言学研究所的皮耶拉·菲莉比是这项研究的领导者。

“Interestingly, we did not find any effect of language background on the human’s accuracy.”

“有趣的是，我们没有发现语言背景不同对实验中人类判断的准确性有任何影响。”

Participants who spoke English, German or Mandarin all did equally well at pointing out which chirps, squeals, and hoots were emotionally charged. They were also able to tell when actors speaking in Tamil, a language none of them had ever heard before, sounded upset.

那些说英语、德语或中文普通话的参与者都能很好地辨别出那些唧唧声、尖叫声和叫嚣声所表达的情绪。他们甚至能够听出来说泰米尔语的演员们言语中的沮丧感，而泰米尔语是一种他们均从未听过的一门语言。

“The finding thus suggests that humans’ ability to recognize higher levels of emotional intensity in animal vocalizations is biologically universal.”

“这一发现表明，人类识别动物叫声中蕴含的高强度情绪的能力是生物间通用的。”

The listeners seem to be tuning in on the higher frequency of alarm calls, the researchers say. These shifts in pitch are perhaps clearest in the vocalization of infants, such as the piglet < > used in this study. That suggests that we may be hardwired to recognize babies in distress. 

研究人员表示，志愿者似乎对高音调的警戒性叫声更加敏感。而这些发声大概在幼体中是最常见的，例如小猪宝宝的高音调叫声。这表明，我们可能天生就能识别出感觉到不适的小宝宝们。

We’re not necessarily horse whisperers…but it seems we all feel for that little piggy when it goes < > to make its emotions known.

我们不需要懂得动物的语言……当那只小猪发出这种高音调声来传达情绪时，我们就能感受到它的情绪。

—Karen Hopkin