第1段

When we think of intelligent members of the animal kingdom, the creatures that spring immediately to mind are apes and monkeys. But in fact the social lives of some members of the insect kingdom are sufficiently complex to suggest more than a hint of intelligence. Among these, the world of the ant has come in for considerable scrutiny lately, and the idea that ants demonstrate sparks of cognition has certainly not been rejected by those involved in these investigations.

第1段：

当我们谈到智慧的动物王国成员时，我们首先想到的是猿猴。但实际上，昆虫世界中的一些成员的社会生活足够复杂，足以表明它们具有一定的智能。在这些成员中，蚂蚁的世界最近受到了广泛的关注，蚂蚁展现出认知的迹象的观点在这些调查中肯定没有被拒绝。

第2段

Ants store food, repel attackers and use chemical signals to contact one another in case of attack. Such chemical communication can be compared to the human use of visual and auditory channels (as in religious chants, advertising images and jingles, political slogans and martial music) to arouse and propagate moods and attitudes. The biologist Lewis Thomas wrote, ‘Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids* as livestock, launch armies to war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

第2段：

蚂蚁储存食物、抵抗攻击者，并使用化学信号在遭受攻击时与其他蚂蚁联系。这种化学传播可以与人类使用视觉和听觉渠道（如宗教圣歌、广告图片和广告语、政治口号和军事音乐）来激发和传播情绪和态度进行比较。生物学家刘易斯·托马斯写道：“蚂蚁和人类太像，以至于让人为之尴尬。它们养殖真菌，养殖蚜虫作为牲畜，引发战争，使用化学喷雾来惊扰和迷惑敌人，掠夺奴隶，孩子劳动，不断交换信息。它们做的事情除了看电视以外应有尽有。”

第3段

However, in ants there is no cultural transmission everything must be encoded in the genes – whereas in humans the opposite is true. Only basic instincts are carried in the genes of a newborn baby, other skills being learned from others in the community as the child grows up. It may seem that this cultural continuity gives us a huge advantage over ants. They have never mastered fire nor progressed. Their fungus farming and aphid herding crafts are sophisticated when compared to the agricultural skills of humans five thousand years ago but have been totally overtaken by modern human agribusiness.

第3段：

然而，在蚂蚁身上没有文化传播，一切都必须在基因中进行编码，而在人类身上则相反。新生儿基因中只携带基本的本能，其他技能是孩子在成长过程中从社区中学习的。这种文化的延续似乎给了我们比蚂蚁更大的优势。他们从未掌握火焰，也没有进步。与五千年前人类的农业技能相比，它们的真菌养殖和蚜虫饲养工艺在现代人类农业商业中已经完全被取代。

第4段

Or have they? The farming methods of ants are at least sustainable. They do not ruin environments or use enormous amounts of energy. Moreover, recent evidence suggests that the crop farming of ants may be more sophisticated and adaptable than was thought.

第4段：

或者说它们成功了吗？蚂蚁的农业方法至少是可持续的。它们不会破坏环境或使用大量能源。此外，最近的证据表明，蚂蚁的农作物栽培可能比人们原以为的更加复杂和适应性更强。

第5段

Ants were farmers fifty million years before humans were. Ants can’t digest the cellulose in leaves – but some fungi can. The ants therefore cultivate these fungi in their nests, bringing them leaves to feed on, and then use them as a source of food. Farmer ants secrete antibiotics to control other fungi that might act as ‘weeds’, and spread waste to fertilise the crop.

第5段：

蚂蚁在人类之前五千万年就开始养殖。蚂蚁无法消化叶子中的纤维素，但某些真菌可以。因此，蚂蚁会在巢穴中栽培这些真菌，并给它们带来叶子作为食物来源。农民蚂蚁分泌抗生素来控制可能充当“杂草”的其他真菌，并传播废料以施肥。

第6段

It was once thought that the fungus that ants cultivate was a single type that they had propagated, essentially unchanged from the distant past. Not so. Ulrich Mueller of Maryland and his colleagues genetically screened 862 different types of fungi taken from ants’ nests. These turned out to be highly diverse: it seems that ants are continually domesticating new species. Even more impressively, DNA analysis of the fungi suggests that the ants improve or modify the fungi by regularly swapping and sharing strains with neighbouring ant colonies.

第6段：

人们曾经认为蚂蚁栽培的真菌是相同类型的，并且基本上没有变化。但事实并非如此。马里兰州的乌尔里希·米勒和他的同事对来自蚂蚁巢穴中的862种不同类型的真菌进行了遗传筛查。结果发现这些真菌具有很高的多样性：蚂蚁似乎不断地驯化新的物种。更令人印象深刻的是，对真菌的DNA分析表明，蚂蚁通过定期与周围的蚂蚁群交换和共享菌株来改进或修改真菌。

第7段

Whereas prehistoric man had no exposure to urban lifestyles – the forcing house of intelligence – the evidence suggests that ants have lived in urban settings for close on a hundred million years, developing and maintaining underground cities of specialised chambers and tunnels.

第7段：

虽然史前人类没有接触过城市生活方式（智力的温床），但证据表明蚂蚁已经在城市环境中生活了近一亿年，建造和维护着专门的洞穴和隧道的地下城市。

第8段

When we survey Mexico City, Tokyo, Los Angeles, we are amazed at what has been accomplished by humans. Yet Hoelldobler and Wilson’s magnificent work for ant lovers, The Ants, describes a supercolony of the ant Formica yessensis on the Ishikari Coast of Hokkaido. This ‘megalopolis’ was reported to be composed of 360 million workers and a million queens living in 4,500interconnected nests across a territory of 2.7 square kilometres.

第8段：

当我们看到墨西哥城、东京、洛杉矶时，我们对人类所取得的成就感到惊叹。然而，霍尔多布勒和威尔逊为蚂蚁爱好者撰写的壮丽著作《蚂蚁》描述了北海道石狩海岸上一个由Formica yessensis蚂蚁组成的超级殖民地。据报道，这个“大都市”由3.6亿只工蚁和100万只蚁后组成，分布在2.7平方公里的4,500个相互连接的巢穴中。

第9段

Such enduring and intricately meshed levels of technical achievement outstrip by far anything achieved by our distant ancestors. We hail as masterpieces the cave paintings in southern France and elsewhere, dating back some 20,000 years. Ant societies existed in something like their present form more than seventy million years ago. Beside this, prehistoric man looks technologically primitive. Is this then some kind of intelligence, albeit of a different kind?

第9段：

这种持久而错综复杂的技术成就远远超过了我们遥远祖先所实现的任何成就。我们称赞法国南部和其他地方的洞穴壁画，它们可以追溯到大约2万年前。而蚂蚁社会以与现在差不多的形式存在了七千多万年。与此相比，史前人类在技术上显得原始。那么，这是否算是某种智能，尽管是一种不同类型的智能？

第10段

Research conducted at Oxford, Sussex and Zürich Universities has shown that when desert ants return from a foraging trip, they navigate by integrating bearings and distances, which they continuously update in their heads. They combine the evidence of visual landmarks with a mental library of local directions, all within a framework which is consulted and updated. So ants can learn too.

第10段：

牛津、苏塞克斯和苏黎世大学进行的研究表明，沙漠蚂蚁在返回觅食行程时，通过将方向和距离进行整合并不断更新来导航。它们将视觉标志的证据与一个心理上的本地方向库相结合，在一个被咨询和更新的框架内进行。因此，蚂蚁也可以学习。

第11段

And in a twelve-year programme of work, Ryabko and Reznikova have found evidence that ants can transmit very complex messages. Scouts who had located food in a maze returned to mobilise their foraging teams. They engaged in contact sessions, at the end of which the scout was removed in order to observe what her team might do. Often the foragers proceeded to the exact spot in the maze where the food had been. Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent the foraging team using odour clues. Discussion now centres on whether the route through the maze is communicated as a ‘left-right’ sequence of turns or as a ‘compass bearing and distance’ message.

第11段：

在为期十二年的研究中，Ryabko和Reznikova发现了蚂蚁可以传递非常复杂的消息的证据。在迷宫中找到食物的侦察兵返回以动员他们的觅食队伍。它们进行接触会议，在会议结束后，会观察其团队可能会怎么做。通常，觅食者们会直接去到食物所在的迷宫位置。为防止觅食队使用气味线索，采取了详细的预防措施。现在讨论的焦点是迷宫路径是作为“左右”转向的顺序传达还是作为“指南针方位和距离”的消息传达。

第12段

During the course of this exhaustive study, Reznikova has grown so attached to her laboratory ants that she feels she knows them as individuals – even without the paint spots used to mark them. It’s no surprise that Edward Wilson, in his essay, ‘In the company of ants’, advises readers who ask what to do with the ants in their kitchen to: ‘Watch where you step. Be careful of little lives.’

第12段：

在这项详尽研究的过程中，Reznikova对她的实验室蚂蚁变得如此深情，以至于她觉得她对它们有了解，甚至不需要用来标记的颜料斑点。毫不奇怪，爱德华·威尔逊在他的文章《与蚂蚁为伴》中建议那些问他们的厨房里的蚂蚁该怎么办的读者：“看着你迈出的每一步。小心这些微小生命。”