【翻譯練習】人狗相愛為何更勝其他動物
Why Dogs and Humans Love Each Other More Than Anyone Else
作者：Jeffrey Kluger
來源：https://time.com/5342964/human-bond-dog-thoughts/
本文節錄自時代雜誌出版社《狗狗怎麼想：汪星人的內心世界》(TIME How Dogs Think: Inside the Canine Mind，暫譯) 一書。
你萬萬沒想到，原來自己這麼擅長跟狗對話。雖然講得可能還是不太流利，畢竟你本身並不是一隻真正的狗。不過，假如你確實活在只有與狗為伍的世界，那麼你一定可以輕鬆聽懂狗在說些什麼。你認得出來，狗是在發出緊張的吠叫，還是示威的怒吼；牠的汪汪聲是在跟你打招呼，還是向你透露牠迷路了。你能夠讀懂狗狗的肢體語言表達的是開心、難過、疲倦、害怕，還是懇求：拜託、拜託、拜託現在陪我玩嘛！
懂得狗在想些什麼，你覺得這件事很稀鬆平常，沒什麼好大驚小怪嗎？那麼看看你答不答得出這些問題：開心的鳥兒該是什麼模樣？難過的獅子又是怎般情景？答不出來吧，但是你卻能理解狗的語言。而且不需要刻意學習就能知悉狗的心意，就跟人類習得母語差不多。你在到處都見得到狗的世界長大，自然而然便獲得和狗溝通的技能。
由此便可看出人和狗之間緊緊相依的連結。我們和貓一同生活，和馬一同工作，養牛擠乳，飼雞取卵，並且供應食物給這些牲畜－－結果人類到頭來還是宰了牠們，吃進肚子。人類的生活也跟這些物種密不可分，然而人類隨時都可以把牠們從生活中抹除。
狗的話，就又是另一回事了。很久很久以前，人類的世界就跟狗的世界難分難捨，宛如兩種不同色調混合成一個顏色。一旦混合紅色和黃色得到橘色，就再也不可能從橘色分離出原本的紅色和黃色。
可是究竟為什麼會這樣呢？共生恐怕還不足以解釋人與狗的關係－－共生指的是狗為人類狩獵、牧羊，人類則提供棲身之所和食物給狗作為回報。鯊魚和鮣魚也有類似的共生關係，鮣魚會清理鯊魚皮上的寄生蟲，而鯊魚捕食後的殘羹剩餚則留給鮣魚盡情享用。這種水下的共生關係純粹各取所需，沒有存在愛的成分。相較之下，人與狗是相親相愛的。
人狗羈絆始於……其實還真的不知從何時開始。最古老的人犬合葬遺跡可追溯至 14,000 年前，不過有些尚未確認的考古發現，據說年代更久遠一倍以上。這些發現的意義比較值得重視：人與狗一起生活，而且選擇死後與狗同眠。確實耐人尋味。
就是那麼一丁點微不足道的遺傳學機率，搭起人狗之間的跨物種親密橋梁。狗與狼的粒線體 DNA (此種 DNA 只由母系遺傳) 有 99.9% 的相似度，使得這二個物種幾乎無甚差別。然而基因組的其他地方，有一小部分的基因片段卻發揮了重大的影響。特別是第六對染色體，研究人員發現有 3 個基因負責決定過度社交 (hyper-sociability) 的性格－－而狗狗的這些基因，跟與狗狗親和性類似的人類基因都在相同的位置。
數千年前的人類遠祖還不知道基因是什麼，然而他們非常清楚的是，偶爾會有一兩隻中等體型、長鼻吻的動物界清道夫，來到人類的營火附近嗅嗅聞聞，用一種專注、乞憐的眼神凝視人類，叫人難以抗拒。於是史前人類歡迎這些動物一同圍過來取暖，最後稱呼牠們為「狗」；至於不帶有社交基因的狗近親，也就是人類稱呼為狼、胡狼 (jackal)、土狼 (coyote) 或澳洲野犬 (dingo) 的動物，則依舊任其在大自然自生自滅。
當人類脫離大自然環境，我們大可就此斷開與狗的連結。假如不需要工作犬 (需要工作犬的人確實愈來愈少)，那麼人狗之間算的帳就會愈來愈失衡。人類仍然用食物和住所當作薪水付給狗，但從狗那邊卻得不到什麼實質的回報。可是，真的沒關係；到了那時，我們已經深深愛上狗。
我們的語言反映出人類對狗的癡迷：小狗的英文「puppy」這個字得自法文的「poupée」，意思是玩偶－－人類在這種物品上投入無以名狀的愛戀。狗狗是民間故事的要角：非洲傳說有隻名叫魯庫巴 (Rukuba) 的狗為人類帶來火種；威爾斯流傳著忠犬格勒特 (Gelert) 的故事，牠將王子的愛子救出狼口；貴族把家犬一同繪入家族肖像畫；有錢的怪咖在遺囑裡把財產留給狗。
今日，狗是地球上數量最多的陸生肉食動物，至少在人類群聚的地方是如此。全世界有將近 9 億隻狗，讓美國的 8 千萬人口相形失色。家犬學名為 Canis lupus familiaris，這個單一物種已經分出好幾百支品系，以體型、秉性、毛色或可愛程度區分。
美國的狗飼主每年平均花費超過 2 千美元在狗狗的吃喝玩樂和醫療等上面，有人甚至願意砸更多錢，為狗狗堆砌無盡的寵愛。2005 年卡崔娜颶風肆虐紐奧良時，竟有超多人不願拋棄狗狗撤離家園，國會只好通過法律，規定災難應變計畫必須為寵物提供收容處所。
人與狗，一人一獸的殊異物種，從互惠互利的服務契約，變為比愛更濃的深情牽掛。這其中完全找不出任何道理，但其實也不必找出什麼道理。愛並不是由大腦的理性部分運作，而是我們所說的「心」來主導。幾千年了，狗狗一直都活在我們的心裡。
You speak dog better than you think you do. You may not be fluent; that would require actually being a dog. But if you went to live in a dogs-only world, you'd be pretty good at understanding what they're saying. You can tell a nervous yip from a menacing growl, a bark that says hello from a bark that says get lost. You can read the body language that says happy, that says sad, that says tired, that says scared, that says Please, please, please play with me right now!
Think that's not a big deal? Then answer this: What does a happy bird look like? A sad lion? You don't know, but dog talk you get. And as with your first human language, you didn't even have to try to learn it. You grew up in a world in which dogs are everywhere and simply came to understand them.
That, by itself, says something about the bond that humans and dogs share. We live with cats, we work with horses, we hire cows for their milk and chickens for their eggs and pay them with food—unless we kill them and eat them instead. Our lives are entangled with those of other species, but we could disentangle if we wanted.
With dogs, things are different. Our world and their world swirled together long ago like two different shades of paint. Once you've achieved a commingled orange, you're never going back to red and yellow.
But why is that? It's not enough to say that the relationship is symbiotic—that dogs hunt for us and herd for us and we keep them warm and fed in return. Sharks and remora fish struck a similarly symbiotic deal, with the remora cleaning parasites from the shark's skin and getting to help itself to scraps from the shark's kills as its pay. That underwater deal is entirely transactional; love plays no part. Humans and dogs, by contrast, adore each other.
The relationship began—well, nobody knows exactly when it began. The earliest remains of humans and dogs interred together date to 14,000 years ago, but there are some unconfirmed finds that are said to be more than twice as old. The larger point is the meaning of the discoveries: we lived with dogs and then chose to be buried with them. Imagine that.
It was only by the tiniest bit of genetic chance that our cross-species union was forged at all. Dogs and wolves share 99.9% of their mitochondrial DNA—the DNA that's passed down by the mother alone—which makes the two species nearly indistinguishable. But elsewhere in the genome, there are a few genetic scraps that make a powerful difference. On chromosome six in particular, investigators have found three genes that code for hyper-sociability—and they are in the same spot as similar genes linked to similar sweetness in humans.
Our ancestors didn't know what genes were many millennia ago, but they did know that every now and then, one or two of the midsize scavengers with the long muzzles that came nosing around their campfires would gaze at them with a certain attentiveness, a certain loving neediness, and that it was awfully hard to resist them. So they welcomed those few in from the cold and eventually came to call them dogs, while the animals' close kin that didn't pull the good genes—the ones we would come to call wolves or jackals or coyotes or dingoes—would be left to make their way in the state of nature in which they were born.
When humans ourselves left the state of nature, our alliance with dogs might well have been dissolved. If you didn't need a working dog—and fewer and fewer people did—the ledger went out of balance. We kept paying dogs their food-and-shelter salary, but we got little that was tangible in return. Never mind, though; by then we were smitten.
Our language reflected how love-drunk we'd gotten: the word "puppy" is thought to have been adapted from the French poupée, or doll—an object on which we lavish irrational affection. Our folk stories were populated by dogs: the Africans spoke of Rukuba, the dog who brought us fire; the Welsh told the tale of the faithful hound Gelert, who saved a prince's baby from a wolf. Aristocrats took to including the family dog in family portraits. Wealthy eccentrics took to including dogs in their wills.
Today, at least in areas populated by humans, dogs are the planet's most abundant terrestrial carnivore. There are about 900 million of them worldwide, just shy of 80 million of whom live in the U.S. alone. The single species that is the domestic dog—Canis lupus familiaris—has been subdivided into hundreds of breeds, selected for size or temperament or color or cuteness.
The average American dog owner spends more than $2,000 a year on food, toys, medical care and more, and some people would be prepared to pay a much higher, much dearer price. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, so many people refused to evacuate without their dogs that Congress passed a law requiring disaster preparedness plans to make accommodations for pets.
What began as a mutual-services contract between two very different species became something much more like love. None of that makes a lick of sense, but it doesn't have to. Love rarely touches the reasoning parts of the brain. It touches the dreamy parts, the devoted parts—it touches the parts we sometimes call the heart. For many thousands of years, it's there that our dogs have lived.
作者：Jeffrey Kluger
來源：https://time.com/5342964/human-bond-dog-thoughts/
本文節錄自時代雜誌出版社《狗狗怎麼想：汪星人的內心世界》(TIME How Dogs Think: Inside the Canine Mind，暫譯) 一書。
你萬萬沒想到，原來自己這麼擅長跟狗對話。雖然講得可能還是不太流利，畢竟你本身並不是一隻真正的狗。不過，假如你確實活在只有與狗為伍的世界，那麼你一定可以輕鬆聽懂狗在說些什麼。你認得出來，狗是在發出緊張的吠叫，還是示威的怒吼；牠的汪汪聲是在跟你打招呼，還是向你透露牠迷路了。你能夠讀懂狗狗的肢體語言表達的是開心、難過、疲倦、害怕，還是懇求：拜託、拜託、拜託現在陪我玩嘛！
懂得狗在想些什麼，你覺得這件事很稀鬆平常，沒什麼好大驚小怪嗎？那麼看看你答不答得出這些問題：開心的鳥兒該是什麼模樣？難過的獅子又是怎般情景？答不出來吧，但是你卻能理解狗的語言。而且不需要刻意學習就能知悉狗的心意，就跟人類習得母語差不多。你在到處都見得到狗的世界長大，自然而然便獲得和狗溝通的技能。
由此便可看出人和狗之間緊緊相依的連結。我們和貓一同生活，和馬一同工作，養牛擠乳，飼雞取卵，並且供應食物給這些牲畜－－結果人類到頭來還是宰了牠們，吃進肚子。人類的生活也跟這些物種密不可分，然而人類隨時都可以把牠們從生活中抹除。
狗的話，就又是另一回事了。很久很久以前，人類的世界就跟狗的世界難分難捨，宛如兩種不同色調混合成一個顏色。一旦混合紅色和黃色得到橘色，就再也不可能從橘色分離出原本的紅色和黃色。
可是究竟為什麼會這樣呢？共生恐怕還不足以解釋人與狗的關係－－共生指的是狗為人類狩獵、牧羊，人類則提供棲身之所和食物給狗作為回報。鯊魚和鮣魚也有類似的共生關係，鮣魚會清理鯊魚皮上的寄生蟲，而鯊魚捕食後的殘羹剩餚則留給鮣魚盡情享用。這種水下的共生關係純粹各取所需，沒有存在愛的成分。相較之下，人與狗是相親相愛的。
人狗羈絆始於……其實還真的不知從何時開始。最古老的人犬合葬遺跡可追溯至 14,000 年前，不過有些尚未確認的考古發現，據說年代更久遠一倍以上。這些發現的意義比較值得重視：人與狗一起生活，而且選擇死後與狗同眠。確實耐人尋味。
就是那麼一丁點微不足道的遺傳學機率，搭起人狗之間的跨物種親密橋梁。狗與狼的粒線體 DNA (此種 DNA 只由母系遺傳) 有 99.9% 的相似度，使得這二個物種幾乎無甚差別。然而基因組的其他地方，有一小部分的基因片段卻發揮了重大的影響。特別是第六對染色體，研究人員發現有 3 個基因負責決定過度社交 (hyper-sociability) 的性格－－而狗狗的這些基因，跟與狗狗親和性類似的人類基因都在相同的位置。
數千年前的人類遠祖還不知道基因是什麼，然而他們非常清楚的是，偶爾會有一兩隻中等體型、長鼻吻的動物界清道夫，來到人類的營火附近嗅嗅聞聞，用一種專注、乞憐的眼神凝視人類，叫人難以抗拒。於是史前人類歡迎這些動物一同圍過來取暖，最後稱呼牠們為「狗」；至於不帶有社交基因的狗近親，也就是人類稱呼為狼、胡狼 (jackal)、土狼 (coyote) 或澳洲野犬 (dingo) 的動物，則依舊任其在大自然自生自滅。
當人類脫離大自然環境，我們大可就此斷開與狗的連結。假如不需要工作犬 (需要工作犬的人確實愈來愈少)，那麼人狗之間算的帳就會愈來愈失衡。人類仍然用食物和住所當作薪水付給狗，但從狗那邊卻得不到什麼實質的回報。可是，真的沒關係；到了那時，我們已經深深愛上狗。
我們的語言反映出人類對狗的癡迷：小狗的英文「puppy」這個字得自法文的「poupée」，意思是玩偶－－人類在這種物品上投入無以名狀的愛戀。狗狗是民間故事的要角：非洲傳說有隻名叫魯庫巴 (Rukuba) 的狗為人類帶來火種；威爾斯流傳著忠犬格勒特 (Gelert) 的故事，牠將王子的愛子救出狼口；貴族把家犬一同繪入家族肖像畫；有錢的怪咖在遺囑裡把財產留給狗。
今日，狗是地球上數量最多的陸生肉食動物，至少在人類群聚的地方是如此。全世界有將近 9 億隻狗，讓美國的 8 千萬人口相形失色。家犬學名為 Canis lupus familiaris，這個單一物種已經分出好幾百支品系，以體型、秉性、毛色或可愛程度區分。
美國的狗飼主每年平均花費超過 2 千美元在狗狗的吃喝玩樂和醫療等上面，有人甚至願意砸更多錢，為狗狗堆砌無盡的寵愛。2005 年卡崔娜颶風肆虐紐奧良時，竟有超多人不願拋棄狗狗撤離家園，國會只好通過法律，規定災難應變計畫必須為寵物提供收容處所。
人與狗，一人一獸的殊異物種，從互惠互利的服務契約，變為比愛更濃的深情牽掛。這其中完全找不出任何道理，但其實也不必找出什麼道理。愛並不是由大腦的理性部分運作，而是我們所說的「心」來主導。幾千年了，狗狗一直都活在我們的心裡。
You speak dog better than you think you do. You may not be fluent; that would require actually being a dog. But if you went to live in a dogs-only world, you'd be pretty good at understanding what they're saying. You can tell a nervous yip from a menacing growl, a bark that says hello from a bark that says get lost. You can read the body language that says happy, that says sad, that says tired, that says scared, that says Please, please, please play with me right now!
Think that's not a big deal? Then answer this: What does a happy bird look like? A sad lion? You don't know, but dog talk you get. And as with your first human language, you didn't even have to try to learn it. You grew up in a world in which dogs are everywhere and simply came to understand them.
That, by itself, says something about the bond that humans and dogs share. We live with cats, we work with horses, we hire cows for their milk and chickens for their eggs and pay them with food—unless we kill them and eat them instead. Our lives are entangled with those of other species, but we could disentangle if we wanted.
With dogs, things are different. Our world and their world swirled together long ago like two different shades of paint. Once you've achieved a commingled orange, you're never going back to red and yellow.
But why is that? It's not enough to say that the relationship is symbiotic—that dogs hunt for us and herd for us and we keep them warm and fed in return. Sharks and remora fish struck a similarly symbiotic deal, with the remora cleaning parasites from the shark's skin and getting to help itself to scraps from the shark's kills as its pay. That underwater deal is entirely transactional; love plays no part. Humans and dogs, by contrast, adore each other.
The relationship began—well, nobody knows exactly when it began. The earliest remains of humans and dogs interred together date to 14,000 years ago, but there are some unconfirmed finds that are said to be more than twice as old. The larger point is the meaning of the discoveries: we lived with dogs and then chose to be buried with them. Imagine that.
It was only by the tiniest bit of genetic chance that our cross-species union was forged at all. Dogs and wolves share 99.9% of their mitochondrial DNA—the DNA that's passed down by the mother alone—which makes the two species nearly indistinguishable. But elsewhere in the genome, there are a few genetic scraps that make a powerful difference. On chromosome six in particular, investigators have found three genes that code for hyper-sociability—and they are in the same spot as similar genes linked to similar sweetness in humans.
Our ancestors didn't know what genes were many millennia ago, but they did know that every now and then, one or two of the midsize scavengers with the long muzzles that came nosing around their campfires would gaze at them with a certain attentiveness, a certain loving neediness, and that it was awfully hard to resist them. So they welcomed those few in from the cold and eventually came to call them dogs, while the animals' close kin that didn't pull the good genes—the ones we would come to call wolves or jackals or coyotes or dingoes—would be left to make their way in the state of nature in which they were born.
When humans ourselves left the state of nature, our alliance with dogs might well have been dissolved. If you didn't need a working dog—and fewer and fewer people did—the ledger went out of balance. We kept paying dogs their food-and-shelter salary, but we got little that was tangible in return. Never mind, though; by then we were smitten.
Our language reflected how love-drunk we'd gotten: the word "puppy" is thought to have been adapted from the French poupée, or doll—an object on which we lavish irrational affection. Our folk stories were populated by dogs: the Africans spoke of Rukuba, the dog who brought us fire; the Welsh told the tale of the faithful hound Gelert, who saved a prince's baby from a wolf. Aristocrats took to including the family dog in family portraits. Wealthy eccentrics took to including dogs in their wills.
Today, at least in areas populated by humans, dogs are the planet's most abundant terrestrial carnivore. There are about 900 million of them worldwide, just shy of 80 million of whom live in the U.S. alone. The single species that is the domestic dog—Canis lupus familiaris—has been subdivided into hundreds of breeds, selected for size or temperament or color or cuteness.
The average American dog owner spends more than $2,000 a year on food, toys, medical care and more, and some people would be prepared to pay a much higher, much dearer price. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, so many people refused to evacuate without their dogs that Congress passed a law requiring disaster preparedness plans to make accommodations for pets.
What began as a mutual-services contract between two very different species became something much more like love. None of that makes a lick of sense, but it doesn't have to. Love rarely touches the reasoning parts of the brain. It touches the dreamy parts, the devoted parts—it touches the parts we sometimes call the heart. For many thousands of years, it's there that our dogs have lived.
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