英语动物小故事带翻译（英语趣闻精选九）

首先我想重申一下这个英文趣闻精选系列的初衷，学习英语的过程本身是很枯燥的，为了激发我们的兴趣和放松我们的大脑，我们应该有意识地寻找一些有意思的题材，就能达到调节节奏和“苦中作乐”的目的。并且能够深刻的理解和消化我们读过的东西并学以致用，这也是很有成就感的事情，因此我会进行朗读和简单的解析而不是囫囵吞枣地一带而过。

很多人家里都养猫猫或者狗狗，即使没有养过，相信大家也都看到过猫猫或者狗狗喝水。不知道大家有没注意过他们到底是怎么把水送到口中的。最近有一项研究详细展示了猫猫和狗狗喝水的过程，原来他们喝水的方式竟然完全不同，让人大开眼界。

在这里，我会对这篇英文研究文章进行朗读和简单的解析，感兴趣的读者可以阅读并点击收听。

以下是原文以及解析。

Even if you don't own a cat you've probably seen one lap up a bowl of milk. Exactly how our feline friends go about doing it has been a scientific mystery, until now: The journal Science has published the conclusive study of how cats drink.

• Lap up: 你熟悉的lap的意思，是不是跑圈儿的“圈儿”？或者是laptop的“lap”？然而这段话里的lap却是“用舌头汲取液体”的意思。我会在明天的《英语词汇专题系列》里对lap着重进行介绍，敬请关注。
• Feline：猫科动物或者是像猫的，这里的“-ine”是一个非常常用的后缀（suffix），我也会专门在《英语词汇专题系列》里进行归纳总结，敬请关注。
• Go about doing something: “go about”本身也有很多意思，本文里它指的是“to begin to do something or deal with something”，也就是“着手做，开始处理”的意思。比如：

How can we go about solving this problem?

It turns out that trying to capture cat-drinking on film is a bit harder than you might expect."You don't induce the cat to drink; you just wait until the cat decides to drink," says Roman Stocker, an author of the study and an associate professor at MIT who specializes in fluid mechanics. Stocker and his colleagues spent hours filming -- or trying to film -- cats lapping.

• Induce：to persuade someone to do something，也就是“诱使，劝说”的意思。它的名词形式induction经常被用在职场英语中，表示“a formal introduction or entry into an office or position”，也就是“正式入职介绍”的意思。

"The nice thing about it is that the cat laps with an impressive frequency of four times per second, so if you catch only a few seconds of lapping you have many laps," Stocker explains.Watching in slow motion reveals that cats of all sizes, from tabbies to tigers, have a very elaborate way of drinking. First, they move the tip of their tongue onto the surface of the water to flick the water up so that a little jet of liquid flies into the air. Then, in a flash, they catch the jet in their mouth.

• Tabby: (a cat) having dark-coloured marks on grey or brown fur，如图：

• Elaborate：注意这个单词在作为形容词和作为动词的时侯发音是不同的。

1. 形容词时：/ɪˈlæbərɪt/，指的是detailed，这也是本文里的意思。请仔细留意音频里我的读法。
2. 动词时：/ɪˈlæbəˌreɪt /，指的是to work out carefully or minutely（这里的“minute”跟你印象中的“分钟”不论是从发音上来讲，还是从意义上来讲都是不一样的哟，详细解释请关注我之后的《英语发音系列》）

• Jet: 本文中的意思是“A rapid stream of liquid or gas forced through a small opening or nozzle under pressure.”，也就是猫猫通过用舌头快速弹射液体激起的液流。（关于jet的多种意思请关注我之后的《英语词汇系列》

What's more, when the researchers crunched the numbers, they found the cats had it down.

• Crunch numbers: 意思是“Perform numerous calculations or process a large amount of numerical data”，也就是进行了大量的计算或者数据分析。
• Have it down: 指的是have (something) mastered。还有一个比较常用的俚语是“down pat”，意思是“Thoroughly practiced, rehearsed, or understood; mastered.”，比如：

My son is a piano prodigy who gets all of his scales and arpeggios down pat.

(跟之前的jet一样，pat也有很多意思，敬请关注我之后的《英语词汇系列)

"They really know how to do it perfectly, almost as if they're doing the equations in their head," says Pedro Reis, a co-author of the study and assistant professor at MIT.The whole system is much more elaborate than that of dogs, who simply scoop up the water with their tongues.

这里还有一个简短的视频可以让我们更清晰地看出他们的不同。

"I have no idea why cats don't just do it the ordinary way, but you know that's the weird, interesting thing about biology: What nature does is not necessarily the best way to do things," says David Hu, a researcher at Georgia Tech. "I think that dogs generally have a better way to do it."

如果你喜欢我的文章，请点赞和关注。每天写一点，每天学一点，在学英语的同时学习英语国家文化。好好学习，天天向上。

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