《人类的神秘力量》:猫是如何影响健康的?

《人类的神秘力量》:猫是如何影响健康的?

When a stray cat wandered onto the tracks of a midtown 7 train in New York City last month, the MTA halted the entire subway line until the animal was out of harm's way. At the same time, the U.S. government euthanizes millions of stray cats each year.

上个月，当一只流浪猫在纽约中城7号线的铁轨上游荡时，大都会运输署暂停了整条地铁线路，直到这只猫脱离危险。与此同时，美国政府每年对数百万只流浪猫实施安乐死。

They're a disaster for the environment: American cats kill between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds each year, and they've been implicated in dozens of mammalian extinctions. (The Australian government has funded research into the most efficient methods of cat control -- yielding products like a poison-laced kangaroo sausage called "Eradicat.")

它们对环境是一种灾难: 美国猫每年杀死14亿到37亿只鸟，它们还与几十次哺乳动物的灭绝有关。(澳大利亚政府资助了一项研究，研究最有效的猫控制方法——生产一种有毒的袋鼠香肠，名为“根除剂”。)

Nearly half of house cats have physically attacked their owners.

近一半的家猫会攻击它们的主人。

Humans' relationship with cats is rife with paradox. There are an estimated 100 million pet cats in the U.S., and their ranks are only growing. "Cat culture" flourishes online. The cat-less can get their fix at "cat cafés" opening across Asia, Europe, and North America.

人类与猫的关系充满了矛盾。据估计，美国有1亿只宠物猫，而且他们的队伍还在不断壮大。“猫文化”在网上盛行。不养猫的人可以在遍布亚洲、欧洲和北美的“猫咖”里得到满足。

In "The Lion in the Living Room: How Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World," journalist Abigail Tucker traces cats' journey from fearsome Near Eastern predator to global intruder, shedding light on how this baby-sized beast worked its way into so many homes.

在《客厅里的狮子:猫是如何驯服我们并征服世界的》一书中，记者阿比盖尔·塔克追溯了猫从可怕的近东掠食者到全球入侵者的历程，揭示了这种婴儿大小的野兽是如何进入这么多家庭的。

Science of Us spoke with Tucker about the similarities between cats and lions, and the somewhat baffling question of why people put up with them.

《我们的科学》杂志采访了塔克，讨论了猫和狮子之间的相似之处，以及人们为什么要忍受它们这个令人困惑的问题。

You write that cats are a rather unlikely house pet. Why is that?

你把猫写成是一个相当不可能的家庭宠物。这是为什么?

Cats are uniquely ill-suited for domestication. When people set out to domesticate the first animals, we targeted animals that were easy to keep in confined spaces, and animals that would eat a variety of things -- think of a pig or a goat, which will eat any old swill left over from your kitchen. Cats eat only fancy food that we could eat ourselves.

猫是唯一不适合驯化的动物。当人们开始驯化第一只动物时，我们的目标是那些容易被关在狭小空间里的动物，以及那些会吃各种各样东西的动物——想想猪或山羊，它们会吃你厨房里剩下的任何旧泔水。猫只吃我们自己能吃的美味食物。

We also tended toward animals that we could dominate. Dogs and cattle have lead animals, and we can control them by acting the alpha dog or the lead steer. But cats are solitary animals that don't have social hierarchies. They're hard to control, and they don't tolerate confinement well.

我们也倾向于那些我们可以支配的动物。狗和牛都有领头的动物，我们可以通过扮演领头狗或领头牛来控制它们。但是猫是独居动物，没有社会等级。他们很难控制，也不能很好地忍受监禁。

So how did they trick us into feeding them and taking care of them?

那么它们是如何欺骗我们去喂养和照顾它们的呢？

For a long time, it was probably just an accident. But there are reasons that cats made the transition, but we don't have badgers or foxes as pets today. One reason is that cats have a set of physical features that, for completely accidental reasons, remind us of human babies.

很长一段时间，这可能只是一个意外。但是猫的这种转变是有原因的，但是我们今天没有獾或狐狸作为宠物。一个原因是猫有一系列的生理特征，完全是出于偶然的原因，让我们想起了人类的婴儿。

Cats are bad for your health, bad for the environment . Why would you still want to have a cat?

猫对你的健康有害，对环境有害。你为什么还想养猫?

I lost a lot of my sentimental regard for cats -- that "oh, my cute baby" response. But I find that I marvel at them more. I can appreciate the backstory, how this little animal managed to carve out a place for itself in the world, and to become a dreaded invasive species and -- culturally speaking -- one of the most powerful animals on the planet.

我对猫失去了很多情感上的尊重——那种“噢，我可爱的宝宝”的反应。但我发现我对他们更惊叹。我可以欣赏它的故事背景，它是如何在这个世界上为自己开辟出一片天地，成为一个可怕的入侵物种，从文化上讲，它是地球上最强大的动物之一。

To me, it's about the wonder of life, and how this animal has gotten so far in the world without giving us much in return. Humans are so good at extracting what they want from the environment. With cats, we're not necessarily holding the reins. We don't even know what we want, but we love it.

对我来说，这是关于生命的奇迹，以及这种动物是如何在没有给我们太多回报的情况下，在这个世界上走了这么远。人类非常善于从环境中提取他们想要的东西。对于猫，我们并不一定要控制它。我们甚至不知道自己想要什么，但我们爱它。