跟读练习: Why Is Blue So Rare In Nature? - 通过视频学习英语口语
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83 句
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There are no blue tigers.
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No blue bats, no blue squirrels, or blue dogs.
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Even blue whales aren’t that blue.
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Animals come in pretty much every color, but blue seems to be the rarest.
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What’s cool, though, is when we do find a blue animal, they’re awesome looking.
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Nature doesn’t do halfway with blue.
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To understand why this is, we’re gonna journey through evolution, chemistry, and some very cool physics.
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But, first we’re gonna need to understand why animals are any color at all, and to do that, we need to go look at some butterflies… because butterflies are awesome… and if you don’t think so, you’re wrong This is Bob Robbins.
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He’s curator of Lepidoptera at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.
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Butterflies ARE awesome.
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Make no mistake about it.
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They’re a group of moths that evolved to be active during the day, and if you’re active during the day, you have an advantage: You can use light to communicate.
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You probably realize this, but out of all insects, butterflies display the brightest and most detailed patterns.
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And there’s a good reason for that: The colors in butterfly wings deliver messages, like “I’m toxic”, or “I’m a male and this is my territory”, but not all butterfly colors are created equal.
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If we zoom way in on a butterfly wing, we see the colors come from tiny scales.
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It’s actually how moths and butterflies get their scientific name.
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Oranges, reds, yellows browns…those scales all contain pigments, organic molecules that absorb every color except what we see.
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Black scales absorb all colors.
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Animals, from butterflies to birds to you and me, don’t make these pigments from scratch, they’re made from ingredients in our diet.
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You might know this thanks to flamingos: They’re born gray, but turn pink thanks to pigments called carotenoids in crustaceans they eat.
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So when it comes to these colors: You are what you eat.
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But not so for blue.
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Blue is If you move the camera, you can see that the color changes as you move the camera.
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It does. It’s like a hologram thing.
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This is because there’s no blue pigment in these butterflies Wait… so they’re blue, but they’re not really blue?
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That’s correct!
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Yes. You’re lying to me butterflies!
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These are Blue Morpho butterflies, maybe the prettiest butterflies of all.
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I mean… they did make it the butterfly emoji.
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The blue color isn’t from a pigment.
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The blue comes from the shape of the wing scale itself, and when I learned how this works, it kinda blew my mind.
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If we zoom way in on a blue wing scale, we see these little ridges.
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If we slice across the scale, and look closer, we see those ridges are shaped like tiny Christmas trees.
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The arrangement of the branches is what gives Morpho wings their blue color.
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When light comes in, some bounces off the top surface.
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But some light passes into the layer and reflects off the bottom surface.
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For most colors of light, waves reflecting from the top and bottom will be out of phase, they’ll be canceled out, and that light is removed.
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But blue light has just the right wavelength: the reflected light waves are in sync, and that color makes it to our eye.
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This hall of mirrors only lets blue light escape.
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There’s even a pigment at the base that absorbs stray red and green light to make the blue even more pure.
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That’s how we get this awesome iridescent blue.
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The microscopic structure of the wing itself.
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All of this happens because of the way light bends when it moves from air into another material.
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So if we fill all those tiny gaps with something other than air, like alcohol, the blue disappears.
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Technically, this “changes the index of refraction”, but in plain English that means blue light is no longer bent the right way.
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The microscopic light filter is broken.
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Until the alcohol evaporates.
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And the color returns.
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But these butterflies live in the rainforest.
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You think they’d lose their color any time they got wet, right?
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Well watch this.
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These wing scales are made of a material that’s naturally water-resistant.
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What about this blue jay feather?
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If we look through it, the color completely disappears.
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No blue pigment.
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Each feather bristle contains light-scattering microscopic beads, spaced so everything but blue light is canceled out.
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Unlike the highly-ordered structures we find in butterfly wings, these feather structures are more messy, like a foam, so instead of changing as we move, the color’s more even from every direction.
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Peacock tail feathers?
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Again it’s the shape of the feather, not pigment.
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But the light reflecting structures here are more ordered, like a crystal, so it’s brighter from certain angles.
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There’s even a monkey–WHOA let’s keep this PG!!–even that color is made by the adding and subtracting of light waves thanks to structures in the skin… not pigment.
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And yes, even your blue eyes, are colored by structures, not pigments.
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Outside of the ocean, almost exclusively, the bluest living things make their colors with microscopic structures, and each one’s a little different.
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No vertebrate, not a single bird or mammal or reptile that we know of, makes a blue pigment on its body.
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In fact, there’s only one known butterfly that has cracked the code for making a true blue pigment.
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Blue as a pigment in nature is incredibly rare.
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But there’s one exception so far that we know about, and these are over here called the olivewings.
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They have evolved a blue pigment.
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They’re not very common and we don’t know much about them, and I don’t know of any other blue pigment.
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That’s a really special butterfly.
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Why is almost all of nature’s blue made from structures and not pigments like everything else?
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I’ve asked this question to several scientists that study color, and here’s their best theory so far: At some point way back in time, birds and butterflies evolved the ability to see blue light.
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But they hadn’t yet evolved a way to paint their bodies that color.
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But if they could, it’d be like going from early Beatles to Sgt.
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Pepper’s Beatles.
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it meant new opportunities for communicating and survival.
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Creating some blue pigment–out of the blue–would have required inventing new chemistry, and there was no way to just add that recipe to their genes.
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It was much easier for evolution to change the shape of their bodies, ever so slightly, at the most microscopic level, and create blue using physics instead.
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They solved a biology problem with engineering.
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What I love about this is these colors have fascinated curious people for hundreds of years.
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After looking at peacock feathers through one of the first microscopes back in the 1600’s Robert Hooke wrote: “these colours are onely fantastical ones” Even Isaac Newton noticed there was something unusual about these blues, and scientists have been studying it ever since.
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Not only because the science is interesting, but because it’s beautiful.
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Thanks for watching, and stay curious.
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本课的词汇与口语要点
这段视频共有 83 个句子、1184 个单词可供跟读。 讲话部分时长为 7:31。 说话人语速自然，每分钟约 158 个词，接近日常对话。 只有 80% 的单词属于英语最常用的 3,000 词，词汇难度较高。
视频中的重点词汇
视频中 15 个不太常见的单词，附发音和释义：
- butterfly /ˈbʌ.tə(ɹ).flaɪ/ (名词) — хўте, 蝶仔. A flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, distinguished from moths by their diurnal activity and generally brighter colouring.
- feather /ˈfɛðə/ (名词) — 羽毛, 羽. A branching, hair-like structure that grows on the bodies of birds, used for flight, swimming, protection and display.
- reflect /ɹɪˈflɛkt/ (动词) — 反映, 反射. To bend back (light, etc.) from a surface.
- absorb /æbˈsɔɹb/ (动词) — 吸收. To include so that it no longer has separate existence; to overwhelm; to cause to disappear as if by swallowing up; to incorporate; to assimilate; to take in…
- curious /ˈkjʊɹ.i.əs/ (形容词) — 好奇, 有好奇心. Tending to ask questions, or to want to explore or investigate; inquisitive; (with a negative connotation) nosy, prying.
- evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/ (名词) — 演變 /演变, 變遷 /变迁. A manoeuvre of troops or ships.
- physics /ˈfɪz.ɪks/ (名词) — 物理學 /物理学. The branch of science concerned with the study of the properties and interactions of space, time, matter and energy.
- chemistry /ˈkɛm.ɪ.stɹi/ (名词) — 化學 /化学. The branch of natural science that deals with the composition and constitution of substances and the changes that they undergo as a consequence of alterations…
- scientist /ˈsaɪəntəst/ (名词) — 科學家 /科学家. One whose activities make use of the scientific method to answer questions regarding the measurable universe. A scientist may be involved in original research…
- cancel /ˈkæn.sl̩/ (动词) — 划, 勾. To cross out something with lines etc.
- bend /bɛnd/ (动词) — 彎 /弯. To cause (something) to change its shape into a curve, by physical force, chemical action, or any other means.
- ridge /ɹɪd͡ʒ/ (名词) — 背脊. The back of any animal; especially the upper or projecting part of the back of a quadruped.
- disappear /dɪsəˈpɪɹ/ (动词) — 消失. To vanish.
- gap /ɡæp/ (名词) — 間隙 /间隙. An opening in anything, made by breaking or parting.
- mirror /ˈmiɹɚ/ (名词) — җинзы, 鏡 /镜. A smooth surface, usually made of glass with reflective material painted on the underside, that reflects light so as to give an image of what is in front of it.
视频中出现的短语动词
- come from (动词) — 來自 /来自. To have as one's origin, birthplace or nationality.
- look at (动词) — 觀察 /观察, 看. To observe or watch.
需要注意的发音
说话人用了 29 次缩略和弱读形式，例如 they're, don't, you're。请按听到的简短形式来说。
- “th” 音: feather /ˈfɛðə/, moth /mɔθ/, wavelength /ˈweɪvˌlɛŋ(k)θ/
- “sh” 和 “zh” 音: evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, exception /əkˈsɛpʃən/, crustacean /kɹʌsˈteɪʃən/, refraction /ɹəˈfɹækʃən/
- 长单词——注意重音位置: evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/, communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/
如何用这段视频练习
- 先完整听一遍视频，不要开口，记下不认识的单词。
- 先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟读，熟练之后再回到正常速度。
- 录下自己的声音并与原声对比，特别注意 butterfly, feather, reflect 这类单词。
视频中的语法
说话人最常用的结构，并附上视频中的原话：
| 结构 | 视频中的用法 |
|---|---|
| 被动语态 be + 过去分词 — 强调发生了什么，而不是谁做的 | are created · are shaped · be canceled |
| 现在完成时 have/has + 过去分词 — 过去发生但与现在仍有关联的事 | has cracked · have evolved · I've asked |
什么是跟读法？
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。