This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Julia Rosen.("Bye, Buddy. I hope you find your dad.")("Thanks, Mr. Narwhal.")In real life, narwhals don't speak English, like the one bidding farewell to Will Ferrell's character in the movie Elf.Instead, they sound more like this:That's an audio clip recorded by scientists last summer under the icy waters of Northwest Greenland."If we want to describe what animals are doing, we first better understand what sounds are telling us."Evgeny Podolskiy, a geophysicist at Hokkaido University in Japan.Podolskiy and his colleagues study the soundscape of glacial fjords.They are noisy places, where icebergs crash into the ocean and air bubbles fizz out of melting ice. These fjords are also home to narwhals.The animals are sometimes called unicorns of the sea because of their single, long spiraled tusk.And they are shy, which makes them hard to study.So Podolskiy teamed up with local Inuit hunters, who snuck up on narwhals in kayaks and captured audio.That's the sound of a narwhal looking for food using echolocation, like a dolphin or a bat.And that's a narwhal closing in on its prey, which it vacuums up into its toothless mouth."It starts sounding like, to my ear, like a chainsaw or something: crrk, crrk, crrk, crrk.
这里是科学美国人――60秒科学系列，我是朱莉娅・罗森。（“再见，巴迪。希望你能找到父亲。”）（“谢谢，独角鲸先生。”）这是电影《圣诞精灵》中的独角鲸在向威尔・法瑞尔扮演的角色告别，而在现实生活中，独角鲸并不会说英语。它们的声音更像是这样：这是去年夏天科学家在格陵兰西北冰海域下录制的音频片段。“如果我们想描述动物在做什么，首先要更好地理解它们的声音在告诉我们什么。”日本北海道大学的地球物理学家埃夫根尼・波多尔斯基说到。波多尔斯基和同事研究了冰川峡湾的声景。这些地方很嘈杂，有冰山撞进海洋的声音，也有气泡从融冰中嘶嘶冒出的声音。这些峡湾也是独角鲸的家园。因其螺旋状单只长牙，这种动物有时也被称为“海洋独角兽”。独角鲸很害羞，这令人们很难研究它们。因此，波多尔斯基与当地因纽特猎人合作，乘坐皮艇偷偷接近独角鲸并捕捉声音。这是独角鲸像海豹或蝙蝠那样利用回声定位觅食时的声音。这是一只独角鲸正在接近猎物，它将猎物吸入其没有牙齿的嘴巴。“在我听来，开始时像是电锯之类的声音：咔嚓、咔嚓、咔嚓、咔嚓。
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