TED | 我与蚊子的爱恨情仇

演讲精彩片段（节选）欣赏

This is our mosquito city. It is the largest mosquito farm available in the world for malaria research. Here we have large-scale self-sustaining colonies of malaria mosquitoes that we rear in these facilities. Of course, they are disease-free. But what these systems allow us to do is to introduce new tools and test them immediately, very quickly, and see if we can crush these populations or control them in some way. And my colleagues have demonstrated that if you just put two or three positions where mosquitoes can go pick up these lethal substances, we can crush these colonies in just three months. That’s auto dissemination, as we call it.

这是我们的蚊子城市。这是全世界最大的蚊子养殖基地用于支持对疟疾的研究。在这个基地里，我们养了一大批自给自足的疟疾蚊子群体。当然，它们是不携带任何疾病的这些系统使我们可以引进新技术并立即投入试验非常快并看看我们是否能消灭蚊子种群或者设法控制它们我的同事也证明了只需在两三个地方投放致命物质让蚊子去采集，我们就可以将蚊群在三个月内消灭干净。我们称它为：自动化播散。

But what if we could use the mosquitoes’ sexual behavior to also control them? So, first of all I would like to tell you that actually mosquitoes mate in what we call swarms. Male mosquitoes usually congregate in clusters around the horizon, usually after sunset. The males go there for a dance, the females fly into that dance and select a male mosquito of their choice, usually the best-looking male in their view.

但是我们是否可以利用蚊子的性行为来控制它们？首先，我想跟你们说的是蚊子其实是聚众交配的，公蚊子通常成群结队的聚集在地表面，太阳落山后公蚊子去那里跳舞母蚊子也过去跳舞，并挑选一个她们看上的公蚊子，——通常是那个看起来最英俊的。

They clump together and fall down onto the floor. If you watch this, it’s beautiful. It’s a fantastic phenomenon. This is where our mosquito-catching work gets really interesting. What we have seen, when we go swarm hunting in the villages, is that these swarm locations tend to be at exactly the same location every day, every week, every month, year in, year out. They start at exactly the same time of the evening, and they are at exactly the same locations.

它们聚集在一起，然后落到地上你要看到这景象，你也会认为很美。这真是一个太棒的现象了这就是我们捕蚊工作的好玩之处当我们到村里的沼泽去捕蚊子的时候会发现，这些沼泽地总是固定不动的每天，每周，每个月年复一年。它们每晚都在相同的时间开始交配，它们也去相同的地点。

What does this tell us? It means that if we can map all these locations across villages, we could actually crush these populations by just a single blow. Kind of, you know,bomb-spray them or nuke them out. And that is what we try to do with young men and women across the villages. We organize these crews, teach them how to identify the swarms, and spray them out. My colleagues and I believe we have a new window to get mosquitoes out of the valley.

这给我们有什么启发呢？这就意味着，如果我们可以在村子里找到这些地点我们就能把这些蚊子一网打尽。就像，用炸弹覆盖或者核武器一样消灭它们那就是我们和青年男女在村子里尝试做的事我们把这帮人组织起来，教他们如何去辨认蚊群并喷洒药物杀死它们。我和我的同事相信我们有新的机会将蚊子赶出村子。

But perhaps the fact that mosquitoes eat blood, human blood, is the reason they are the most dangerous animal on earth.But think about it this way - mosquitoes actually smell you. And they have developed incredible sensory organs. They can smell from as far sometimes as100 meters away. And when they get closer, they can even tell the difference between two family members.

但是事实是，这些蚊子吸血，吸人类的血这就是为什么他们是世上最危险的动物但是，请这样想－蚊子实际上是闻到了你的气味而它们进化出了不可思议的感觉器官它们可以闻到100米开外的气味它们离你很近的时候连一家的两个不同成员都能区分出来。

They know who you are based on what you produce from your breath, skin, sweat and body odor. What we have done at Ifakara is to identify what it is in your skin, your body, your sweat or your breath that these mosquitoes like. Once we identified these substances, we created a concoction, kind of a mixture, a blend of synthetic substances that are reminiscent of what you produce from your body. And we made a synthetic blend that was attracting three to five times more mosquitoes than a human being.

它们通过你呼出的气体，皮肤分泌物，汗液，体味就能知道你是谁。我们在Ifakara做的是去鉴别来自你皮肤，你身体，汗液和呼吸中那些蚊子喜欢的东西。一旦我们找到这种物质，我们就可以做一种混合剂一种合成物质接近人类的体味。我们做了一个合成的混合物它吸引蚊子数量是人类能够吸引的3-5倍。