Pigs recorded using tools for the first time
2015年10月的一天，生态学家梅瑞迪斯·伯恩斯坦正在巴黎的一家动物园里观察一个稀有猪种家庭，突然，一幕景象抓住了她的眼球。
On an October day in 2015, ecologist Meredith Root-Bernstein was watching a family of rare pigs at a Parisian zoo when something caught her eye.
其中一只米沙鄢疣猪——菲律宾本地猪种，属于极度濒危物种，用它的嘴叼起了一片树皮，然后在地里刨坑。
One of the Visayan warty pigs—a critically endangered species native to the Philippines—picked up a piece of bark in its mouth and started digging with it, pushing the soil around.
“我说，哇，这也太酷了吧。” 巴黎人类博物馆访问学者兼国家地理探险家伯恩斯坦说：“当我着手搜索关于猪使用工具的资料的时候，我发现没有任何相关的记载。”
“I said, Whoa, that’s pretty cool,” says Root-Bernstein, a visiting researcher at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris and a National Geographic Explorer. “When I looked up tool use in pigs, there was nothing.”
出于兴趣，接下来的几个月里伯恩斯坦频繁出入于巴黎植物园里的野生动物区，反复观察猪使用工具的行为，却没有任何新的进展。
Intrigued, the scientist returned to the menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes frequently over the following months to try to observe the behavior again, to no avail.
to little/no avail：几乎或根本毫无作用； The doctors tried everything to keep him alive but to no avail. 医生千方百计想使他活下来，但无济于事。
她猜想猪这样做是和搭建窝穴有关，通常，米沙鄢猪每隔六个月就要迎接新的小猪的诞生。
She hypothesized that what she’d seen was related to nest-building, which Visayans generally do every six months to prepare for the arrival of piglets.
充分肯定了这点后，她的一名同事在下一个春天来到了疣猪猪圈，并记录到了四只猪中有三只在使用工具搭建它们的窝穴，一个土坑里堆满了树叶。
Sure enough, the next spring, a colleague returned to the warty pig enclosure and recorded three of the four animals using tools to complete their nest, an earthen pit filled with leaves.
尽管许多野生物种都会使用工具，从大猩猩到乌鸦，再到海豚，但从没有关于猪使用工具的报道，包括17种野生猪种和家养猪。
Though many wild species use tools, from chimpanzees to crows to dolphins, no one has reported the phenomenon in any pig, including the17 wild pig species and domestic swine.
swine: (单复数同形）， a herd of swine 一群猪 ； swine fever 猪瘟
这出乎伯恩斯坦的意料，尤其是考虑到猪科动物广为人知的智力。
This surprised Root-Bernstein, especially considering the Suidae family’s well-known intelligence.
但是由于关于野猪的研究很少，在大多数情况下，野猪要么是濒危，要么极度濒危，因此，也难怪人们没有注意到野猪这样的创造力。
But because wild pigs are so little studied and, in most cases, either endangered or critically endangered, it may not be so unusual that such innovation has escaped human eyes。
她说，研究动物对于工具的使用是一件特别有趣的事，因为这种特性是和人类共通的，同时也强调了万物起源于一的进化史。
She says tool use is particularly fascinating to study because it’s a trait shared with humans, as well as one that may highlight a common evolutionary history.
“这让我们对动物的理解更深了一步，”她说：“也帮助我们认识到万物都是有联系的。”
“It brings us closer to animals,” she says, “and helps us realize it’s all connected.”
该研究团队注意到，猪群中尤其是猪妈妈普里西拉，在搭窝的过程中，她总是会使用工具。
The team noticed the animals—particularly the mama pig, Priscilla—would always use tools in the middle of the nest-building process.
科学家们猜测普里西拉自个儿先学会了使用工具，然后把方法教给了她的配偶和后代。
The scientists suspect that Priscilla may have learned how to use the tool herself, and passed on that knowledge to her mate and offspring.
