Elephants don't forget - at least, female elephants don't.
大象不会忘记——至少母象不会。
Elephant families are matriarchal . And the social knowledge gained by the oldest females is the key to the family group's survival, according to a study published in April by Karen MeComb, a biologist at Sussex University in England.
大象群是母系社会。根据英国苏塞克斯大学生物学家卡伦·梅科姆4月份发表的一项研究，年龄最大的母象获得的社会知识是这个族群生存的关键。
Elephants announce their presence by making a deep, long sound, a practice referred to as contact calling. An unfamiliar call may mean that the elephant from outside the family is nearby. A stranger can cause trouble, interrupting feeding or disturbing the young. So an elephant matriarch signals the family to gather around her: then they all lift their trunks in the air to smell the unfamiliar caller. False alarms can disturb the group and take time and energy away from feeding, so survival may depend in part on getting it right.
大象们通过发出悠长的声音来宣布自己的存在，这种做法被称为联络呼叫。陌生的叫声可能意味着附近有族群外的大象。访客可能会造成麻烦，打断喂食或惊扰小象。因此，雌性头象示意家族将她围住：然后所有人把鼻子举到空中，闻陌生访客的气味。错误的警报会扰乱族群，并占用喂食的时间和精力，因此生存可能在一定程度上取决于是否正确。
Working with Cynthia Moss, who founded the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya 30 years ago, McComb tested the social knowledge of 21 Amboseli elephant families with matriarchs 27 to 67 years old. She played recordings of contact calls to each family and found that the oldest matriarchs were much better at picking out unfamiliar calls. In fact, a group with a matriarch in her fifties was several hundred times more likely to form into a group upon hearing an unfamiliar contact call than when hearing a familiar call. However, families with younger matriarchs were less than twice as likely to gather together upon hearing an unfamiliar contact call as compared with a familiar call. And they gathered together a lot. Moreover, the social knowledge of older matriarchs translated into favorable results: Families with older matriarchs produced more baby elephants in each female reproductive year.
30年前，辛西娅·莫斯在肯尼亚创立了安博塞利大象研究项目。梅科姆与她合作，测试了21个安博塞利大象族群的社会知识，这些族群的头象年龄在27至67岁之间。她播放了每个族群的联系呼叫录音，发现最年长的头象更善于识别不熟悉的呼叫。事实上，一个拥有50多岁头象的族群在听到陌生的呼叫时聚集的可能性是听到熟悉的呼叫时的几百倍。然而，头象年轻的族群在听到陌生的呼叫时聚集在一起的可能性是听到熟悉的呼叫时的不到两倍。此外，头象年长的族群社会知识转化成有利的结果：头象年龄较大的族群在每一个雌性生殖年份都会产生更多的幼象。
This finding shows how difficult it is to protect the oldest members of elephant families. As elephants age, they continue to grow larger, as do their much wanted tusks. So the older-and wiser-a Matriarch is, the greater the chance she will be killed. About 800, 000 elephants have been killed by people in the past 20 years.
这一发现表明保护大象族群中最年长的成员是多么困难。随着大象年龄的增长，它们会持续变大，象牙也是如此。因此，头象年龄越大、越聪明，她被杀的可能性就越大。在过去的20年里，大约有80万头大象被人类杀害。
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