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This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是克里斯托弗·因塔格里塔。

You know how in the Road Runner cartoons, whenever something drops—like Wile¹ E. Coyote f?alling off a cliff—it makes this sound?

你知道在《BB鸟》动画片中，当有东西掉下来时——比如歪心狼掉下悬崖时——会发出这种声音吗？

(CLIP: Cartoon dropping sound)

（音频剪辑：动画片中的掉落声）

"And obviously, if you hear that sound, you assume that something is falling down rather than going up, and this is something we as humans do automatically."

“很明显，如果你听到这个声音，你会假设有东西在掉落而不是上升，这是我们人类自动意识到的事情。”

Anna Korzeniowska is an animal behavior scientist at the University of Sussex in the U.K. And she wanted to see whether dogs might also associate falling objects with falling sounds.

安娜·科泽尼奥斯卡是英国苏赛克斯大学的动物行为科学家。她想弄清狗是否也会将掉落物体与掉落音效联系起来。

"But obviously, we can't ask them."

“但显然，我们不能直接问它们。”

So instead she recruited 101 canines—not all dalmatians, if you're wondering. And she had the dogs watch a short video sequence, in the lab, of a blue ball rising and falling on the screen. The video was accompanied by either a corresponding rising and falling tone....

因此，她招募了101只狗，如果你好奇的话，这些狗并不全是斑点狗。她让狗狗们在实验室里观看一小段视频序列，内容是屏幕上有个蓝色球在上升和下落。视频中要么搭配与动作对应的上升和下落音效……

(CLIP: Rising and falling sound)

（音频剪辑：升降声）

... or the opposite, more counterintuitive pairing of the ball falling with a tone that was rising.

要么相反，在球掉落时配上升音效的反直觉搭配。

After running these tests, the researchers analyzed³ video of the dogs. They coded each frame using a program called Gamebreaker, which is usually used to analyze² sports footage.

完成这些测试之后，研究人员对狗狗的反应视频进行了分析。他们用Gamebreaker程序对每一帧进行编码，该程序通常用于分析运动镜头。

And the researchers found that while the dogs spent equal amounts of time looking at both video sequences, they spent a larger proportion of that time tracing the movement of the ball with their heads when the direction of the ball and the sound aligned—perhaps suggesting that they were more engaged when sight seemed to match sound. The results are in the journal Biology Letters.

研究人员发现，虽然狗狗观看两个视频序列的时间基本相同，但当球的运动方向与音效一致时，它们的头随球上下运动的时间更多，这或许说明，当视觉与听常见匹配时，它们会更专注。研究结果发表在《生物学通讯》期刊上。

And although we can't truly know what the dogs were thinking—or whether this behavior really means they find corresponding tones and motion more captivating—it might nevertheless be something for us humans to ponder as we play fetch with Fido.

尽管我们不能真正明白狗狗当时在想什么，或者这种行为是否真的表明它们发现音效与动作一致时更具吸引力，但这可能是我们人类与狗狗玩耍时会思考的东西。

Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。