英语听力：2013-04-12 恐龙之战之极限生存 Extreme Survivors—11

 I mean, these guys were, frankly¹ dumb as a fence post. 

 

Sauroposeidon does almost everything by instinct, including rearing or more accurately² not rearing its children. 

 

It may seem cruel to just dig a hole and leave your eggs and wander on, but it’s a very effective means of reproduction if you can afford to make lots of babies. We know that the sauropods were not taking care of the newly hatched babies. And we don’t find the newly hatched babies with the adults. 

 

Scientists believe sauroposeidon’s gargantuan³ size makes incubating eggs a physical impossibility. 

 

When you’re running, say, 60, 80 feet in length, and your eggs are only about the size of a cantaloupe, the size difference makes it so hard to be gentle. I think sauropods like Sauroposeidon are just too big to  be able to control where their body mass is going to be. You know, they aren’t, they don’t have the brain capacity to understand where their butt⁴ is at the same time as where their head is.

 

With its mammoth⁵ size and limited intellect, sauroposeidon relies on a totally different method than Tyrannosaurs Rex to raise its young. 

 

In its life span, a mated pair of sauroposeidons might produce thousands and thousands of eggs, and only maybe a couple or 3 are going to survive to adulthood⁶. So what that tells us is that almost all of the offspring are being killed and eaten by predators⁷. 

 

Basically you’re flooding all the carnivores with so much food that they can’t eat it all, and so there’s bound to be some survivors⁸. 

 

Sauroposeidon’s approach to its young sounds brutish and cruel. But it isn’t. 

 

Sauroposeidon like sea turtles, for example, seems to have tried to overwhelm the predators with just sheer numbers of offspring. They’re not just all laying their eggs within a few weeks of each other. They’re all trying to lay the eggs on the same night or two. And one of the reasons is so that they can overwhelm the predators. If you have a food resource that’s available in vast numbers, but only for a very limited time, it’s hard for predators to eat all of them.

1 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

2 accurately   

adv.准确地，精确地

参考例句：

• It is hard to hit the ball accurately.准确地击中球很难。
• Now scientists can forecast the weather accurately.现在科学家们能准确地预报天气。

3 gargantuan   

adj.巨大的，庞大的

参考例句：

• My gargantuan,pristine machine was good for writing papers and playing solitaire,and that was all.我那庞大的、早期的计算机只适合写文章和玩纸牌游戏，就这些。
• Right away,I realized this was a mistake of gargantuan proportions.我立刻意识到这是一个巨大的错误。

4 butt   

n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶

参考例句：

• The water butt catches the overflow from this pipe.大水桶盛接管子里流出的东西。
• He was the butt of their jokes.他是他们的笑柄。

5 mammoth   

n.长毛象；adj.长毛象似的，巨大的

参考例句：

• You can only undertake mammoth changes if the finances are there.资金到位的情况下方可进行重大变革。
• Building the new railroad will be a mammoth job.修建那条新铁路将是一项巨大工程。

6 adulthood   

n.成年，成人期

参考例句：

• Some infantile actions survive into adulthood.某些婴儿期的行为一直保持到成年期。
• Few people nowadays are able to maintain friendships into adulthood.如今很少有人能将友谊维持到成年。

7 predators   

n.食肉动物( predator的名词复数 )；奴役他人者（尤指在财务或性关系方面）

参考例句：

• birds and their earthbound predators 鸟和地面上捕食它们的动物
• The eyes of predators are highly sensitive to the slightest movement. 捕食性动物的眼睛能感觉到最细小的动静。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 survivors   

幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The survivors were adrift in a lifeboat for six days. 幸存者在救生艇上漂流了六天。
• survivors clinging to a raft 紧紧抓住救生筏的幸存者