科学美国人60秒 SSS 巨骨舌鱼为防弹衣提供了灵感（在线收听）

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。

Deep in the Amazon lives one of the world's largest freshwater fish: the legendary Arapaima. It tips the scales at hundreds of pounds, making it a coveted catch for extreme anglers, like Jeremy Wade from the show River Monsters.

亚马逊河深处生活着世界上最大的淡水鱼之一：传说中的巨骨舌鱼。它重达数百磅，因此成为了电视节目《河中巨怪》里令杰里米·韦德等极限垂钓者梦寐以求的猎物。

(CLIP: River Monsters audio)

（音频片段：《河中巨怪》音频）

After a dramatically scored struggle, he catches one. It takes two guys to hold it up!

经过激烈斗争，韦德抓住了一只巨骨舌鱼。两个人才能把它抬起来！

(CLIP: "There it is. Look at that for a fish! Look at that massive female Arapaima; about 150 pounds.")

（音频片段：这就是巨骨舌鱼。快看这条鱼有多大！这只巨大的雌性巨骨舌鱼大概有150磅重。）

Speaking of scales, this giant fish has another superlative quality: "It has these very impressive armored scales on its body, which prevent penetration by predators teeth yet still makes the fish quite flexible and nimble in the water."

说到鱼鳞，这种巨型鱼还有一个卓越的特质：“它身上有防御性极强的鱼鳞，既可以防止被捕食者的牙齿咬穿，又能确保其在水中灵活敏捷地畅游。”

Robert Ritchie, a materials scientist at U.C. Berkeley. The predators he's talking about are piranhas. But the mighty Arapaima has them beat with its scales—one of the "toughest flexible biological materials," according to Ritchie's team.

加州大学伯克利分校的材料科学家罗伯特·里奇说到。他所说的捕食者是水虎鱼。但强大的巨骨舌鱼用鱼鳞击败了水虎鱼，据里奇团队介绍，巨骨舌鱼的鱼鳞是“最坚硬且最柔韧的生物材料”之一。

After subjecting the scales to stress tests and electron microscopy in the lab, they figured out the scales' secrets. For one, they have a hard, mineralized layer on the outside.

在实验室对巨骨舌鱼的鳞片进行压力测试和电子显微镜检查后，他们发现了鳞片的秘密。首先，鳞片表面有非常坚硬的矿化层。

"You need the hard layer at the surface to prevent the thing from penetrating. But if the whole scale was made of this hard layer, it would just shatter, like if you tried to penetrate a piece of glass."

“表层要非常坚硬才能防止被穿透。但如果整个鳞片都由这种硬层构成，那在被刺后就会像玻璃一样破碎。”

And so the scale then has a layer of softer but tougher collagen on the inside—more resistant to cracking in a piranha's bite. Materials scientists have already figured out this trick—to build materials with a hard layer on the outside and a tough layer on the inside. But the secret of the Arapaima scales is how exquisitely they transition from the hard to the tough.

因此，鱼鳞内部有一层更柔软也更坚韧的胶原蛋白，能更好地抵抗水虎鱼的撕咬。材料科学家已经发现了这种诀窍，能做出外层坚硬内层坚韧的材料。但巨骨舌鱼鳞片的秘密在于它们如何精巧地从坚硬向坚韧过渡。

"We would love to do that in synthetic materials; it's just very hard to make materials like that. Maybe 3-D printing in the future can do this. But nature does this rather cleverly because it builds materials from the bottom up, from the atoms and molecules up to the macro scale."

“我们想把合成材料做成这样，但现在很难制造出这样的材料。也许未来的3D打印技术可以做到。大自然非常聪明地做到了这一点，因为其从原子结构到分子结构，再到宏观维度，自下而上地制造材料。”

Photos and details are in the journal Matter.

研究相关的照片和细节发表在《物质》期刊上。

So who cares about a fish's scales? Well, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research does—they funded the study—because Kevlar and other body armors are incredibly heavy. And this piranha-proof fish could be the key to a lighter load.

那谁会在乎鱼鳞呢？美国空军科学研究办公室就很关心，他们资助了这项研究，因为凯夫拉尔防弹衣和其他盔甲都非常重。而这种不怕水虎鱼撕咬的巨骨舌鱼可能是减轻负重的关键。

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。