已下载音频资料，多谢了！.

下载了，多谢！
就是担心没时间看。.

7－zip也可.

引用:

原帖由 生姜水 于 2008-11-13 20:40 发表
蚂蚁那段，

蚁后折断公蚁的翅膀，儿子说，不对，这个their,指的是蚁后自己，我google了下，还真是的：

“在每年春季蚁群苏醒之时，孵出具有生殖能力的蚂蚁。在35—45天之后变成长翅膀的雄蚁和雌蚁。婚飞之后， ...

---认同这个说法，即their, them都是指queens,而不是指句号前的males.
   记得动物世界中的蚁后都是白白胖胖而无翅的。.

When conditions are hot and humid after rain and wind is minimal, masses of winged ants or "flying ants" will leave their parent nest and take flight . The mating flights occur simultaneously in all ant nests of the particular species. The female "queen" ants will fly a long distance, during which they will mate with at least one winged male from another nest. He transfers sperm to the seminal receptacle of the queen and then dies. Once mated, the "queen" will attempt to find a suitable area to start a colony and, once found, detach her wings.

-----Wikepedia.

Most ant species have a system in which only the queen and breeding females have the ability to mate. Contrary to popular belief, some ant nests have multiple queens while others can exist without queens. Workers with the ability to reproduce are called "gamergates" and colonies that lack queens are then called gamergate colonies; colonies with queens are said to be queen-right.The winged male ants, called drones, emerge from pupae along with the breeding females (although some species, like army ants, have wingless queens), and do nothing in life except eat and mate. During the short breeding period, the reproductives, excluding the colony queen, are carried outside where other colonies of similar species are doing the same. Then, all the winged breeding ants take flight. Mating occurs in flight and the males die shortly afterwards. Females of some species mate with multiple males. Mated females then seek a suitable place to begin a colony. There, they break off their wings and begin to lay and care for eggs. The females store the sperm they obtain during their nuptial flight to selectively fertilise future eggs. The first workers to hatch are weak and smaller than later workers, but they begin to serve the colony immediately. They enlarge the nest, forage for food and care for the other eggs. This is how new colonies start in most species. Species that have multiple queens may have a queen leaving the nest along with some workers to found a colony at a new site.[47]

Ant colonies can be long-lived. The queens can live for up to 30 years, and workers live from 1 to 3 years. Males, however, are more transitory, and survive only a few weeks.[48] Ant queens are estimated to live 100 times longer than solitary insects of a similar size.[49]

Ants survive the winter in a state of dormancy or inactivity. The forms of inactivity are varied and some temperate species have larvae going into the inactive state (diapause), while in others, the adults alone pass the winter in a state of reduced activity. Ants are active all year long in the tropics.[50]
----好象应该翻译成：queens 脱掉她们（自已的）翅膀并吃掉他们（自己的翅膀）在回nest之前，.

个人认为：their和them离males太远，如果指代他们，易倒致语意不清，就近指代queens更合情理.

queen回原先的蚁群产卵是不对的，mate之后，queen就得重建一个家园。queen 一生也就如此浪漫一次，然后将sperm储存在体内供一世之用。.

引用:

原帖由 嘟嘟虎妈 于 2008-11-14 10:58 发表
首先谢谢你提供了这么多关于蚂蚁的英文资料，但是你的意见中＂queen回原先的蚁群产卵是不对的，mate之后，queen就得重建一个家园＂这点我不同意.
原因1.存在新蚁后重新找一个新地方产卵的情况,但找不到不许她回老巢 ...

----从发下来的课本原文看是“the nest",这点没有疑问。.

对不起，上面的文章出处是：Wikipedia,我也不知是否权威，但不影响教材的翻译，算是一种说法吧。另寻到下一段，有兴趣的家长不妨一观，
Most ant colonies begin when one newly mated queen digs a single-chambered nest, seals herself in, and rears a first brood of workers. Queen ants need be fertilized only once: They store a lifetime supply of sperm in a sac, and in mature colonies, if the ambient temperature is warm enough—72 degrees Fahrenheit—some queens can lay 1,000 eggs a day for many years. The brood hatches in a week and, feeding on reserves in the queen’s body, grows to maturity in a month. Then the workers begin foraging—in the case of Florida harvester ants, for insects and seeds—to feed the next brood of eggs. And so the colony expands. Workers live about a year, but a colony can survive 10 or 20 years, until the queen dies. The colonies of most ant species, including the harvester, are social, cooperative, seamless organisms, differing from what we think of as an individual organism only in that “they’re not stuck together,” as Tschinkel puts it. The colony is a kind of creature—a superorganism.
------DISCOVER.