英語聽力文摘 聰明的螞蟻

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Los Ant-geles

洛杉磯人和螞蟻

If you’ve ever driven in LA, you know that people don’t cooperate terribly well. Traffic jams, folks cutting folks off, people shouting at you out their windows . . . it’s a real headache. We’d all do a lot better–at least, we’d all move through congestion a lot faster–if we were ants.

Why ants, you ask? That’s what Ian Couzin of Princeton University wanted to know. You may have seen films of huge numbers of South American Army Ants zooming across the grass on raids and coming back with all sorts of goodies to eat. So why don’t they crash into each other and suffer ant-gridlock the way humans do? One answer: Couzin found is that army ants follow a simple procedure: everybody coming home has the right-of-way.

Even a simple rule like that: if you going out, same-phrase side; if you coming home, don’t same-phrase side; works terrifically. It results in a stream of home-going ants passing unobstructed through the center of a crowd of out-going ants. Among other things, this means raiding parties can go any direction from the anthill, because nobody has to remember some complicated rule about turning left or turning right. Also, the guys bringing home the goodies will always be protected on both sides by out-going ants. Simple!

So, would this work in LA? Probably not. Thousands of human beings just can’t be made to follow a behavioral rule like that. Somebody would try to get a little bit ahead, then somebody else would see that and get angry, and pretty soon, you’re back to LA traffic. For better or worse, people just don’t think like ants.

如果你在洛杉磯開過車，你就會知道那里路上人們配合得不是很好，致使交通阻塞，水泄不通，人們透過車窗口大嚷大叫，真是讓人頭痛!如果我們能效仿螞蟻，那么，至少擁堵的交通移動地可以更快些!

你可能會問：為什么是螞蟻呢?普林斯頓大學(xué)的Ian Couzin也曾經(jīng)疑惑過。你可能曾看過電影里成群結(jié)隊的南美洲軍蟻 “行軍”穿過草叢，而后滿載而歸。那么，為什么他們不會撞上對方，像人類一樣，交通阻塞呢?Couzin 發(fā)現(xiàn)有個原因能解釋：軍蟻行進的方式很簡單，所有螞蟻回家都有“優(yōu)先權(quán)”。

很簡單的守則：出門就走同向邊;回家就走逆向邊，屢試不爽。這樣一來，回家的一群螞蟻會暢通無阻地穿過成群結(jié)隊的出門螞蟻群。這樣，蟻冢中的螞蟻群可以自由行進，因為無須忌諱向左或向右的復(fù)雜規(guī)則。兩側(cè)要出門的螞蟻也會保護背著東西回家的螞蟻群。再簡單不過了!

那么，洛杉磯能借鑒嗎?也許不行，成千上萬的人是不可能遵守螞蟻群的規(guī)則的。有些人想方設(shè)法在更前面，其他人看到了就會生氣，不一會兒，又會回到洛杉磯交通的狀態(tài)。不管怎樣，人們是無法像螞蟻般思考的。

congestion: 阻塞