▶ 科学60秒：吸人血的蚊子，也有被吸血的时候 | 1:14
Vampire Spiders Home In on Female Mosquitoes
图片来源：Royal Mayhem, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
根据雌蚊子吸饱血后的腹部或特殊的触角，吸血鬼蜘蛛能准确锁定雌性蚊子目标。
[听力全文]（点击展开/收起）
Vampire spiders, as the name suggests, like blood. And they feast on blood-filled mosquitoes to get it. But only female mosquitoes suck blood. So how do spiders home in on the ladies?
To find out, researchers, well, took apart a bunch of mosquitoes. Then they mixed and matched body parts. They glued female heads onto male abdomens and male heads onto female bodies, some of which had blood-filled bellies. Then they let the spiders loose near these reassembled specimens, and watched to see which ones the spiders stalked.
As the researchers predicted, the spiders paid close attention to the abdomen, pouncing on the Frankensquitos filled with blood. But the spiders also kept an eye—or eight eyes—on the mosquitoes' heads. Males have lush, feathery antennae. The females aren't as showy. So if the spiders couldn't see the belly they went for female-headed skeeters, presumably for the better odds of scoring blood. The research is in the Journal of Experimental Biology. [Ximena J. Nelson and Robert R. Jackson: 'The discerning predator: decision rules underlying prey classification by a mosquito-eating jumping spider']
Previous studies have shown that blood meals give vampire spiders a perfume that's irresistible to the opposite sex. Now that’s what I call blood lust.
—Christopher Intagliata
[重难点词汇、短语]（点击展开/收起）
abdomen: n. 腹部
pounce: v. 猛扑，一下抓住；n. 猛扑
Franken-: 结合自...（某物非自然或怪异的修饰版）
lush: adj. 茂密的；豪华的；性感的；很棒的
skeeter: n. 蚊子
[参考译文]（点击展开/收起）
蛛如其名，吸血鬼蜘蛛（Evarcha culicivora）热衷吸血，腹饱血液的蚊子则是它们的嘉肴美馔。众所周知，只有雌蚊子才会吸血，而这些蜘蛛是如何准确锁定蚊子女士的呢？
为了找到答案，研究人员……肢解了很多蚊子，然后将蚊子尸块拼成了不同的“拼接怪”：把雌蚊子的头用胶粘到雄蚊子腹部上，再把雄蚊子的头接在雌蚊子身体上，有些身体部分充满血液。他们让蜘蛛接近这些经过重组的蚊子标本，观察蜘蛛会盯上哪只。
不出预料，这些蜘蛛非常关注腹部，会扑向充盈着鲜血的“拼接怪”；但同时也双目（确切的说是八目）紧盯蚊子的脑袋。雄蚊的触角有着浓密而蓬松的绒毛，而雌蚊的触角则没有那么浮夸。所以如果没有看到膨胀的腹部，这些蜘蛛会冲向雌蚊子的头部，大概是去等候下次吸血的机会。相关研究发表在《实验生物学》（Journal of Experimental Biology）杂志上。
之前的研究表明，食用血液能够让这种吸血鬼蜘蛛散发出令异性无法抗拒的“香味”，不如将此视为“血欲魅惑”。
翻译 墨月枫