摘要：At the center stood a man adorned in a top hat, leather sash, and a swarm of rats.

On a grey London day in 1851, a captivated crowd gathered around a makeshift stage.

1851 年，伦敦的一个阴天，一群着迷的观众聚集在一个临时舞台周围。

At the center stood a man adorned in a top hat, leather sash, and a swarm of rats.

中心站着一位头戴高顶礼帽、系着皮腰带的男子，周围还有一群老鼠。

This showman, Jack Black, had risen to fame claiming to be Queen Victoria's authorized rat catcher.

这位艺人名叫杰克·布莱克，因自称是维多利亚女王授权的捕鼠人而闻名。

And between tricks, he lectured the crowd on his poisons and unique ability to capture hundreds of vermin with just his bare hands.

在表演魔术的间隙，他还向观众介绍他的毒药和仅用赤手就能捕获数百只害虫的独特本领。

This is just one of many junctures in the long entangled history of human and rat.

这只是人类与鼠类漫长纠葛历史中的众多节点之一。

The two most common species of rat, brown and black, both scurried onto the scene roughly 1 to 3 million years ago in Asia.

最常见的两种老鼠是棕色和黑色，它们都是在大约 100 万至 300 万年前在亚洲出现的。

There, they craftily survived Earth's most recent ice age, and eventually, began living around and with humans.

在那里， 它们巧妙地度过了地球最近的冰河时代，并最终开始与人类一起生活。

Their constant presence even earned them a spot in the Chinese zodiac, where they symbolize new beginnings.

他们的持续存在甚至为他们赢得了中国十二生肖中的一席之地，象征着新的开始。

Brown and black rats are generalists— a biological badge ascribed to species who can brave diverse climates and diets.

棕鼠和黑鼠是通才，这是生物学上的标志，指的是能够勇敢面对多种气候和饮食的物种。

So when trade routes opened between East Asia and the West, rats naturally tagged along.

因此，当东亚与西方之间的贸易路线打通时，老鼠自然也随之而来。

Black rats were the first to venture out, sneaking aboard ships from India to Egypt an estimated 5,000 years ago.

黑鼠是第一批踏上冒险之旅的鼠类，大约在5000年前， 它们偷偷搭乘船只从印度来到埃及。

Some believe that this rodent influx into Egypt fueled their ancient spiritual reverence of cats.

一些人认为，啮齿动物涌入埃及激发了人们对猫的古老精神崇拜。

After all, they were top-of-the-line rat catchers.

毕竟，他们是顶尖的捕鼠者。

Trade between Egypt and the Romans brought black rats to Europe.

埃及和罗马之间的贸易将黑鼠带到了欧洲。

And by 300 CE, these stowaways claimed lands as far as the Anglo-Celtic Isles— earning notoriety along the way.

到了公元 300 年，这些偷渡者占领了远至盎格鲁-凯尔特群岛的土地——并因此声名狼藉。

Beyond pilfering and reproducing like there's no tomorrow, black rats brought bacterial and viral infections, which they spread to humans through their droppings and urine.

黑鼠除了偷窃和疯狂繁殖之外，还带来了细菌和病毒感染，并通过粪便和尿液传播给人类。

In the late 1340s, history's most infamous plague, the Black Death, killed tens of millions of people, or around half of Europe's population.

14 世纪 40 年代末， 历史上最臭名昭著的瘟疫——黑死病，夺走了数千万人的生命，约占欧洲人口的一半。

To this day, many lay the blame on rats.

直到今天，许多人仍将责任归咎于老鼠。

However, the real story is more complicated.

然而，真实的情况要复杂得多。

Black rats don't directly spread the plague to humans; though they can carry the fleas that transmit the bacterium responsible.

黑鼠不会直接将瘟疫传播给人类，尽管它们携带传播细菌的跳蚤。

And brown rats, which hadn't yet set foot in Europe, don't have any blood on their paws.

而尚未踏上欧洲土地的褐家鼠，爪子上没有任何血液。

Back in Japan, these brown rats were receiving a warmer welcome as pet rats grew in popularity.

在日本，随着宠物鼠越来越受欢迎，这些棕鼠也受到了更热烈的欢迎。

250-year-old guidebooks detail tips on rodent domestication, and how to breed the most affectionate rats in various coat colors and patterns.

有 250 年历史的指南详细介绍了驯养啮齿动物的技巧，以及如何培育各种毛色和图案的最可爱的老鼠。

Wild brown rats finally entered Europe sometime between the 13th and 18th century, by ship and perhaps, sometimes, by treading water.

野生棕鼠最终在 13 世纪到 18 世纪之间进入欧洲，通过船只， 有时， 通过踩水。

Some say a particularly violent earthquake in 1727 led hordes of brown rats to swim across the Volga River into Russia.

有人说，1727 年的一场特别强烈的地震导致大量棕鼠游过伏尔加河进入俄罗斯。

Eventually, the larger and more adaptable brown rats displaced the black rats in homes and cities across Europe and North America by outcompeting them for resources.

最终，体型更大、适应性更强的棕鼠通过在资源竞争中胜出，取代了黑鼠，出现在欧洲和北美的家庭和城市中。

The Industrial Revolution only bolstered the lives of industrious brown rats.

工业革命只会增强勤劳棕鼠的生活。

As cities expanded, rats thrived by making homes of our sewers and buffets of our trash.

随着城市的扩张，老鼠以我们的下水道和垃圾为食，从而迅速繁衍生息。

They even evolved resistance to our poisons, to the dismay of exterminators who inherited Jack Black's mission.

它们甚至进化出了对我们毒药的抵抗力，这让继承了杰克·布莱克使命的灭虫者们感到沮丧。

But the human-rat race took a monumental turn in 1906, when the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia bred the first standard rat strain for scientific research.

然而， 人鼠竞赛在 1906 年发生了重大转折，当时费城的威斯塔研究所培育出了第一种用于科学研究的标准大鼠品系。

Rats are unrivaled lab animals.

老鼠是无与伦比的实验动物。

Their bodies function and respond to disease similarly to humans, and we share much of the same genome.

它们的身体机能和对疾病的反应与人类相似，而且我们拥有许多相同的基因组。

Plus, they're smart, which has made them indispensable to neuroscience and psychology research.

此外，它们非常聪明，这使得它们对于神经科学和心理学研究来说不可或缺。

In the 1960s, for example, scientists observed that rats raised with toys and companions had thicker cortical brain tissue than those who didn't.

例如，在 20 世纪 60 年代，科学家观察到，在玩具和同伴的陪伴下长大的老鼠，其大脑皮层组织比没有玩具和同伴的老鼠更厚。

This helped establish the concept of neuroplasticity, which explains how our environments and learning shape our minds.

这有助于建立神经可塑性的概念，它解释了我们的环境和学习如何塑造我们的思想。

Today, rats are often regarded as the most successful invasive species in the world.

如今，老鼠常常被认为是世界上最成功的入侵物种。

And this comes at a price— they often live at the mercy of human priorities.

但这是有代价的——他们常常生活在人类优先顺序的摆布之下。

In cities like New York, they're reviled enough to warrant multi-million-dollar extermination efforts.

在纽约这样的城市，它们受到的憎恶足以导致政府耗费数百万美元来消灭它们。

But if history is any indication, no amount of money, nor skill of rat catcher, will ever fully rid us of our rodent shadows.

但如果以历史经验来看， 无论多少钱，或是捕鼠技术有多高， 都无法彻底摆脱老鼠的困扰。

来源：英语东