Ashleigh Papp: This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I'm Ashleigh Papp.
这里是《科学美国人》的 60 秒科学，我是阿什利·帕普。
You might say that Guillermo Ponz is a scientific monster hunter–even though he thinks that term, “monster” never really captured his subjects right.
你可能会说吉列尔莫·庞斯(Guillermo Ponz)是科学界的怪物猎人，即使他本人认为“怪物”这个词并没有真正抓住他的研究主题。
Guillermo Ponz: So they're regular animals that have gone through different developmental processes that would end up building a body, that is not what you expect.
它们都是普通动物，只不过经历了不同寻常的发育阶段，最终长出了你预期之外的身体结构。
Papp: What this researcher based in Madrid, Spain, actually loves, is the oddly amazing animals. After all, he studies two-headed worms.
令这位西班牙马德里的研究人员着迷不已的，是一群诡异而奇妙的动物，毕竟他的研究对象是两头虫。
Ponz: We have these worms that are usually regular worms like with one head and one tail, that's normal, but sometimes they may have two heads or two tails. And on the other side, there are worms, which have one head and many tails always.
有些蠕虫通常状态下就是普通蠕虫，一头一尾，非常正常，但有时候它们可能有两个脑袋或者两条尾巴。另一方面，还有一些蠕虫长着一个脑袋加上许多条尾巴。
Papp: Officially, he looks at bifurcated annelids, meaning things like earthworms that have come out of their larval stage with two heads, or spontaneously sprouted two tails, or ... some other combination of mixed up appendages.
从专业角度来说，他研究的是分支环节动物，意思就是像蚯蚓这样的蠕虫经历幼虫阶段之后长出两个脑袋，或者自发长出两条尾巴，又或者其他一些附肢混合组合到一起。
We know that certain species, like some salamanders and insects, have the ability to regrow appendages in a time of need. But there's this one phylum of worms, the annelids, that can re-grow unlike anything else that we've ever seen in the kingdom.
我们知道某些物种，例如一些蝾螈和昆虫，可以在有需要时重新长出附肢，但还有一类环节动物的蠕虫，它们重新长出的是我们在动物王国中见所未见的。
Their segmented bodies, like an earthworm with rows of ringed compartments, help them easily regrow a new head or tail at the first sign of trouble.
它们的身体分成多个节段，例如蚯蚓的身体呈环节状，这能帮它们在遇到麻烦的第一时刻重新长出脑袋或者尾巴。
Or even crazier, they can regrow an entirely new right side of their body if sliced in half.
还有更疯狂的情况，如果把它们对半切开，它们还能重新长出全新的右半身。
Ponz: … worms that do these crazy things that are very weird, very, you know, very, very strange things that these worms should not, quote-unquote, should not do.
能做出这些疯狂行为的蠕虫非常奇怪，这是蠕虫‘不应该’做到的事情。
Papp: Once Ponz started studying the anatomically death-defying lengths to which these worms would go to grow and survive, he was totally pulled in.
一旦庞斯开始研究解剖结构上决定这些蠕虫生长存活的死亡限定长度，他就完全被吸引了。
And he realized that he and his team weren’t the first to be fascinated. Ponz found that there was a golden age of research on “monster creatures” during the 18th and 19th centuries.
他意识到自己的团队并不是第一个着迷于此的团队。庞斯发现，在18～19世纪，有一个研究“怪物生物”的黄金时代。
Ponz: ... 100 plus year old literature would refer to the sentiments of monsters, creatures, or monsters, or oddities or, you know, they're, they're all these these variations that describe them. And in the end, these these animals are not not monsters.
100多年前的文献作品提及虫子的观点，会变换着各种名字称呼它们，什么怪物、生物、或者怪虫等等。最后，这些动物并不是什么怪物。
Papp: A fixation with the “reanimated Monster” makes sense, especially back then. Author Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, was published in 1818, and it only further intensified interest–and some of that interest translated into actual research.
执着于“复活的怪物”有一定道理，特别是在那个年代。作家玛丽·雪莱(Mary Shelley)的小说《弗兰肯斯坦》(Frankenstein)发表于1818年，这部作品激发了人们深入研究这类动物的强烈兴趣，其中一些更是将兴趣转化为实际研究。
Ponz and a team of international researchers conducted a wide-sweeping review of the existing knowledge about monster worms. They dove into 275 years' worth of research — combing through scientists' observational journals, reading historical texts, and even reaching out to the broader scientific community to see if anyone knew anything about records of abnormal worms.
庞斯和一支国际研究团队展开了关于怪物蠕虫现有认识的大范围综述研究，他们深入275年间的研究，梳理了科学家的观察日志、历史文献，甚至广泛联系科学界看看有没有人知道关于怪蠕虫的记录。
They wanted to understand all of the different types and patterns of bifurcation and see if there were any clues about how the oddities developed.
他们想要了解分支演化的不同类型和模式，看看是否有任何线索能解开这些怪虫子的发育过程。
Their search landed them in a jackpot of both history and science.
他们的搜寻获得了历史和科学的双重奖励。
They came across documents and drawings of bifurcated worms from around the world — in Latin, French and German, all the way to Russian, Japanese, and even Indonesian. All in all, they spent over a year working through the archives, translating old texts, and following the trail of monster worm clues.
他们找到了世界各地分支蠕虫的文字记录和图画，包括拉丁文、法语、德语，一直到俄语、日语，甚至印尼语。总而言之，他们用了一年的时间钻研档案，翻译古老文本，追踪着怪物蠕虫的线索。
What they learned is that bifurcation in worms has been observed in over 60 species of worms across the annelid family tree, and in some species, up to 20% of the juveniles ended up with some form of bifurcation. This work was recently published in the journal Biological Reviews. [Guillermo Ponz-Segrelles et al., Monsters reveal patterns: bifurcated annelids and their implications for the study of development and evolution]
他们了解到，蠕虫的分支现象出现在了环节动物家族树的60多种蠕虫物种中，其中高达20%的幼虫最终表现出了某种形式的分支。该研究结果发表在《生物综述》(Biological Reviews)期刊上。
Ponz: And that means, for example, in the in the case of bifurcation, that when an animal is cut, and is regenerating, for example, the tail, there needs to be some mechanism that specifies where this tail is going to be, how it's going to be oriented, what is posterior, what is anterior, what is left, what is right, what is dorsal, what is ventral. And these mechanisms can be disturbed. And these might lead to different anatomies.
Ponz：这意味着，以分支现象为例，即说明当我们把动物切开，它们会重新长出身体部分，例如尾巴，因此需要某些机制来指引确定尾巴在哪里长，往哪个方向长，哪边算尾部，哪边算头部，哪边算左哪边算右，背侧和腹侧又在哪里。这些机制可能会受到干扰，可能导致不同解剖结构的出现。
And that gives us clues about what is important during this process. Of course, these are the baby steps. So we are just pointing towards this process, this phenomenon, we are saying, Okay, hello, this happens, there are these animals that are doing these weird things. We should not forget about them, let's look into them.
这给了我们关于这一过程中重点内容的线索。当然，这些都属于刚起步阶段。所以，我们只是朝这个过程、这一现象前进，就是说，好，发生了这样的情况，有这样的动物会做这样奇怪的事情。我们不应该忘了它们的存在，让我们好好瞧瞧。
Papp: They also realized that there's a strong correlation between the type of bifurcation and the internal organ development. Meaning, the way that the worms were split reliably indicated if extra sets of organs were present.
他们还发现分支类型和内脏器官发育之间存在强烈的相关性，也就说，如果存在额外的器官，就能有效地预见蠕虫分裂的方式。
With this type of intel, Ponz and his team were able to essentially draw up a blueprint, or how-to guide, for reliably and repeatedly creating bifurcated worms ... which is potentially a very useful resource for scientists interested in studying the mechanisms of development.
拥有了这一类型的情报后，庞斯团队基本上能够绘制出一份蓝图，或者操作指南，以便可靠地重复创造分支蠕虫……为有兴趣研究发育机制的科学家提供非常有用的资源。
This long-forgotten study of worm developmental anomalies seems poised for a comeback. According to Ponz, this information could extend far beyond the annelid and even insect worlds to help us better understand how things like growth and development actually happen ... in both the normal and the monster ways.
这项长期被遗忘的蠕虫发育异常研究似乎即将卷土重来。根据庞斯的说法，这些信息可扩展至环节动物甚至昆虫世界之外的领域，帮助我们深入理解生长和发育如何以正常或“凶猛”的方式进行。
Ponz: In a sense, we are now following this trend that they started then, studying these animals to try to understand bigger pictures in nature. Usually development leads to a certain way to assert them to a certain point. So you have a development that ends up in anatomy that's more or less conserved. But sometimes it doesn't. And that can teach us something about development processes. And that's interesting.
从某种意义上说，我们现在正追随前人的脚步研究这些动物，尝试理解自然界中更大的图景。发育通常将导致某一特定方式的出现，以表达一个特定点。所以，从解剖结构方面来看，发育最终或多或少有点儿保守，但有时候又并非如此。这能教会我们关于发育过程的新知识，这点就很有趣。
Papp: For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I’m Ashleigh Papp.
以上是《科学美国人》的 60 秒科学，阿什利·帕普报道。
Ashleigh Papp: This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I'm Ashleigh Papp.
You might say that Guillermo Ponz is a scientific monster hunter–even though he thinks that term, “monster” never really captured his subjects right.
Guillermo Ponz: So they're regular animals that have gone through different developmental processes that would end up building a body, that is not what you expect.
Papp: What this researcher based in Madrid, Spain, actually loves, is the oddly amazing animals. After all, he studies two-headed worms.
Ponz: We have these worms that are usually regular worms like with one head and one tail, that's normal, but sometimes they may have two heads or two tails. And on the other side, there are worms, which have one head and many tails always.
Papp: Officially, he looks at bifurcated annelids, meaning things like earthworms that have come out of their larval stage with two heads, or spontaneously sprouted two tails, or ... some other combination of mixed up appendages.
We know that certain species, like some salamanders and insects, have the ability to regrow appendages in a time of need. But there's this one phylum of worms, the annelids, that can re-grow unlike anything else that we've ever seen in the kingdom.
Their segmented bodies, like an earthworm with rows of ringed compartments, help them easily regrow a new head or tail at the first sign of trouble.
Or even crazier, they can regrow an entirely new right side of their body if sliced in half.
Ponz: … worms that do these crazy things that are very weird, very, you know, very, very strange things that these worms should not, quote-unquote, should not do.
Papp: Once Ponz started studying the anatomically death-defying lengths to which these worms would go to grow and survive, he was totally pulled in.
And he realized that he and his team weren’t the first to be fascinated. Ponz found that there was a golden age of research on “monster creatures” during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Ponz: ... 100 plus year old literature would refer to the sentiments of monsters, creatures, or monsters, or oddities or, you know, they're, they're all these these variations that describe them. And in the end, these these animals are not not monsters.
Papp: A fixation with the “reanimated Monster” makes sense, especially back then. Author Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, was published in 1818, and it only further intensified interest–and some of that interest translated into actual research.
Ponz and a team of international researchers conducted a wide-sweeping review of the existing knowledge about monster worms. They dove into 275 years' worth of research — combing through scientists' observational journals, reading historical texts, and even reaching out to the broader scientific community to see if anyone knew anything about records of abnormal worms.
They wanted to understand all of the different types and patterns of bifurcation and see if there were any clues about how the oddities developed.
Their search landed them in a jackpot of both history and science.
They came across documents and drawings of bifurcated worms from around the world — in Latin, French and German, all the way to Russian, Japanese, and even Indonesian. All in all, they spent over a year working through the archives, translating old texts, and following the trail of monster worm clues.
What they learned is that bifurcation in worms has been observed in over 60 species of worms across the annelid family tree, and in some species, up to 20% of the juveniles ended up with some form of bifurcation. This work was recently published in the journal Biological Reviews. [Guillermo Ponz-Segrelles et al., Monsters reveal patterns: bifurcated annelids and their implications for the study of development and evolution]
Ponz: And that means, for example, in the in the case of bifurcation, that when an animal is cut, and is regenerating, for example, the tail, there needs to be some mechanism that specifies where this tail is going to be, how it's going to be oriented, what is posterior, what is anterior, what is left, what is right, what is dorsal, what is ventral. And these mechanisms can be disturbed. And these might lead to different anatomies.
And that gives us clues about what is important during this process. Of course, these are the baby steps. So we are just pointing towards this process, this phenomenon, we are saying, Okay, hello, this happens, there are these animals that are doing these weird things. We should not forget about them, let's look into them.
Papp: They also realized that there's a strong correlation between the type of bifurcation and the internal organ development. Meaning, the way that the worms were split reliably indicated if extra sets of organs were present.
With this type of intel, Ponz and his team were able to essentially draw up a blueprint, or how-to guide, for reliably and repeatedly creating bifurcated worms ... which is potentially a very useful resource for scientists interested in studying the mechanisms of development.
This long-forgotten study of worm developmental anomalies seems poised for a comeback. According to Ponz, this information could extend far beyond the annelid and even insect worlds to help us better understand how things like growth and development actually happen ... in both the normal and the monster ways.
Ponz: In a sense, we are now following this trend that they started then, studying these animals to try to understand bigger pictures in nature. Usually development leads to a certain way to assert them to a certain point. So you have a development that ends up in anatomy that's more or less conserved. But sometimes it doesn't. And that can teach us something about development processes. And that's interesting.
Papp: For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I’m Ashleigh Papp.
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