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As a young scientist, Sharon Swartz studied gibbons.
科学家莎伦·史沃兹年轻时研究长臂猿。
But she was intrigued by the fine skeletal structure of bat wings and by the evolutionary trade-offs necessary for mammals to take flight.
但她对蝙蝠翅膀的精巧骨骼结构感到好奇，也对要让哺乳动物能够飞行所必须发生的演化取舍很感兴趣。
So she took a detour from her primate research and traveled to Australia to study the large bats known as flying foxes.
因此，她从原本的灵长类动物研究改变路线，前往澳洲研究狐蝠这种大型蝙蝠。
She recalled one evening when she visited a suburban golf course where roosting bats filled the trees.
她回忆，有天晚上她前往郊区一座高尔夫球场，树上挂满了栖息中的蝙蝠。
First one, then a few more, then hundreds of the creatures lifted off as the sun set until, she said, there was "a river of bats in the sky."
她说，随着太阳下山，起初是一只，然后是几只，接着几百只蝙蝠起飞，就像“天空中出现一条蝙蝠河”。
The next night Swartz, now a professor of biology and engineering at Brown University, and her colleague trapped bats in nets, and she held one for the first time.
隔天晚上，如今已是布朗大学生物与工程学教授的史沃兹和同事用网捕捉蝙蝠，她第一次把蝙蝠握在手中。
It was a flying fox with a wingspan of several feet. "My heart was racing. It felt like I had never seen anything so beautiful."
那是一只翼展有几英尺长的狐蝠。“我的心跳得很快。我从来没见过这么美的东西。”
The more common reaction is probably an involuntary shudder.
比较常见的反应大概是不由自主的震颤。
Bats have long been associated with darkness and evil in Western culture, and unsettlingly hard to place in folk taxonomy -- not birds but airborne, not rodents but small and furry. And, for some species, disturbing in close-up.
长久以来，西方文化一直将蝙蝠与黑暗和邪恶联想在一起，而一般人也不知道该叫他们什么才好：他不是鸟却会飞，不是啮齿类动物却又小又毛茸茸。而且，有些种类的蝙蝠在特写镜头下令人心里发毛。
The poet Theodore Roethke wrote, "something is amiss or out of place. When mice with wings can wear a human face."
诗人迪奥多·罗赛克写道：“有个东西不太对劲或格格不入。带着翅膀的老鼠还拥有人的脸。”
Some people just find them creepy. Others worry about the diseases they may carry, including those similar to the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
有些人就是觉得蝙蝠很诡异。有些人则担心他们可能会携带疾病，包括类似导致COVID-19大流行的病毒。
To be fair, dogs with rabies kill vastly more humans than bats do, and the flu virus passes through ducks and pigs, but none of these animals elicits the same dread.
平心而论，相较于蝙蝠，罹患狂犬病的狗导致的死亡人数其实要多得多，流感病毒会通过鸭和猪传播，但这些动物都没有引起同样的恐慌。
For true bat appreciation, even evangelism, biologists like Swartz and her colleagues have no competition.
说到真正欣赏蝙蝠，甚至大力宣传蝙蝠有多好，没人比得上像史沃兹及同事这样的生物学家。
Many have the zeal of converts who at some point turned from other mammals to find a wonderland of scientific mysteries, like bats' impossibly acrobatic flight, their remarkable longevity, or their enviable resistance to most cancers.
其中许多人如皈依者般充满热忱，他们在某一时刻决定将研究对象从其他哺乳动物改成蝙蝠，从而踏入了充满科学谜题的奇妙领域，例如蝙蝠不可思议的矫健飞行能力、惊人的长寿，或是对大多数癌症令人羡慕的抵抗力。
Scientists worldwide are probing these secrets. Some hope to turn insights into these animals to human benefit.
世界各地的科学家正在探索这些秘密。有些人希望将关于这些动物的洞见转化成人类可利用的效益。
Others are simply captivated by their breathtaking diversity and evolutionary history.
有些人纯粹是着迷于蝙蝠令人赞叹的多样性和演化史。
They would like you to know, queasy poets notwithstanding, that bats are so much more than flying mice.
尽管诗人觉得蝙蝠很恶心，但这些科学家想让你知道，蝙蝠绝不只是会飞的老鼠。
