The animal kingdom is full of species that use sound—growls and bellows and roars—to signal size. Dogs do it. Red deer do it. Koalas do it.

　　动物王国里，有许多物种都用声音咆哮来显示威力大小。狗是这样，马鹿是这样，考拉也是这样的。

　　But now we can add humans to that list. Because a new study suggests we can size up other people by the sound of their roaralone.

　　现在，人类也可被加入这个列表。因为一项新的研究表明，我们可以仅通过人们的吼声来判断它们的大小。

　　First, researchers took the circumference of 61 men’s and women’s biceps, measured their grip strength, and their height. Then they told ’em to let loose a roar.

　　首先，研究人员测量了61名男性和女性二头肌的周长，测量了他们的握力和身高。然后让他们发出一声吼叫。

　　"I would probably describe it as the most hellish version of Groundhog Day you can think of." Jordan Raine, a behavioral ethologist at the University of Sussex. "If you just imagine 30 actors in training coming into a small room one after another and roaring at you, um, yeah it was an experience, that’s for sure."

　　“我可能会把它描述成你能想到的最令人崩溃的土拨鼠日。”Jordan Raine是苏塞克斯大学的行为学家。“如果你想象一下30个人在训练中一个接一个地走进一个小房间，对你咆哮，嗯，是的，这真是一次难忘的经历，这是肯定的。”

　　His team then played those roars back to a separate group of male and female listeners, who’d also been measured for strength and size. They found that men correctly rated other men as substantially stronger than them 90 percent of the time, based on roar alone.

　　然后，他的团队对另一组分开的男性和女性听众播放了这些咆哮声，这些听众也被测量了力量和大小。他们发现，仅根据咆哮声，男性在90%的时间里对其他男性是否比自己强壮作出了正确的评价。

　　Men did tend to underestimate women’s strength by the sound of their roars, and women overestimated men’s strength. But, in general, roaring like a wild animal seemed like a pretty accurate way to telegraph body size and strength.

　　男性确实倾向于通过咆哮声低估女性的力量，而女性则高估了男性的力量。但是，总的来说，像野兽一样咆哮似乎是一种预估体型的大小和力量的一种非常精确的方式。

　　The researchers also found that regular shouting did not seem to have the same effect as a roar. "So what the roaring is actually doing is having this exaggerating effect on strength, which is very similar to the adaptations that non-human mammals possess that allow them to exaggerate their strength as well." The full results—and more roars—are in the journal iScience.

　　研究人员还发现，有规律的喊叫似乎没有咆哮的效果。“咆哮者实际上是在夸大自己的力量，这和非人类哺乳动物的适应能力非常相似，它们也可以夸大自己的力量。”完整的结果——以及更多种的咆哮——发表在《iScience》杂志上。

　　The finding could have practical, real-world applications too. For example, soldiers have roared in battle throughout history to attempt to intimidate the enemy. "And the U.S. National Park Service actually recommends roaring as a defense strategy against bears."Just hope that the bears’ hearing is better than their eyesight.

　　这一发现也可以在现实世界中得到应用。例如，在历史上，士兵们在战斗中咆哮，试图恐吓敌人。“事实上，美国国家公园管理局建议称，咆哮是对抗熊的一种防御策略。”希望熊的听力比视力要好。