单项选择题
| Part science and part natural history,
ornithology(鸟类学) owes its tremendous popularity as a science and a scientific
recreation to a simple circumstance that is sometimes forgotten when we weigh
the eligibility(有被选资格，合适)of different kinds of animals for informal study. Birds
are day animals where others, just as engaging in their way—mice, for
instance—are creatures of the night. Apart from their visibility (something very
much in their favor), the beauty of birds and their many appealing habits have
won for them a huge fan following that has more than once tempted impatient and
ill-informed laboratory biologists to dismiss ornithology as so much
bird-watching—an absurdly unjust judgment that ignores the fact that ornithology
has made a number of profoundly important contributions to general
biology. Professional biologists are not hard put to reel off(滔滔不绝地讲) a list of distinctive contributions that ornithology has made to general biology science. They will cite, for example, Ernst Mayr’s investigations of evolution and the mechanisms of speciation (物种形成), or M. R. Irwin’s work on the immunologic performance of species of Columbidae(pigeons and doves) and of hybrids(杂交种)between them. Then again, David Lack’s studies on mortality in wild populations of birds are the most illuminating life tables of wild animals and animal demography (统计学) generally. Most important of all, perhaps is the contribution that ornithology has made to the study of animal behavior, beginning with Julian Huxley’ s classic study of the courtship habits of the great crested great and followed by Niko Tinbergen’s studies on the behavior of herring gulls. |