Listening to the sounds panda pairs make when they're introduced could lead to better breeding success.

倾听大熊猫的叫声能让大熊猫配种的成功率更高。

撰文播音：克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔（Christopher Intagliata）

翻译：陈美娟

校对：张艺箫

If you're a giant panda, this sound

假如你是大熊猫，这个声音<大熊猫叫声>是浪漫的意思。

"I wouldn't call it a romantic serenade " Megan Owen, a conservation biologist at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research. "There's nothing soft or demure about it." 

“我不觉得这是浪漫的小夜曲<笑>。”来自圣地亚哥动物园研究保护组织的保护生物学家梅甘·欧文（Megan Owen）说：“这声音并不温柔端庄。”

And yet: that sound, called a bleat, "that's B-L-E-A-T, just like a goat" signals that a panda couple has hit it off, and copulation is nigh. 

这声音叫“bleat”，听起来像山羊的叫声。听到这种声音就说明有大熊猫夫妇在附近交配。

Owen and her colleagues analyzed more than 2,500 panda sounds recorded during breeding introductions, and analyzed the audio’s acoustic qualities. Their study, in the journal Royal Society Open Science, is a sort of how-to guide for panda breeders, cataloguing the various vocal characteristics of a blind date: an uninterested roar

欧文与她的同事分析了超过2500例大熊猫在配种时的叫声，并分析音频的质量。他们发表在《皇家学会公开科学》杂志的研究成果，是将大熊猫交配时发出的各种声音特征进行分类，为大熊猫饲养员提供了一份操作指南：如没性趣的吼声<吼声>或咆哮<咆哮声>，更加不确信的叫声<叫声>，或者性志高昂的吼叫<吼叫>。

[Benjamin D. Charlton et al., Vocal behaviour predicts mating success in giant pandas]

Decoding the sounds could be important not just for boosting panda numbers, Owen says, but for avoiding very bad dates. "These are bears and they have sharp teeth and claws and they can do a lot of damage to one another if they don't want to be around each other."

欧文说，解读这些声音不仅仅对增加大熊猫数目有重要意义，还会避免配种的不顺利。“它们属于熊类，有尖牙利爪，如果它们彼此不想被安排的话会搞很多破坏。”

And these fine-tuned communication skills also make the case that the social lives of pandas are anything but black and white.

这些精心调整过的配对技巧让熊猫的社交生活不再是只有黑白两种颜色。