HIGH THROW
高掷比赛
Q. How high can a human throw something?
Q．人类可以把一个物体扔多高？
A. HUMANS ARE GOOD AT throwing things. Infact, we 8217;re great at it; no other animal can throw stuff like we can.
A．人类很擅长扔东西。实际上，我们是超级擅长，没有其他动物能够像我们这样扔东西。
It 8217;s true that chimpanzees hurl feces (and,on rare occasions, stones), but they 8217;re not nearly as accurate or precise ashumans. Antlions throw sand, but they don 8217;t aim it. Archerfish hunt insects bythrowing water droplets, but they use specialized mouths instead of arms.Horned lizards shoot jets of blood from their eyes for distances of up to 5feet. I don 8217;t know why they do this because whenever I reach the phrase “shootjets of blood from their eyes” in an article I just stop there and stare at ituntil I need to lie down.
诚然，大猩猩会扔大便（偶尔会扔扔石头），但它们扔得既没有我们准，也没有我们稳。蚁狮会扔沙子，但它们是随便乱扔的，没有确定的目标。喷水鱼通过射出水珠来捕捉小昆虫，但它们用的是特殊的嘴巴而非胳膊。沙漠角蜥能从眼睛那儿射出血液束，射程可达1.5米。我不太清楚它们为什么要这么做，因为每当我在文章里读到“从眼睛那儿射出血液束”这样的语句时，就会一动不动地注视着直到我累趴下为止。
So while there are other animals that useprojectiles, we 8217;re just about the only animal that can grab a random object andreliably nail a target. In fact, we 8217;re so good at it that some researchers havesuggested that rock-throwing played a central role in the evolution of themodern human brain.
所以尽管还有其他动物也会使用投掷物，但人类估计是唯一能够随手抓起一个东西并相对准确地朝着一个目标扔过去的动物了。实际上一些研究人员认为，人类善于扔东西的习性在现代人类大脑进化的过程中起了重要作用。
Throwing is hard.1 In order to deliver abaseball to a batter, a pitcher has to release the ball at exactly the rightpoint in the throw. A timing error of half a millisecond in either direction isenough to cause the ball to miss the strike zone.
投掷不是一个简单活儿。1为了让棒球能够到达击球手那儿，投手必须准确地在投掷过程中松手放开棒球，早了或者晚了0.5毫秒都足以使棒球偏出击球区。
To put that in perspective, it takes aboutfive milliseconds for the fastest nerve impulse to travel the length of thearm. That means that when your arm is still rotating toward the correctposition, the signal to release the ball is already at your wrist. In terms oftiming, this is like a drummer dropping a drumstick from the tenth story andhitting a drum on the ground on the correct beat.
相比之下，最快的神经脉冲通过手臂长度的距离要花5毫秒。这意味着当手臂朝着正确的位置挥去时，松手的信号已经传递到手腕处了。从计时角度来说，这就相当于一个鼓手从10层楼扔下一根鼓槌，而鼓槌在正确的节拍落到了地上的鼓上。
We seem to be much better at throwing things forwardthan throwing them upward.2 Since we 8217;re going for maximum height, we could useprojectiles that curve upward when you throw them forward; the Aerobie OrbitersI had when I was a kid often got stuck in the highest treetops.3 But we couldalso sidestep the whole problem by using a device like this one:
我们看起来更善于往前扔东西，而不是往上扔东西。2既然我们讨论的是最高能扔多高，我们可以考虑使用那些丢出去会自己向上飞的东西。我小时候经常把回旋镖玩具扔到最高的树顶上下不来。3但我们还可以通过使用像这样的一个装置来回避这一问题：