中英對照─Adorable Shark Fits in Your Hand／手掌大小的可愛鯊魚

科學家在墨西哥灣捕捉到新種的口袋鯊。（取自網路）

◎劉宜庭

Tiny, blunt-headed sharks called pocket sharks are so rare that until just a few years ago, only one individual had ever been collected from the southeastern Pacific Ocean.

超小隻、頭型圓鈍、被稱為「口袋鯊」的鯊魚相當罕見，近幾年也只有在東南太平洋發現一隻。

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The only other pocket shark specimen in the world － a female － was caught in 1979 and is part of the collection at the Zoological Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

世上僅存的其他口袋鯊標本—一隻在1979年被捉到的母鯊，是俄羅斯聖彼得堡動物博物館的收藏品。

Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration（NOAA）caught a second pocket shark in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists declared it to be a pocket shark in 2015, and after further analysis it was recently described as a new species.

美國國家海洋暨大氣總署（NOAA）的研究人員，2010年在墨西哥灣捕捉到第二隻口袋鯊。科學家2015年公開這項新發現，在經過進一步分析後，最近宣布此為新種的口袋鯊。

You might think that adorable pocket sharks are so named because they’re small enough to fit comfortably in a pocket. However, the name comes not from their petite size but from a physical feature：a pocket-like orifice found near their pectoral fins.

你可能會以為可愛的「口袋鯊」係因恰巧能放進口袋而得名。然而，這個名號並非源自其嬌小的體型，而是另一項身體特徵：在牠們胸鰭附近發現的口袋形狀孔口。

新聞辭典

shark：名詞，鯊魚。例句：From certain angles, pocket sharks look like very, very tiny sperm whales.（口袋鯊從特定角度看起來，很像非常、非常迷你的抹香鯨。）

specimen：名詞，標本。例句：This new specimen has light-producing organs distributed on its stomach and back.（這個新標本的背部和腹部分布著會發光的器官。）

pectoral fin：名詞，胸鰭。例句：Most sharks have eight fins：a pair of pectoral fins, a pair of pelvic fins, two dorsal fins, an anal fin, and a caudal fin.（大部分的鯊魚有8隻鰭：1對胸鰭、1對腹鰭、2個背鰭、1個臀鰭、1個尾鰭。）

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