We know that the last of the woolly mammoths went extinct about 4,000 years ago, in Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean, not far off the Siberian coast.
我們知道最後一隻長毛象大約在4000年前滅絕了，在北冰洋的蘭蓋爾島，離西伯利亞海岸不遠。
And in 2017, we learned that an “excess” of genomic effects plagued the last of this kind.
在2017年，我們瞭解到基因組效應的“過剩”困擾著最後一種。
Now, we know why: a hostile environment and inbreeding.
現在，我們知道原因了：敵對的環境和近親繁殖。
According to a study published earlier this month in journal Genome Biology and Evolution, Wrangel Island mammoth genes weren’t just bad — they were straight-up broken.
根據本月早些時候發表在“基因組生物學與進化”雜誌上的一項研究，朗格爾島猛獁象的基因不僅僅是壞的-它們是直接破壞的。
Per the authors of the study, a mammoth of Wrangel Island’s genome “had many putative deleterious mutations” that were “predicted to cause diverse behavioral and developmental defects.” Among them were infertility, motor skills, cognitive skills — like the ability to perceive smells like flowers accurately, messing with their ability to feed themselves correctly — and even diabetes.
根據這項研究的作者們的說法，蘭格爾島的一頭猛獁象的基因組“有許多假定的有害突變”，這些突變“被預測會導致不同的行為和發育缺陷”。其中包括不孕不育，運動技能，認知技能-比如準確感知花香的能力，擾亂他們正確餵養自己的能力-甚至是糖尿病。
The genome sequenced came from a single woolly mammoth, so the researchers are looking for more to confirm their work.
基因組測序來自一隻長毛象，所以研究人員正在尋找更多來證實他們的工作。
But if there’s one crucial takeaway, University of Buffalo researcher Vincent Lynch, who worked on the study while at the University of Chicago, summed it up nicely: Don’t.
但是如果有一個重要的結論的話，布法羅大學的研究員文森特·林奇(Vincent Lynch)，他在芝加哥大學時參與了這項研究，他很好地總結了這一點：不要。
Inbreed.
近親繁殖。
“Beyond suggesting that the last mammoths were probably an unhealthy population, it’s a cautionary tale for living species threatened with extinction: If their populations stay small, they too may accumulate deleterious mutations that can contribute to their extinction.”
“除了暗示最後的猛獁象可能是一個不健康的種群外，這對於瀕臨滅絕的現存物種來說是一個警示故事：如果它們的種群數量仍然很小，它們也可能積累有害的突變，從而導致它們的滅絕。”
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