会尝味道的触手

伸手去摸一样东西，你感觉到的是它的形状和质地。章鱼伸出触手做的事更奇怪：它一碰就尝到了味道，靠的是每条触手上排列的几百个吸盘。

Reach out and touch something, and you feel its shape and texture. An octopus reaching out does something stranger: it tastes what it touches, instantly, through hundreds of suckers lining each arm.

科学家最近发现，章鱼的吸盘里有一种别的动物身上都没有的特殊受体，专门用来感知不溶于水的化学物质。这让章鱼可以把一条触手伸进礁石里黑漆漆的缝隙，立刻知道那里藏着什么：食物、危险，还是什么都没有，不必先看见它，也不必把它拽出来。

Scientists recently discovered that octopus suckers contain special receptors unlike anything found in other animals, built to sense chemicals that do not dissolve in water. This lets an octopus slide an arm into a dark crack in the rocks and immediately know what is hiding there, food, danger, or nothing at all, without needing to see it or pull it out first.

这是一种完全不同的感知世界的方式，触觉和味觉合成一种感官，分布在八条各自独立的触手上。对一只在全黑中捕猎的章鱼来说，这样的组合也许比眼睛有用得多。

It is a completely different way of experiencing the world, touch and taste combined into a single sense, spread across eight independent arms. For an octopus hunting in total darkness, that combination might be more useful than eyes ever could be.