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You wouldn't think studying lizards is a particularly dangerous profession. Until, that is, sheriffs approach you with their guns drawn. "We get the cops called on us sometimes."
也许你不会认为研究蜥蜴是一个危险的职业。直到警察拔出枪指着你的时候。“有时候，我们真的会被警察‘逮到’”。
Bree Putman, a behavioral ecologist at U.C.L.A. and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Her colleague at the museum, Greg Pauly, really did end up on the wrong side of a gun once, and here's why:
布里·普特曼是加州大学洛杉矶分校和洛杉矶自然历史博物馆的一名行为生态学家。她和她的博物馆同事格雷格·保利还真经历过一次枪口事件，以下就是为什么：
"A lot of times we're doing work at night in people's neighborhoods and we're using flashlights to look for geckos on the sides of people's houses. And so sometimes people will think we're criminals or burglars or something."
“我们经常夜间在社区里工作，用手电筒在人们房屋周围找壁虎。因此有时候，人们会错把我们当成罪犯或窃贼。”
The museum's solution was neon orange shirts with the museum logo. "And we call these shirts the 'don't shoot me' shirts." But the bright orange left Putman with a concern: that the color would spook the very animals they were trying to study.
博物馆给出的解决方法是让她们穿上印有博物馆标志的霓虹橙色衬衫。“我们把这个衬衣叫做“别对我开枪”衬衫。”但是鲜艳的橙色让普特曼有点担心：衬衣的颜色可能会把他们想研究的动物吓跑。
So she devised an experiment. "I basically designed a study to show to the museum staff that these shirts were not going to be good for research, and that's what I found.”
于是她设计了一个实验。“我就是想通过这个实验，向博物馆的工作人员证明这个衬衫对研究没有益处，这就是我的发现。”
In her trials, Putman wore tank tops of various colors -- red, gray, light blue, dark blue -- and then attempted to approach and capture western fence lizards in public and private parkland in L.A.
在她的试验中，普特曼分别穿上各种颜色的背心--红色、灰色、浅蓝色、深蓝色，然后试图在洛杉矶公共和私人公园里接近并捕捉西部围栏蜥蜴。
And she found that when wearing dark blue, she could get twice as close to the lizards, compared to when she wore red.
她发现，当她身穿深蓝色背心时，要比她身穿红色背心时更容易接近蜥蜴，距离要缩小两倍。
And she was about twice as likely to catch a lizard too, while wearing dark or light blue, compared to red or gray.
而且相对于穿红色或灰色衣服，穿浅蓝或者深蓝背心的时候，会有两倍的几率能抓住那些蜥蜴。
Putman thinks that the lizards may be more tolerant of blue hues, because they most closely resemble the blue patches males have on their bellies -- a sexual signal.
普特曼认为蜥蜴也许更适应蓝色调，因为这种色调最接近雄性发出求爱信号时，其腹部出现的蓝色斑块。
Other studies have shown that birds with orange and red plumage are similarly less creeped out by orange and red shirts.
其他的研究结果表明，有橙色和红色羽毛的鸟类。同样也不太会被橙色和红色的衬衫吓到。
