Exactly why these limbless reptiles take to the air in the first place is not known, but their fellow gliders do so to travel more efficiently, pursue prey or evade predation

这些无翼爬行动物一开始为什么要飞还不得而知,不过其他动物滑行无非是为了行动更省力,捕捉猎物或逃避追捕。

||1:Of the 12,000-odd amputees reckoned to have come back to Britain from the second world war, almost none had lost three limbs, says Jerome Church of BLESMA (formerly the British Limbless Ex-Service Men's Association).||2:Soldiers with such injuries died in combat.||3:Even five years ago, they probably would not have survived such trauma.||4:Today, it is normal to do so.||5:That is a mark of medical improvements on and off the battlefield, says Keith Porter, a surgeon and professor of clinical traumatology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.||6:Every year, people are surviving bigger injuries, says Professor Porter, and the rate of improvement is rapid.||7:The treatments provided today do not appear in existing manuals: “We are writing the textbooks of the future.”

||1:为英国截肢退伍军人协会（BLESMA）效力的杰罗姆?切奇说，自二战以来，已约有12000余名截肢者回到英国，而他们之中很少有失去三肢或以上的人。||2:因为通常受到这样等级外伤的士兵，他们通常面临的就是死亡。||3:甚至在五年前，受到这种程度外伤的人也很少能够活下来。||4:但是在现如今，对于这类人来说，活下来是一件再正常不过的事情。||5:基斯·波特是一名在伯明翰伊丽莎白女王医院工作的外科医生，并且是一名专攻临床创伤的教授。波特教授说，“这种情况无论是在战场上或日常生活中，都是医疗体系进步的标志。||6:人们能够经受住越来越严重的外伤并存活下来，最后得到改善的几率也在逐年迅速攀升。||7:今天我们所实现的治疗方法在现存的资料或手册中却难觅踪迹。”波特博士同时表示，“我们正在编纂相关教科书为未来的医疗事业提供帮助。”

||1:A GRISLY photo shows a soldier lying injured, the snow around him steeped in blood. Both his legs have been blown off.||2:The blood is fake. His legs, however, really are missing.||3:The picture is from a training exercise run by Amputees in Action, an agency for actors who have lost arms or legs.||4:It provides limbless people to train the armed forces and the emergency services as they learn how better to deal with injuries sustained in the midst of fighting or accidents.||5:Such training, along with improvements in care back home, mean that those who do suffer grievous injuries on the battlefield are more likely to survive.

||1:一张令人扼腕的照片为我们展示了这样一幅画面：一名负伤的士兵倒在被鲜血浸透的雪地中，纷飞的战火令他失去了双腿。||2:事实上，照片中的血是假，而那位士兵确实是失去了双腿。||3:这张图片来源于由“截肢者在行动”的培训机构所组织的一次表演训练，这家机构旨在为失去双臂或双腿的特型演员提供中介服务。||4:该机构为军队提供残疾演员，用以训练士兵以及教授急救措施，从而使他们习得在战斗或意外中如何处理其所受到的伤害。||5:这样的培训再配以家中的精心照料，将意味着那些在战争中经受到严重创伤的人，将更有机会活下来。

Still others suggest the short or sometimes nonexistent legs of the 800 species of skinks are clues to where limbless snakes originated.

也有科学家认为，800种小蜥蜴的短小的有些甚至了退化的四肢提供了蛇起源的线索。