老鼠嗅覺有多靈敏？柬埔寨用鼠掃雷
It's been a busy morning for Cletus, Meynard, Victoria and others of their furry band. Tiny noses and long whiskers twitching, they've scurried and sniffed their way across 775 square meters of fields to eliminate a scourge that has killed thousands of Cambodians: land mines.
克萊圖斯、邁納爾德、維多利亞等“鼠英雄”已經忙碌一早上了。它們的小鼻子使勁嗅着，長鬍須隨之抽動，一路疾掃了柬埔寨方圓775平方米的土地，目的是爲剷除當地已奪走成千上萬人性命的一大禍害——地雷。
Meet the Hero Rats: intelligent, surprisingly adorable creatures with some of the most sensitive noses in the animal kingdom. Sent from Africa, where they successfully cleared minefields in Mozambique and Angola, they began the same task in northwestern Cambodia early this month and have already scored tangible results.
何謂“鼠英雄”？答案便是這些“聰明可愛、嗅覺極其靈敏的老鼠”。這些老鼠生長於非洲，曾成功清除了莫桑比克以及安哥拉的雷區。本月初，它們被送往柬埔寨西北部，開始了掃雷任務，並且目前已是戰果累累。
Two hectares have been declared mine-free around this village where more than 15 people have been killed or wounded by the explosives, forcing some to abandon their homes and rice fields and seek jobs elsewhere.
目前該村莊附近兩公頃的區域內都沒有了地雷隱患。而此前已有超過15人因炸彈喪生或受傷，一些村民不得不撇下自己的房屋和田地，去別處謀工作。
One villager, Khun Mao, says the rats have been sniffing for suspected mines in a rice field he had been afraid to cultivate for years. He says that while it is too soon to say whether the rodents can remove every mine, "To me, these rats are wonderful."
村民庫恩·毛稱，多年來他一直不敢耕種的那片田地已經有地雷探測隊的“鼠英雄”去聞過了。他還說，儘管現在就肯定老鼠能排除所有地雷還爲時過早，“但對我來說，這些老鼠真的非常了不起。”
"The villagers have started to get excited about farming their land again. You can see the light in their faces," says Paul McCarthy, Cambodia program manager for the Belgian noNPRofit organization APOPO, or Anti-Personnel Land Mines Detection Product in English.
APOPO，即“防殺傷掃雷組織”，是比利時一家非營利機構。其柬埔寨項目經理保羅·麥卡錫表示：“村民們又重新燃起了對耕種的熱情，一個個臉上洋溢着喜悅。”
On a recent morning, the African giant pouched rats were working two suspected, taped-off minefields. Each rodent wore a harness connected to a rope strung out in a straight line between two handlers standing about 5 meters apart and outside the danger zone. The rodents then darted from one handler to the other, constantly sniffing the ground and only taking time out to scrub their bodies with tiny front paws or to answer nature's call. The handlers moved a step or two down the field to repeat the process, and a second rat was later sent over the same terrain to double check.
近日的某個清晨，這些非洲巨囊鼠開始搜尋兩個存在安全隱患的雷區。兩名訓導員站在危險區外，兩人之間相距約5米，用一條筆直的繩子連着。每隻老鼠身上都戴着套索，套索與訓導員手中的繩子相連。老鼠們在兩名訓導員之間的直線區域來回跑動，除了偶爾用細小的前爪擦拭身體，或者上上廁所外，它們會一路不停地嗅着地面。訓導員向雷區下方移動，老鼠們又開始重複之前的工作。一隻老鼠搜完後，會有第二隻鼠複查一遍。
Two-year-old Victoria proved particularly swift — "very active," one team member calls her.
一隻名爲“維多利亞”的兩歲老鼠表現得尤爲敏捷——有隊員說她“非常活潑”。
At the second field, Merry and Meynard were completing three hours of effort as a midday sun beat down on the parched earth. The duo had earlier nosed in on an explosive, halting just above it and scratching the ground — the learned response when a rodent detects TNT inside a land mine. A deminer with a detector followed and the mine was dug up and detonated.
在另一個雷區，午時的太陽烘烤着炙熱的大地，瑪麗和邁納爾德都連續搜了近三個小時了。它們兩個早先曾嗅到了一顆炸彈：在炸彈正上方停下來，狂撓地面。這是有經驗的鼠在探測到地雷中的炸藥成分後做出的常見反應。接下來就會有負責排雷的人帶着探測器過來，把雷挖出並銷燬。
Unlike standard mine detectors, the super-sniffers pick up only TNT and not other metal objects. And unlike wage-earning humans, the rats work for peanuts — and their other favorite, bananas.
不同於正規地雷探測儀，超級“鼠英雄”只能嗅出地雷中的三硝基甲苯成分，無法探測出其他金屬物件。此外，不同於需要賺錢養家的人類，巨鼠們有花生餵食就夠了，當然香蕉它們也很喜歡。
Theap Bunthourn, operations coordinator for the 34-member team, cited other advantages of using rats: They are cheaper to acquire and train than mine-sniffing dogs and easier to transport.
這個探測組有34名工作人員。小組的行動協調員西伯·本圖龍表示，用鼠探雷還有其他好處：與狗相比，老鼠的購買和訓練費用更低，運輸起來也更容易。
