老鼠嗅觉有多灵敏？柬埔寨用鼠扫雷

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.

克莱图斯、迈纳尔德、维多利亚等“鼠英雄”已经忙碌一早上了。它们的小鼻子使劲嗅着，长胡须随之抽动，一路疾扫了柬埔寨方圆775平方米的土地，目的是为铲除当地已夺走成千上万人性命的一大祸害——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.

何谓“鼠英雄”？答案便是这些“聪明可爱、嗅觉极其灵敏的老鼠”。这些老鼠生长于非洲，曾成功清除了莫桑比克以及安哥拉的雷区。本月初，它们被送往柬埔寨西北部，开始了扫雷任务，并且目前已是战果累累。

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.

目前该村庄附近两公顷的区域内都没有了地雷隐患。而此前已有超过15人因炸弹丧生或受伤，一些村民不得不撇下自己的房屋和田地，去别处谋工作。

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."

村民库恩·毛称，多年来他一直不敢耕种的那片田地已经有地雷探测队的“鼠英雄”去闻过了。他还说，尽管现在就肯定老鼠能排除所有地雷还为时过早，“但对我来说，这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“防杀伤扫雷组织”，是比利时一家非营利机构。其柬埔寨项目经理保罗·麦卡锡表示：“村民们又重新燃起了对耕种的热情，一个个脸上洋溢着喜悦。”

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.

近日的某个清晨，这些非洲巨囊鼠开始搜寻两个存在安全隐患的雷区。两名训导员站在危险区外，两人之间相距约5米，用一条笔直的绳子连着。每只老鼠身上都戴着套索，套索与训导员手中的绳子相连。老鼠们在两名训导员之间的直线区域来回跑动，除了偶尔用细小的前爪擦拭身体，或者上上厕所外，它们会一路不停地嗅着地面。训导员向雷区下方移动，老鼠们又开始重复之前的工作。一只老鼠搜完后，会有第二只鼠复查一遍。

Two-year-old Victoria proved particularly swift — "very active," one team member calls her.

一只名为“维多利亚”的两岁老鼠表现得尤为敏捷——有队员说她“非常活泼”。

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.

在另一个雷区，午时的太阳烘烤着炙热的大地，玛丽和迈纳尔德都连续搜了近三个小时了。它们两个早先曾嗅到了一颗炸弹：在炸弹正上方停下来，狂挠地面。这是有经验的鼠在探测到地雷中的炸药成分后做出的常见反应。接下来就会有负责排雷的人带着探测器过来，把雷挖出并销毁。

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.

不同于正规地雷探测仪，超级“鼠英雄”只能嗅出地雷中的三硝基甲苯成分，无法探测出其他金属物件。此外，不同于需要赚钱养家的人类，巨鼠们有花生喂食就够了，当然香蕉它们也很喜欢。

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.

这个探测组有34名工作人员。小组的行动协调员西伯·本图龙表示，用鼠探雷还有其他好处：与狗相比，老鼠的购买和训练费用更低，运输起来也更容易。