How do dogs "see" with their noses? - Alexandra Horowitz

狗鼻“看”世界 - Alexandra Horowitz

翻译人员: Joanna Zhou 校对人员: Rongxin Liu

"Hi, Bob."

“嗨，鲍勃。”

"Morning, Kelly. The tulips looks great."

“早上好，凯利。这株郁金香看起来好美。”

Have you ever wondered how your dog experiences the world?

你曾经为你的狗狗如何感受这个世界产生过质疑吗？

Here's what she sees.

这是她看到的世界。

Not terribly interesting.

不是特别的有趣。

But what she smells, that's a totally different story.

但是，当她利用嗅觉感知的，缺是另一个世界。

And it begins at her wonderfully developed nose.

这都是取决于她发达的鼻子。

As your dog catches the first hints of fresh air,

当你的狗狗捕捉到第一缕新鲜空气，

her nose's moist, spongy outside helps capture any scents the breeze carries.

她鼻子潮湿像海绵一样的外部帮助她捕捉风中每一丝香气。

The ability to smell separately with each nostril,

两个鼻孔在嗅觉上分别有不同的功能，

smelling in stereo,

立体的嗅觉，

helps to determine the direction of the smell's source

可以帮助狗狗来判断气味源的方向，

so that within the first few moments of sniffing,

因此，在刚开始嗅的几分钟里，

the dog starts to become aware of not just what kind of things are out there

狗狗就开始意识到的有什么在附近，

而且还能判断出他们的位置在哪里。

but also where they're located.

As air enters the nose,

当空气进入到狗狗的鼻子里，

a small fold of tissue divides it into two separate folds,

小部分褶皱组织把空气分成两缕，

one for breathing and one just for smelling.

一缕用来维持呼吸，另一缕为嗅觉。

This second airflow enters a region

第二缕空气进入一个

filled with highly specialized olfactory receptor cells,

充满高度特殊化嗅觉接受细胞的区域；

several hundred millions of them, compaired to our five million.

狗狗有数亿个嗅觉细胞，人类却只有五百万个。

And unlike our clumsy way of breathing in and out through the same passage,

不同于人类笨拙地呼吸进出同一丝气息，

dogs exhale through slits at the side of their nose,

狗狗透过鼻旁的细缝呼气，

creating swirls of air that help draw in new odor molecules

形成空气漩涡帮助吸纳新的气味分子，

and allow odor concentration to build up over mulitple sniffs.

并且透过多次嗅闻建立起味道浓度。

但如此精妙的鼻子架构，缺乏一个信息处理组织

But all that impressive nasal architecture wouldn't be much help

without something to process the loads of information the nose scoops up.

是难以实现的。

And it turns out that the olfactory system dedicated to proessing smells

事实证明，狗狗用于处理气味的嗅觉系统

占用了比人类更多的脑空间。

takes up many times more relative brain area in dogs than in humans.

All of this allows dogs to distinguish

这些都帮助了狗狗去用分辨

and remember a staggering variety of specific scents

和记忆各种

人类无法检测的，浓缩亿万倍的特殊气味。

at concentrations up to 100 million times less than what our noses can detect.

If you can smell a spritz of perfume in a small room,

如果你能闻到一个小房间里的香水味，

a dog would have no trouble smelling it in an enclosed stadium

狗狗就能在封闭的体育馆里

闻到且分辨出它的成分，

and distinguishing its ingredients, to boot.

街上任何事物，每一个经过的行人和车辆，

And everything in the street, every passing person or car,

邻居的垃圾，

any contents of the neighbor's trash,

每种树，

each type of tree,

还有栖息在树上的鸟儿

and all the birds and insects in it

都有独特的气味信息，似乎在告诉你的狗狗，他们是什么，在哪里，

has a distinct odor profile telling your dog what it is, where it is,

和朝着那个方向移动。

and which direction it's moving in.

Besides being much more powerful than ours,

除了比我们人类厉害百倍，

狗的嗅觉还能感知到一些无法看见的事物。

a dog's sense of smell can pick up things that can't even be seen at all.

一个完全分离的嗅觉系统，

A whole separate olfactory system,

called the vomeronasal organ, above the roof of the mouth,

叫做犁鼻器，位于口腔上方，

检测所有动物自然释放的荷尔蒙，包括人类。

detects the hormones all animals, Including humans, naturally release.

它让狗狗能辨识潜在的伴侣，

It lets dogs identify potential mates,

或是区分友好和带敌意的动物。

or distinguish between friendly and hostile animals.

It alerts them to our various emotional states,

它也提醒狗狗留意我们不同的情绪，

and it can even tell them when someone is pregnant or sick.

或者当有人怀孕或生病的时候告诉它们。

Because olfaction is more primal than other senses,

因为嗅觉比其他感官更原始，

绕过丘脑直接连接大脑，

bypassing the thalamus to connect directly to the brain structures

involving emotion and instinct,

涉及情感和本能，

we might even say a dog's perception is more immediate and visceral than ours.

我们甚至可以说狗狗的感知比我们的 更直接和发自肺腑。

But the most amazing thing about your dog's nose

但狗鼻子最神奇的地方在于

它可以跨越时间。

is that it can traverse time.

旁人留下的印记，

The past appears in tracks left by passersby,

短暂停留车辆留下的些许暖气，

and by the warmth of a recently parked car

where the residue of where you've been and what you've done recently.

或你最近去过的地方，做过的事的残留。

地标如消防栓和树木，

Landmarks like fire hydrants and trees

are aromatic bulletin boards carrying messages of who's been by,

是带有气味的告示板， 记录着曾留下足迹的人们，

what they've been eating,

他们曾吃过什么，

他们曾感觉到了什么。

and how they're feeling.

未来也蕴藏在风的气息里，

And the future is in the breeze,

alerting them to something or someone approaching long before you see them.

告知狗狗即将靠近的人事物，在它们还未看到之前。

我们看到或听到的一瞬，

Where we see and hear something at a single moment,

a dog smells an entire story from start to finish.

狗狗就能闻到整个故事的开头到结尾。

一些人犬合作的例子里，

In some of the best examples of canine-human collaboration,

狗狗透过对故事的分享，和反馈来帮助我们。

dogs help us by sharing and reacting to those stories.

用友善回应悲伤，

They can respond with kindness to people in distress,

or with aggression to threats

或用进攻抵御威胁，

because stress and anger manifest as a cloud of hormones

因为压力和愤怒都能释放能被

recognizable to the dog's nose.

狗狗嗅到的荷尔蒙。

With the proper training,

透过正规的训练，

they can even alert us to invisible threats

狗狗能告知我们潜在的危险

ranging from bombs to cancer.

从炸弹到癌症。

As it turns out, humanity's best friend

所以，人类最好的朋友，

is not one who experiences the same things we do,

并不是与我们同经历共患难的谁，

but one whose incredible nose reveals a whole other world beyond our eyes.

而是透过灵敏的鼻子，带给我们视线以外新世界的他们。