你的压力谁也不知道，但你家狗知道！

译介 2023-06-20

收录于合集 #双语精选 46个

一直以来，狗都被视为人类的朋友。它们不仅能看家护院，还能感受主人的情绪，十分善解人意。

最近，国外有项研究又发现了狗狗的一项新技能：它们能闻出人类的压力，准确率高达93.8%！

不知它们拆家的时候能不能感受到主人压力倍增呢？

一起看文章吧！

Dogs can smell when humans are stressed, study suggests

研究表明，狗能闻到人的压力

There’s now scientific evidence shedding more light on one of Barkley’s impressive skills in a long list of endearing traits: the ability to smell when you’re stressed.

现在有科学证据表明，《芝麻街》的小狗“巴克利”一长串讨人喜欢的特征中，有一项令人印象深刻的技能，那就是能闻到你的压力。

Dogs can smell the difference between odors from humans when they’re stressed and when they’re calm, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

根据周三发表在公共科学图书馆期刊《PLOS ONE》上的研究表明，狗能闻到人类在紧张和平静时产生的不同气味。

Earlier research found that canines may be able to smell when a person is happy or fearful, but this latest study eliminated other competing scents and measured its human participants’ stress levels to increase the accuracy of the results.

先前的研究表明，犬类可以识别人类快乐或恐惧时的气味，但这项最新的研究排除了其他干扰气味，并检测了参与者的压力等级来提高研究结果的准确性。

Researchers first collected breath and sweat samples from study participants to use as a baseline. Afterward, these people performed a mental arithmetic task, counting backward from 9,000 in units of 17 in front of two researchers for three minutes.

研究人员首先收集了实验参与者呼吸和汗液样本作为基线。随后，这些参与者在两名研究人员面前进行三分钟的心算任务，从9000开始，每17为一个单位倒数。

“If the participant gave a correct answer, they were given no feedback and were expected to continue, and if they gave an incorrect answer the researcher would interrupt with ‘no’ and tell them their last correct answer,” said lead study author Clara Wilson, a doctoral candidate at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland.

该研究的主要作者、北爱尔兰贝尔法斯特女王大学（Queen’s University Belfast）的博士生克拉拉·威尔逊解释道：“如果参与者给出了正确答案，那么他们将不会收到任何反馈，并继续心算任务；如果答错了，研究人员会打断他们说‘错了’，并告诉他们正确答案。”

The study team collected another round of breath and sweat samples after the task was completed.

在任务完成后，研究人员又搜集了一轮实验参与者的气味和汗液样本。

Additionally, the researchers collected reported stress levels, heart rate and blood pressure before and after the assigned task. Thirty-six participants who reported feeling stressed and had increased heart rate and blood pressure had their samples shown to the dogs.

此外，研究人员还搜集了心算任务前后的压力等级、心率和血压报告。36名参与者称这个任务让他们感到紧张，且心率和血压都有所上升。收集好的样本将交由狗狗来分辨。

The researchers presented post-task breath and sweat samples from one person to 20 dogs along with two other blank control samples. The canines needed to select the correct sample at least seven out of 10 times to move onto the next phase.

研究人员向20只狗狗提供了每个参与者进行心算任务后的气味和汗液样本以及另外两个空白对照样本。狗狗需要在10次测试中至少选对7次正确样本才能进入下一阶段。

In the second and final phase, the study team showed the four dogs that passed phase one the same samples they sniffed in phase one along with a sample from the same individual collected before the task and a blank. Presented with these options 20 times, the dogs needed to successfully identify the original post-task “stress” scent at least 80% of the time for the results to be conclusive.

在第二阶段和最后阶段，研究团队向通过第一阶段的四只狗狗展示了它们在第一阶段嗅到的相同样本，以及在心算任务前从同一个参与者身上采集的样本和空白样本。每20次测试为一轮，从结果来看，狗狗们成功识别心算任务后的“压力”气味的概率至少为80%。

The dogs chose the right sample in 93.8% of the trials, which suggested that the stress odors were quite different from the baseline samples, Wilson said.

威尔逊表示：“狗狗在试验中选择样本的正确率为93.8%，这表明‘压力’与基线样本的气味截然不同。”

“It was fascinating to see how able the dogs were at discriminating between these odors when the only difference was that a psychological stress response had occurred,” she said.

她接着表示：“看到狗狗能够从不同气味中识别出心理应激反应的气味，是一件多么有趣的事。”

A powerful nose

强大的鼻子

Dogs have 220 million olfactory receptors compared with humans’ 50 million, which makes canines “extremely effective at differentiating and identifying odors,” said Dr. Mark Freeman, clinical assistant professor in the department of small animal clinical sciences at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. He was not involved in the study.

美国布莱克斯堡弗吉尼亚理工大学小型动物临床医学系的临床助理教授马克·弗里曼博士介绍道：“狗狗有2.2亿个嗅觉感受器，而人类只有5000万个，这使得狗狗可以非常有效地辨别气味。”弗里曼未参与此次研究。

Olfactory receptors are small nerve endings located inside your nostrils that allow you to smell, he said.

他接着解释道：“嗅觉感受器位于鼻腔内的神经末梢突触小体，使你能够闻到气味。”

“While we can’t know with certainty why dogs developed such keen olfactory senses, it is very probably related with the need to identify prey, potential threats, reproductive status, and familial relationships in a pack setting among others,” Freeman said.

弗里曼博士称：“虽然我们不能确定狗狗为何有如此敏锐的嗅觉，但它很可能与识别猎物、发现潜在威胁、繁衍状态以及在群居环境中的家庭关系等需求有关。”

Real-world implementation

现实生活中的实施运用

Service dogs who assist people with mental health conditions like anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder may benefit from these findings, Wilson said.

威尔逊表示：“帮助人类缓解诸如焦虑和创伤后应激障碍等心理问题的服务犬也许可以从这些发现中受益。”

“Knowing that there is a detectable odor component to stress may raise discussion into the value of scent-based training using samples from individuals in times of stress versus calm,” she said.

她接着说道：“得知人在压力下会产生某种可检测的气味成分，或许会引发人们对气味训练价值的探讨。这种训练采用的是人在压力和平静状态下的气味样本。”

More experimentation needs to be done outside of a laboratory to see how applicable the results of this study are in the real world, Wilson said.

威尔逊还称需要在实验室之外做更多的实验来了解这项研究结果在现实生活中的适用性。

These findings also open the door to future research to investigate if dogs can discriminate between emotions, plus how long the odors are detectable, she said.

她说道：“这些发现也为未来的研究打开了大门，以研究狗狗是否能够区分不同的情绪，以及检测到这些气味需要多长时间。”

今日词汇

shed light on 阐明；使……清楚地显出

endearing / ɪnˈdɪərɪŋ / adj. 可爱的；讨人喜欢的

odor / ˈəʊdə(r) / n. 气味

scent / sent / n.（动物或人的）气味，臭迹

canine / ˈkeɪnaɪn / n. 犬

baseline / ˈbeɪslaɪn / n. 基线，基准

mental arithmetic task 心算任务

arithmetic / əˈrɪθmətɪk / n. 算术；演算

heart rate 心率

blood pressure 血压