新型蜱虫捕手研制成功（图）

新华网7月31日电 据美国科技博客Gizmodo刊文称，弗吉尼亚军事学院设计“ 蜱虫漫游者”（Tick Rover）机器人运用仿生学原理，专门捕获吸血的蜱虫 。

在所有人们厌恶的吸血生物中， 蜱虫往往位列榜首。这种嗜血小虫不仅吸人血，还能携带十多种人类病菌，如2011年感染了24000人的莱姆病菌和今年早些时候夺走北卡罗来纳州一六岁女孩生命的落基山斑疹热。所幸的是，愚笨的蜱虫会绕着任何看起来或者闻起来像它们的目标的事物跳来跳去，即便那事物涂着杀虫药。弗吉尼亚军事学院的工程师正是利用蜱虫的这一特点，研制出新型的蜱虫捕手。

蜱虫不能像蚊子那样飞，也不能像跳蚤那样一跳横跨长距离，所以它们进化出了非常敏锐的感知可能寄主的能力：具体来说，蜱虫爬行50英尺，就能嗅出呼出的二氧化碳或地表震动的细微痕迹。循着这些感官线索，蜱虫能探入一个寄主并迅速吸血。弗吉尼亚军事学院设计的“蜱虫漫游者”机器人运用仿生学原理，利用蜱虫自身强大的捕猎技术反过来吸引他们。

“得有二氧化碳，得是能动的东西，好攀附，这些就是我们成功探索出的行为。”弗吉尼亚军事学院的大卫·利文斯顿告诉美国广播公司附属的WSET电视网。

蜱虫想寻二氧化碳，蜱虫漫游者就在试验地通过长长的软管散发二氧化碳来吸引他们。软管把所有的蜱虫都吸引到试验地的一边，让它们聚集约30分钟。之后遥控卡车拖拽一条浸满杀虫剂的布，利用内置感应器导航，绕软管开动。蜱虫会以为它们的寄主到了而跳上那块布，沾上杀虫剂后，几小时内就死亡。

“蜱虫感知到二氧化碳时，会认为寄主就在附近，并开始移动。你能看到它们沿着软管快速爬，找寻潜在的动物。”该项目的负责人，弗吉尼亚军事学院电子工程教授詹姆斯·斯夸尔告诉记者，“这种方法最好的地方就是不会把杀虫剂留在生态环境中，因为浸了杀虫剂的布用完就会回收处理。”

这种方法并没有十足的安全性，因为其他蜱虫可以在安全区域繁殖，但此方法确实能起到一天的缓解作用。弗吉尼亚军事学院研究组希望最终能将该方法通过商业化运作，拓展到家庭灭虫服务，但拓展前仍需进一步的后续效益研究。

译者：贺飞

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Among animals you don't want sucking sucking your blood, ticks are near the top of the list. These hemophilic arachnids don't just help themselves to your vital fluids, they are also host to nearly a dozen human pathogens including Lyme disease, which afflicted more than 24,000 people in 2011 alone, and the Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever that claimed the life of a six year old North Carolina girl earlier this year. Lucky for us, ticks are pretty stupid. They'll hop aboard anything that so much as looks and smells like a suitable host—even if it's coated in pesticide. It's this overzealous nature that Virginia Military Institute engineers hope to exploit with their ingenious new tick-hunting rover.

Ticks can't fly like mosquitos or cover large swaths of ground in single leaps like fleas, so they've developed very sensitive faculties to detect potential hosts—specifically the ability to sniff out minute traces of exhaled CO2 and ground vibration from walking up to 50 feet away. By following these sensory clues, the ticks can hone in on a host and climb aboard for a quick snack. The VMI "Tick Rover" employs biomimicry to use the tick's own hunting prowess to lure them to their doom.

"It's got carbon dioxide. It's something moving. It's something that is very easy to cling to. And those are the kinds of behaviors we exploited, basically... successfully," David Livingston of VMI told ABC News affiliate WSET.

Ticks want to smell CO2, the Tick Rover gives it to them in the form of a long, CO2-exuding hose laid across a test field. This hose draws all of the ticks to one side of the testing area and concentrates them over the course of 30 minutes. Then, an RC truck dragging a piece of cloth soaked in pesticide drives itself along the length of the hose using embedded sensors to navigate. The ticks think their meal's arrived and gladly hop onto the cloth, coating themselves in pesticide and dying within hours.

"When they sense carbon dioxide they sense a blood meal is nearby and they run. You can actually see them scuttle onto this tube and then run along it searching for where that live animal is," Dr. James Squire, project lead and professor of electrical engineering at VMI, told ABC News. "The cool part about this is that it leaves no pesticide in the environment," since the poison-laced cloth is collected and disposed of after use.

The method isn't foolproof, as other ticks can repopulate the cleared area, but it does provide about 24 hours of relief. The VMI team hopes to eventually commercialize the technique for home pest services but first further study into the effectiveness of the method is necessary. [ABC News - CDC - Wikipedia - Images: ABC News]

(原标题：新型蜱虫捕手研制成功（图）)