Thirty-two years ago, 9-week old Azaria Chamberlain disappeared from a campsite in the Australian outback, and her mother’s claim that a dingo took the child caused a storm of public outrage and disbelief.
32年前，九個星期大的艾莎莉亞‧張伯倫自澳洲內陸地區的一處露營地失蹤，她母親說是被一隻澳洲野狗叼走了。這個說法引起社會大眾的憤怒與懷疑。

The story inspired a 1988 movie, “Cry in the Dark,” and a misquote from the film, “A dingo ate my baby!,” caught on.
本案是1988年電影「暗夜哭聲」的靈感來源，誤引自該片的「一隻澳洲野狗吃了我的貝比」一語則從此深植人心。

The reason the story became so well known, of course, was that it has remained unclear whether the dingo did it. And the human drama and Australia’s enigmatic wild dog have become entangled. The dingo is a symbol that may mean one thing to hunters or sheep ranchers and another to scientists and nature lovers.
當然，本案廣為人知是因為，至今依然無法確定此事是否澳洲野狗所為。人類的戲劇化故事與謎樣的澳洲野狗從此糾結不清。澳洲野狗在獵人和牧羊人眼裡象徵著一回事，對科學家與大自然愛好者而言卻又完全不同。

Now the Chamberlain case, and dingoes, are back in the spotlight. On February 24, testimony ended in the fourth coroner’s inquest on Azaria’s death, and the office of the Northern Territory coroner said a ruling would be handed down within two months.
如今，艾莎莉亞失蹤案與澳洲野狗再度成為各界矚目的焦點。法醫對艾莎莉亞死因進行的第四次驗屍聽證已於2月24日結束，澳洲北領地法醫辦公室聲稱，此案將於兩個月內做出裁決。

Lindy Chamberlain, Azaria’s mother, was originally convicted of killing her child and sent to prison. She was released after three years and acquitted only after Azaria’s jacket was found near a dingo den.
艾莎莉亞的母親琳蒂‧張伯倫最初被控殺害自己的女兒，並被判有罪入獄。三年後有人在一個澳洲野狗窩附近找到艾莎莉亞的上衣。琳蒂才無罪獲釋。

When Azaria disappeared, dingoes were thought to be wary of people, and with no known attacks on humans, it was hard to believe one had been aggressive enough to come into a campground and take a baby.
艾莎莉亞失蹤時，人們認為澳洲野狗會避開人。而在從沒聽過澳洲野狗攻擊人的情況下，社會大眾很難相信野狗會大膽到直闖露營區叼走嬰兒。

But in the 1990s, minor human-dingo incidents started worrying managers of Fraser Island, a nature reserve visited by hundreds of thousands yearly, In 2001 two dingoes killed a 9-year-old boy.
然而到了1990年代，情況輕微的人、狗意外事件時有所聞，開始令每年吸引數十萬遊客的傅雷瑟島自然保護區的管理人員引以為憂。2001年，兩隻澳洲野狗咬死一名9歲的男童。

“That was really the game-changer,” said Adrian Peace, an honorary associate professor of anthropology at the University of Queensland, who has studied the change in attitude toward dingoes. Rangers now kill any dingoes on the island believed to pose a danger.
昆士蘭大學人類學榮譽副教授皮斯長期研究人們對澳洲野狗態度的變化。他說：「那改變了一切。」如今，牧人在傅雷瑟島上看到認為構成威脅的澳洲野狗，一律予以格殺。

Dingoes are generally classified as a subspecies of wolf, Canis lupus dingo. They resemble a generic, medium-size dog, about 18 kilograms, usually tan, with pricked ears and a bushy tail.
澳洲野狗通常被歸類為野狼的亞種。牠們的體型接近一般的中型狗，體重約18公斤，毛色多為棕褐色，兩耳豎起，尾部多毛。

They lack some of the physical signs of domestication found in many dog breeds, like barking as adults. They breed once a year, like wolves, and have a stable pack structure topped by one male-female pair, the only ones in the pack that reproduce.
牠們身體上缺少可在許多種狗身上見到的一些馴化特徵，如成犬的吠叫。牠們每年繁殖一次，與野狼相同，而且有穩定的群體組織，由一對雄雌成犬領導。一個群體只有這對成犬負責繁殖。

Bradley Smith, a research associate at Flinders University in Adelaide who has studied dingoes, said by e-mail that tests put dingoes closer to wolves in the kind of intelligence they display. “Both dingoes and wolves, being highly effective predators, are great at problem solving, working well in groups, and independent problem solving,” he said.
阿德雷得傅林德斯大學研究員史密斯長期研究澳洲野狗，他透過電郵指出，測驗結果顯示，澳洲野狗的智力表現比較接近野狼。他說：「澳洲野狗及野狼都是效率很高的掠食者，而且長於解決問題，在群體中表現良好，而且能夠單獨解決問題。」

But they also understand humans in a way that wolves do not. They get it when a person points at something; wolves don’t.
然而牠們理解人類行為的能力，卻又超乎野狼。如果某人指向某物，澳洲野狗會明白其中的意義；野狼則否。

Dingoes, Dr. Smith wrote, “seem to be a prime example of one of the first types of ‘dogs’. Not domestic dogs as we know them now, but some form of early dog that made it easier for the human-canid relationship to develop. You could almost say dingoes are frozen in time.
史密斯說：「澳洲野狗似乎是初期狗的原始典型。牠們有別於今天的家犬，而是某種使人狗比較容易發展關係的早期狗。你幾乎可以說，澳洲野狗是凍結在歲月中的活化石。」

Dingoes came to Australia 3,500 to 5,000 years ago, probably with Asian seafarers, and already at least partly domesticated. At the time, people had been on Australia for almost 50,000 years, without dogs. The dingo quickly became an essential part of Aboriginal life and stories.
澳洲野狗大約在3500至5000年之前出現在澳洲，應該是隨亞洲航海人一同前來，而且當時至少已部分馴化。當時，人類在澳洲繁衍生息已將近五萬年，而且沒有狗。野狗很快就成為澳洲原住民生活與故事少不了的一部分。

The phrase “three-dog night” has been attributed to indigenous Australians as a way of describing how cold it was. However, it does not seem that Aborigines bred dingoes selectively.
以「三犬之夜」形容十分寒冷，據說即語出澳洲原住民。不過澳洲原住民似乎並未有選擇性的飼養野狗。

Europeans, who brought sheep with them, killed dingoes as pests, and built a 5,300-kilometer fence to keep them out of southeastern Australia. The result is a confusion in even the legal status of dingoes. In some parts of Australia they are pests, but in other parts they are protected.
帶著羊群前來澳洲的歐洲人把野狗視為有害動物予以獵殺，而且築起一道全長5310公里的柵欄，把牠們隔絕於澳洲東南部之外，結果連澳洲野狗的法律定位都混淆不清。在澳洲部分地區牠們是有害動物，在其他地區卻又受到保護。

Whatever the outcome of the coroner’s inquest, and even as new science shows the ecological importance of dingoes, their populations are under pressure all over Australia.
無論法醫驗屍的最後結果如何，就在新科學發現顯示澳洲野狗對生態十分重要的此際，牠們的族群已在澳洲全境面臨壓力。

Arian D. Wallach, at James Cook University in Queensland, said “every single population of dingoes that I know of in Australia is persecuted.”
昆士蘭詹姆斯‧庫克大學的華勒克說：「我所知道的澳洲野狗族群，每一個都受到迫害。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/science/australias-view-of-the-dingo-evolves.html

2012-04-03聯合報/G5版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS 陳世欽譯 原文參見紐時週報十版右