Shocking find amongst Chernobyl ruins
Strange things are happening amid the fallout of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, with spectacular mutations leaving experts surprised.
They’re not turning blue. But are the stray dogs roaming Chernobyl’s radioactive wasteland undergoing rapid evolutionary change?
Strange things are happening amid the fallout of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
Black fungus found flourishing amid the debris in the ruined plant itself may be “eating” radiation. Frogs are changing colour. Wild pigs and wolves are thriving despite being loaded with contaminated cesium.
And there may be something different about its dogs.
Speculation soared in September with the photos of allegedly mutant blue dogs roaming the Chernobyl ruins.
It was a false alarm.
But it is exactly the sort of thing scientists have been seeking ever since a radioactive plume settled on the landscape in 1986.
The resulting 4000-square-kilometre exclusion zone in the heart of Eastern Europe has since become a de facto wildlife refuge.
Endangered Przewalski horses, badgers, bats, bison and boars are thriving. As are otters, owls, foxes, and lynx. Eagles soar among the swans and storks.
But things aren’t so great for bugs.
Scientists speculate this is because their eggs are highly susceptible to surface contaminants.
The exclusion zone is also home to about 900 wild dogs. About 250 live around the ruined reactor. Another 200 occupy the nearby abandoned city of Pripyat.
Volunteers regularly catch, tag, examine and release them.
They’re an ideal way to monitor the movement of radiation through the environment.
Now, scientists say the dogs display apparent genetic differences from other nearby populations.
Environmental experiment
The Chernobyl disaster was the most radioactive event in history.
Reactor 4 overheated. Its superheated graphite moderator (a barrier designed to slow the flow of atoms between fuel rods) became exposed to air. This caused it to ignite, blasting a hole in the containment dome and venting plumes of fallout across Belarus, Europe, Russia and Ukraine.
Almost all the local population was evacuated. They’ve never returned.
But they left their pets behind. And their livestock. And the woods and forests have spent the past 40 years reclaiming abandoned urban landscapes.
All have been subject to intense scrutiny as scientists strive to understand the threat of widespread nuclear war.
Radiation becomes harmful once it becomes powerful enough to penetrate the skin and damage DNA molecules.
Sometimes that DNA dies. Sometimes it cannot be repaired.
And that’s where mutations arise.
The corrupted code it contains is reproduced.
Usually, it is manifested as a tumour, deformity, or birth defect.
And the mutations have been spectacular.
Cows with mouths where their noses should be.
Birds with bent beaks.
Frogs turning black.
Some 400 deformed farm animals were born in 1990 alone. Generally, they survived only a few hours.
But sometimes a mutation can confer a new or enhanced characteristic.
That’s where evolution kicks in.
A creature better suited to survival will have greater success in reproducing. And its genes will spread rapidly through future generations.
Most of the radioactive substances found at Chernobyl are Cesium-137 and iodine-131. These have contaminated the food chain. And the further one moves up that chain, from plant to herbivore to carnivore, the greater it concentrates.
So mutations and change should be most evident among apex predators. That means wolves and dogs.
Dogged resilience
Recent footage of bright blue dogs went viral on social media. AI algorithms boosted wildly speculative posts about rapid evolution to win more clicks.
But the story was too good to be true.
Dogs of Chernobyl volunteer program veterinarian Dr Jennifer Bets insisted there was “0 per cent chance that the blue colour is related to radiation”. She suspected the dogs had been rolling in an abandoned portable toilet deodoriser.
“It is strictly topical and just on their fur and was dissipating by the end of the week,” she added.
Eventually, a Ukrainian radiation fallout expert spilled the beans. She told local media that the dogs had been dyed as part of their population control program.
The blue was an obvious marker to identify which dogs had already been sterilised. This enabled vets to select appropriate targets for sedation.
“The dye is harmless to these dogs,” Ecocenter executive Serhiy Kireev states.
But the stories persist.
Some say the Chernobyl wolves and dogs are proving remarkably resilient to cancerous tumours. Others point to their apparent outstanding health.
A 2023 study tested 302 Chernobyl dogs and reportedly found unusually high genetic drift.
The study identified 391 genomic markers where the free-roaming dogs differed from others outside the exclusion zone. And 50 specific genes were involved in immune system operations, stress response and DNA repair.
But a recent follow-up study has failed to confirm the results.
Barking up the wrong tree
“Contrary to some reports in the media, the Chernobyl dogs show no signs of elevated tumour (i.e. cancer) rates, but also show no signs of reduced cancer rates,” writes Dogs of Chernobyl researcher and University of South Carolina Professor Timothy Mousseau.
His study of 302 Chernobyl dogs also failed to detect elevated mutation rates compared with other dog populations. And their emerging differences are instead likely the result of returning to a wild lifestyle.
“The truth is that cancers are generally a disease of old age (in both dogs and humans) and most dogs in the harsh conditions of Chernobyl do not live long enough to express cancers, even if they were predisposed to do so,” he explains in an extensive Facebook post.
Radiation is proving to have different levels and types of effects on different animals. It’s also unevenly distributed, with “hazardous” patches scattered across the exclusion zone accounting for 30 per cent of its total area.
And evolution itself is equally discriminatory.
“There is only one study that shows what might be adaptation to radiation, and it is for bacteria living on the wings of birds,” Professor Mousseau concludes.
“This is not surprising given that bacteria can reproduce very quickly, with thousands of generations since the disaster, allowing for adaptive evolution.
“Dogs and most of the other plants and animals often have only a single chance to reproduce per year, which dramatically slows evolutionary response to change.”
Originally published as Shocking find amongst Chernobyl ruins
