by Rival packs of stray dogs scavenging for waste around the Chernobyl nuclear disaster may be evolving faster than other animals to survive in one of the most hostile environments on Earth.
Scientists are analyzing the impact of the world’s worst nuclear disaster 36 years ago on feral dogs that roam the power plant’s crumbling, abandoned buildings and the surrounding radioactive Red Forest.
Miraculously, the wild dogs are still able to reproduce and survive extreme winters while relying on the waste of tourists who are warned not to touch them.
Researchers say people can learn from the resilience of the 500 stray dogs, whose numbers have increased in the 36 years since the catastrophic accident and Soviet cover-up.
On April 26, 1986, an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine resulted in radioactive fallout being released into the atmosphere. 30 workers died and the long-term death toll from radiation poisoning is estimated to be in the thousands.
The packs are believed to be descendants of dogs that the families left behind during the chaotic evacuation. They are believed to have survived attempts by Soviet soldiers to shoot the animals to prevent the spread of radiation.
“Somehow, two small dog populations managed to survive in this highly toxic environment,” said lead researcher Dr. Norman Kleiman.
Blood samples were taken from semi-feral dogs captured around the power plant and another pack operating in the nearby town of Chernobyl.
Despite having the same breed composition as German Shepherds and being only ten miles apart, the populations of free-breeding dogs were found to reproduce independently.
By analyzing the dogs’ DNA, the team identified 391 outlier regions in their genomes that differed between the two groups, with some indicating genetic repair after exposures similar to Chernobyl.
Scientists say there is still a lot of work to be done to understand how decades of radiation exposure may have changed animals’ genomes – and possibly even accelerated evolution.
They hope future studies will reveal the genetic effects of radiation exposure and observe the adverse health effects of other nuclear or environmental disasters on both animals and humans.
Dr. NC State’s Matthew Breen explains, “The overarching question here is: Does an environmental disaster of this magnitude have a genetic impact on life in the region?”
“By finding out whether the genetic changes we discovered in these dogs are the dog genome’s response to the stresses the populations were exposed to, we may be able to understand how the dogs survived in such a hostile environment and what that could mean for everyone.” Population – animal or human – that is exposed to similar stresses.
Swedish authorities were the first to discover radioactive fallout in Europe, forcing Soviet officials who had tried to cover up the disaster to report it days later.
In 2017, a state veterinary authority in the Czech Republic said that about half of all wild boars in the southwest of the country were radioactive and considered unsafe for consumption. The boars feed on an underground fungus that absorbs radioactivity from the soil. Similar problems with radioactive wildlife have been reported in Austria and Germany.
The full study of the Chernobyl dogs was published in the journal Canine Medicine and Genetics.
