Posted on 02/24/2025 9:12:07 AM PST by dennisw
For decades, scientists have studied animals living in or near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to see how increased levels of radiation affect their health, growth, and evolution.
A study analyzed the DNA of 302 feral dogs living near the power plant, compared the animals to others living 10 miles away, and found remarkable differences.
On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor in northern Ukraine—then part of the Soviet Union—exploded, sending a massive plume of radiation into the sky. Nearly four decades later, the Chernobyl Power Plant and many parts of the surrounding area remain uninhabited—by humans, at least.
Animals of all kinds have thrived in humanity’s absence. Living among radiation-resistant fauna are thousands of feral dogs, many of whom are descendants of pets left behind in the speedy evacuation of the area so many years ago. As the world’s greatest nuclear disaster approaches its 40th anniversary.
Biologists are now taking a closer look at the animals located inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), which is about the size of Yosemite National Park, and investigating how decades of radiation exposure may have altered animals’ genomes—and even, possibly, sped up evolution.
The idea of radiation speeding up natural evolution isn’t a new one. The practice of purposefully irradiating seeds in outer space to induce advantageous mutations, for example, is now a well-worn method for developing crops well-suited for a warming world.
Scientists have been analyzing certain animals living within the CEZ for years, including bacteria, rodents, and even birds. One study back in 2016 found that Eastern tree frogs (Hyla orientalis), which are usually a green color, were more commonly black within the CEZ. The biologists theorize that the frogs experienced a beneficial mutation in melanin—pigments responsible for skin color—that helped dissipate and neutralize some of the surrounding radiation.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
GMTA!...................
Most likely wants some USAID money to study them more.
Agree. Catchy title, vacuous words in the article.
I call BS on that. If you want to mutate seeds using radiation no need to go to space as a commercial method. More like USAID crony narrative supporting grant fodder. J school business and science competence, cliche’ ridden prose.
As the article points out, the Chernobyl wild dogs have been inbred to a significantly higher degree than usual. If I have it right, a more limited gene pool would increase the speed of beneficial adaptation through random mutation, while at the same time the higher background radiation might increase the overall rate of mutation.
It sounds like the differences are just variations in DNA, like blots that don’t line up.
Of course, the fact that this is an “Exclusion Zone”, and the animals can’t really mix their genes easily with outsiders, might be the most likely explanation.
See Post #10 and Post #19 for authentic photos of the "strange mutations."
That’s why they call it The Theory of Evolution. They know they can’t prove it.
Quick call Peter Parker! There are spiders there he needs to look at!
“A well-worn method for regurgitating unsubstantiated crap.”
Nice! Says it all.
I was hoping for flippers or horns. That would be something to talk about.
Fruit dogs?
You succinctly summed up the article.
PM publishes a lot of anti-scientific gibberish like this. It was once naively thought that mutations could magically produce complex systems such as are ubiquitous in biology, but at best all we see are fluke cases where some kind of damage has a beneficial side effect in certain circumstances. (For example, antibiotic resistance arising because certain cellular pathways that the antibiotic uses are shut down by damage to regulatory switches. If there are alternate pathways the cell can use to survive this provides a benefit when the antibiotic is present, but the damage is just that, damage impairing a pre-existing functional system.)
Still, nice qualities in a dog.
Nope. In both the short story by Harlan Ellison, and the film adaptation, telepathic dogs had been specifically bred (or genetically engineered) to be used in police work - hence their near-equal (or superior?) intelligence and telepathy.
They were not portrayed as having evolved naturally, or due to radioactive mutation, to possess those traits.
Regards,
This reads like something written by an A.I. with a distinct penchant for 1950s sci-fi movies.
Regards,
LOL!
One paragraph in the article says this:
“Do they have mutations that they’ve acquired that allow them to live and breed successfully in this region?” co-author Elaine Ostrander, a dog genomics expert at the National Human Genome Research Institute, told The New York Times. “What challenges do they face and how have they coped genetically?”
Well, gee, Darren Orf, isn’t that your job to explain in YOUR article?
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