We love our dogs and strive to give them the best lives we can, but not every canine is as fortunate – among them are the feral dogs living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) near Pripyat in northern Ukraine.
When we think of the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred when a reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded in 1986, we tend to consider the impact it had on humans. People evacuated the area, and it’s still abandoned to this day, but plenty of wildlife remains. And among the creatures, there are a lot of feral dogs.
Now, approaching 40 years since the disaster, scientists are exploring how the explosion and subsequent exposure to radiation may have impacted on the evolution of the animals living nearby.
Experts from the University of South Carolina and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) have examined the DNA of 302 feral dogs around the CEZ to understand how radiation might have changed their genomes.
“Do they have mutations that they’ve acquired that allow them to live and breed successfully in this region?” said co-author Elaine Ostrander, a dog genomics expert at the NHGRI, to the New York Times. “What challenges do they face and how have they coped genetically?”
This isn’t the first time the impact of radiation on evolution has been looked at – and it’s even common to irradiate seeds in space to induce beneficial mutations when it comes to developing crops amid global warming.
And scientists have been analyzing the impact of living in the CEZ on animals for some years now, with one 2016 study finding that Eastern tree frogs, usually green, were more likely to be black when in the CEZ. It’s thought that there was a mutation in melanin.
Meanwhile, this study has found that feral dogs living in the area showed distinct genetic differences from dogs living only 10 miles away. It’s still early days, however, and it’s not guaranteed that this is due to radiation exposure.
As one environmental scientist told Science News, it can be difficult to work out what’s caused by radiation, and what’s caused by other factors, such as inbreeding.
While this study is fascinating in its own right, it’s also hoped that it’ll pave the way for more research, potentially looking at humans. Timothy Mousseau, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of South Carolina, said, “We have high hopes that what we learn from these dogs will be of use for understanding human exposures in the future.”
