First study on stray dogs in Chernobyl disaster
Outlooks of the dogs and puppies are ok without unshaped problem or limping. They turned out to be shepherd breeds. The health effects of low-levels of radiation including certain medical scans and working at nuclear power plants are still hotly debated. To figure it out is very important.
Thanks to a pack of wild canines who live close to the Chernobyl exclusion zone, scientists are now understanding how generations are affected by long tern radiation exposure.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00629-6
According to a research that appeared in Science Advances, the genetic makeup of canine populations may have been significantly altered by the radiation exposure that is still present at Chernobyl decades after the nuclear accident there in 1986.
The genetic makeup of canine populations exposed to various levels of radiation differs from one another according to Tim Mousseau, a professor of biological sciences at the University of South Carolina, US,
There are about 800 dogs. The dogs that are still present in the exclusion zone are likely descended from animals that were abandoned after residents of the area neat the Chernobyl nuclear power plant hastily left the area while also leaving all of their possessions including their dogs.
Dogs have higher rates of cataracts and great genetic diversity
The radioactive pollution caused a significant decline in the region’s wildlife populations, although some animals managed to survive and continue to reproduce.
According to the source, between 2017 and 2019 in locations with varying degrees of contamination, the Chernobyl Dog Research Initiative, which has been offering veterinary treatment, collected preserved blood samples from 302 dogs.
About the same time as building on the new safe confinement facility for the failing nuclear reactor started, the researchers started treating and sterilising the dogs.
They were concerned that the neighbourhood dogs might cause problems at the moment. Several of the effects that scientists have seen in dogs and other animals, are compared to those that were previously noted with atomic bomb survivors from Japan during the World War II.
For instance, professor Tim stated that because the eyes are the first tissues to exhibit symptoms of repeated exposure to ionising radiation, they have higher rates of cataracts and genetics of eye disorder.
The great genetic diversity of the region appears to allow dogs in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to live close to one another, migrate between locations and mate without restriction.
With their current research, scientists want to map the genetic development of dogs over the last few generation and examine how they persisted and spread over that period.
They content that these dogs’ distinctive genetic diversity makes them ideal research subjects for studies on the long term genetic health effects of highly radioactive environments on the populations of large mammals, particularly in figuring out the biological bases of human survival in areas of intense and ongoing environmental assault.
Source: Nature
