The Chernobyl disaster was a 1986 Ukrainian nuclear explosion that came to be as a result of inadequate staff in Chernobyl and a flawed reactor design that ultimately led to a steam explosion in the facility. The explosions and the fire caused around 5% of the radioactive reactor core– around 100,000 pounds of radioactive material– to spread into the environment which spread radioactivity throughout a lot of europe. Approximately 600,000 people died over the due to the radiation that spread, the explosion, and cancers from the radiation. 350,000 people were evacuated.
Many animals still reside in Chernobyl– apart from the thousands that were put down due to the worry of public safety– like the wolf. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone had basically become a large science experiment to understand animal biology once put under these extreme conditions, and Biologists from Princeton University have been studying these wolves for a decade. They found that despite their direct exposure to the Chernobyl explosion, the wolves are thriving in their environment due to their lack of contact with humans, and even have genetic mutations that protect them from cancer.
You would probably expect the wolves to have been greatly impacted by the explosion and struggling to survive in their new conditions. Due to them being irradiated and having to prey on irradiated game. Fortunately, these wolves are actually thriving in their environment compared to its neighboring packs. Cara Love, one of the biologists studying the wolves, has stated that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone’s wolf pack is seven times more dense than in protected wildlife areas.
These wolves are experiencing Chernobyl’s cancer causing radiation at over 6 times the legal limit allowed to be exposed to humans, and yet they thrive. The biologists theorize that they are experiencing a rapid kind of natural selection due to the rapid change in their environment which causes some wolves in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to become more resistant to cancer as that is now their environment and passing it down to its offspring.
Would you have expected this to happen to these wolves?
Do you know anything interesting about Chernobyl?
https://www.popularmechanics.com/
Replies
Good topic choice and summary Annelyse! The issue is you posted so late that you didn't give students an opportunity to make comments which is worth 30 points.
I wouldn't have expected for this to happen to wolves it's not a great sight to see. I know that chernobyl was a pretty bad bomb and that's pretty much it about all of it right now.
No, I would have never exspected to see this werid things to happen to the wolfs and it is sad to see that this happened. No, I don't even know a lot about Chernobyl, so I don't know anything cool about Chernobyl.