The 1986 nuclear accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine (then part of the USSR) led to over 116,000 people being evacuated from the surrounding area. There is now a 30km exclusion zone where nobody lives.
In 2017, scientists at the University of South Carolina and others began the Dogs of Chernobyl Research Initiative. Scientists collected samples from hundreds of feral dogs living in the exclusion zone and found that they were genetically distinct from dogs elsewhere in the world. The team's findings are published in Science Advances.
'We find that there are two major populations of dogs within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone; those that live in the industrial areas of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and those that live approximately 15 kilometers away in the residential area called Chernobyl City,' lead author and PhD student, Gabriella Spatola, told Gizmodo.
'The Chernobyl dog population provides a unique opportunity to study the long-term effects of radiation on a population that is closely linked to humans in a natural setting,' Spatola said.
However, Jim Smith, professor of environmental science at Portsmouth University, said: '…this study in no way links differences in population structure of dogs to current radiation at Chernobyl. It only shows that there is a different mix of breeds and families at Chernobyl compared to the other sites – this isn’t a surprising finding given that the current population depends on the particular mix of breeds which survived the domestic animal cull in 1986 as well as subsequent introductions.'
Professor Smith continued: 'I am surprised that the authors do not clearly state in the paper that their results do not show that radiation is causally linked to differences in population structure of dogs at Chernobyl.'