The “mutant” animals of Chernobyl: “confused” spiders and darker frogs

On April 26, 35 years ago, the most devastating nuclear accident in history occurred. The explosion of the power station of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, located in the north of Ukraine, in the city of Chernobyl, killed 31 people, whose deaths were caused directly by the explosion, although the radiation would leave more than 100 injured and, in the long term, more than a hundred dead.

With a radiation peak 400 times greater than the Hiroshima nuclear bomb -in Japan, in 1945- and 50 times higher than Fukushima – what happened in 2011 in the center of the Japanese city -, around 116 thousand people had to be evacuated. Esta cifra contemplaba una ciudad entera, es decir, a los 48.000 inhabitants of the ahora fantasmagórica Pripyat, donde durante aquella noche de abril sus ciudadanos dormían sin saber que tan solo a tres kilometers de distancia la planta empezaría a irradiar elsáigros lo más To be human: nuclear material.

Evacuation in the Surface area of ​​2590 km, better known as the exclusion zone, implied then the sacrifice of the animals of the place, that the series of HBO staged with spooky images of slaughter of pets and other wilder species.

The truth is that some people they left Chernobyl hoping to return one day, so many people have chosen to leave their dogs and cats behind. What they did not know was that the soldiers of the Soviet Army would be tasked with killing any pets that were in the area, as they considered them to be a risk of radioactive transmission.

However, there are still between 600 and 800 stray dogs and cats who roam the place. This is how organizations established it Clean Future Fund (CFF), who visited Chernobyl to sterilize and vaccinate dogs, and Spca International, which is dedicated to saving animals around the world.

To this day, among the scientists who analyze the area, a debate has been repeated for which no answer has been found. The unknown is how much the wild animals that persist in the exclusion zone benefit from the lack of humans and how much they suffer from the contamination. which still invades the place.

What science continues to study and what generates conflicting positions among specialists is whether the animals and plants that live near the point of the explosion have undergone mutations in their physical appearance and in their forms of behavior … or if it is due to something else. changed.

Where we believed that there would be no more trace of life, Today there are bears, bison, wolves, lynxes, Przewalski’s horses and some 200 species of birds, among other animals., as established by the doctor of biology and researcher in the region, Germán Orizaola, in an article where he exposes on the “Fauna of Chernobyl 33 years after the nuclear accident ”.

If he highlights “the general absence of negative effects of radiation on animal and plant populations”, he underlines: “We also found evidence of adaptive responses to radiation, such as changes in the coloring of frogs. The frogs in the exclusion zone are darker, which may protect them from radiation. “

Likewise, in terms of insects, some seem to live less or be more vulnerable to parasites, especially in areas with high radiation. Birds also appear to have negative effects, such as damage to their immune systems, increased albinism, and genetic alterations, although the latter do not prevent populations from continuing to reproduce.

With all this, the researchers wonder if the possible damage of nuclear activity on animals has been overestimated, given that They observe that the presence of humans – with hunting, fishing, pollution, among other actions – could be more harmful in the medium term for animals – especially for mammals – than a nuclear accident.

On the other hand, specialists in Chernobyl Ecological and Radiation Biosphere Reserve observed, as revealed in 2021 after analyzing them for three years, that the cows of Chernobyl They had organized themselves into herds and behaved very differently from domestic or breeding animals.

In line with the changes, a report by Nat Geo narrated by actor Will Smith shows, in an impressive close-up, a spider, while the voice disabled Of the documentary, he says: “Many cobwebs that were woven next to some houses in the villages were extremely unusual.” The image you see is that of a messy and ragged spider web with big holes and no clear pattern, unlike those that arachnids usually collect, totally symmetrical and orderly.

“Spiders struggled to weave a normal webThe video concludes, hinting that the behavior of the insects had mutated. At the same time, Nat Geo states that not only may the way animals move and manifest themselves have changed, their physical appearance may have changed as well.

An example of this mutation is the tree mallow bug, similar to the colloquially called San Antonio vaquita. “Two large eyes, nose and chin, and due to the symmetry, it is very easy to detect deviations,” says the researcher, commenting that color changes and the absence of parts of the body, such as some eyes, have been observed.

Meanwhile, one of the common features revealed by studies turned out to be that small fauna, such as birds and rodents, were perhaps the most affected, because it has shown negative consequences on their health, effect of radiation, like tumors and cataracts.

That many animals have mutated and adapted, little by little, to the polluted nature that surrounds them does not mean that they do not have or did not have in their bodies. high levels of cesium 137 -the radioactive component that triggered the explosion of Chernobyl– or that many died from the devastating effects the material had on them.

However, if 35 years after the most serious nuclear accident in history, there are still animals that seem to live in total peace and tranquility, especially due to the absence of humans, human beings must again question the damage we are doing to them. Earth and those who inhabit it.