ZOMBIE TERROR OF NUKE BLAST SEX PIGS
Radioactive porkers making bacon with farm sows
RANDY glow-in-the-dark radioactive wild boar have been breeding with domestic pigs to create a terrifying Godzilla-style hybrid species, warn boffins.
The snorting beasts are one of the many bizarre outcomes of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in Japan, when it leaked deadly isotopes after being hit by a massive tsunami and earthquake.
Scientists studying radiation impact on wildlife say a hybrid species of wild boar and domestic pigs is now marauding around Fukushima.
A genetic study found that wild boar have since cross-bred with domestic pigs which had escaped from farms in areas deserted after the tsunami and earthquake displaced over 160,000 people.
Mating
Hunters have been tracking down hundreds of radioactive boar with registered levels of the radioactive element caesium 137, 300 times higher than is safe.
Fukushima University scientists used genetic testing to track the impact of the radiation on wildlife in a regional DNA investigation.
The study, published in journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, made the unexpected discovery that the boar had been mating with pigs.
The wild boar from surrounding mountains gradually moved into depopulated towns, meeting domestic pigs which ran wild after farmers were forced to flee the area.
The genetic sequences of 338 wild boar collected between 2006 and 2018 from across the region were analysed, with scientists discovering that at least 18 of them displayed a so-called ‘biological invasion’ of domestic pig genes.
The findings are remarkably similar to the fictional story behind the Godzilla movies, in which a mutated monster from the deep is unleashed by a nuclear event.
However, Donovan Anderson, a research scientist involved in the study, said the mutant pig genes would most likely be diluted with each future generation.