Chernobyl’s stray dogs studied to see effects of radiation

After the disaster at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, local residents were forced to permanently evacuate, leaving behind their homes and, in some cases, their pets. Concerned that these abandoned animals might spread disease or contaminate humans, officials tried to exterminate them.

And yet, a population of dogs somehow endured. They found fellowship with Chernobyl cleanup crews, and the power plant workers who remained in the area sometimes gave them food.

Today, hundreds of free-ranging dogs live in the area around the site of the disaster, known as the exclusion zone. They roam through the abandoned city of Pripyat and bed down in the highly contaminated Semikhody train station.

Now, scientists have conducted the first deep dive into the animals’ DNA. The dogs of Chernobyl are genetically distinct, different from purebred canines as well as other groups of freebreeding dogs, scientists reported Friday in Science Advances.

It remains too soon to say whether, or how, the radioactive environment has contributed to the unique genetic profiles of the dogs of Chernobyl, scientists said. But the study is the first step in an effort to understand not only how long-term radiation exposure has affected the dogs but also what it takes to survive an environmental catastrophe.

The project is a collaboration among scientists in the United States, Ukraine and Poland, as well as the Clean Futures Fund, a nonprofit based in the United States that works in Chernobyl. The nonprofit, which was established in 2016, began as an effort to provide health care and support to power plant employees, who still work in the exclusion zone.