The Blue Dogs of Chernobyl: Evolution in the Ashes

I love the color blue, it’s my absolute favorite, hands down. I always go to Longwood Gardens when they’re doing their blue theme in the winter and check out all the blue colored flowers. Their orchids are seriously stunning and I wish I could tuck one into my purse and add it to my growing collection of them. I remember reading once that blue is super rare in nature (or maybe my art teacher told me), which is why it hits us emotionally and why artists like Picasso went through their whole ‘blue period’ phase. Back in the day, blue paint was insanely pricey because it came from grinding up lapis lazuli stones, which cost more than gold. Anyway, that’s why I perked up when I saw headlines about these blue-furred dogs in Chernobyl, I just had to figure out how blue found itself in nature again.

I remember watching those clips of the show Chernobyl my husband sent me. When Reactor No. 4 erupted into the night sky on April 26, 1986 in Chernobyl, it released a cloud of invisible radiation. People evacuated in a panic (once they were allowed to), the nearby forests supposedly turned this eerie reddish-brown from the fallout, birds dropped dead, and even helicopters got so irradiated they had to be abandoned. It was pure chaos, no other word for it.

But not everything left.

Stray dogs, descendants of pets left behind during the evacuation, started to breed. Nearly forty years later, there are hundreds of them living in and around the Exclusion Zone. And somehow, imposssibly, they’re still alive. Some even seem flaunt blue fur in the pale Ukrainian light.

A paper published in Science Advances in 2023 analyzed the genetic structure of 302 free-roaming dogs from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (they referred to it as the CEZ). The study was led by researchers including Gabriella J. Spatola and Elaine A. Ostrander from the National Human Genome Research Institute, in partnership with the University of South Carolina and CFF. Blood samples were collected starting in 2017 as part of CFF’s “Dogs of Chernobyl” program. It seemed like the DNA patterns were different enough, some of the dogs had a unique genetic signature tied to the Exclusion Zone.

Now if you want to get bummed a little, the blue tint reported in some individuals does not come from literal radiation glow (as some internet myths claim), but from chemical interactions between minerals in the contaminated soil and compounds in their fur. There’s actually speculation that they rolled around in some chemicals like the ones we use in porter-potties. You read that correctly. The blue glow seemed to wash off their fur and might be from toilet water.

(Full disclosure, this picture’s AI-made since I couldn’t snag a real one without copyright drama, but if you want to see a real blue dog, click here)

Evolution by Disaster

Sadly, radiation doesn’t “create” superpowers, despite what comic books promised us, so don’t go jumping into a vat of anything anytime soon, please. It won’t turn you blue. Rolling around in porter-potty water is not advised either. Instead, radiation does something much worse, it damages DNA, introducing the exposed to random mutations. Most are harmful, a few are neutral, and like the tiniest bit might be a little bit helpful. The odds are total crap, like playing slots here in Vegas where I am right now.

The dogs of Chernobyl are a case study in what happens when nature experiments without supervision (doesn’t it always though?). The mutations accumulating in their genome don’t really define a “new species,” but they sort of hint at divergence. These dogs absolutely are evolving, but realistically, that has nothing to do with the blue color.

Scientists are still trying to figure out what these real differences mean. Are they better at repairing DNA damage? Do they metabolize toxins differently? Or have they simply continued on through luck and generational resilience?

Every one of those dogs is descended from love. They were once somebody’s pet, but when the evacuation buses came, the orders were no animals allowed. Soldiers were sent to “deal with” the ones left behind, and I’m guessing a few dogs escaped to the woods, or the soldiers never wanted to kill all the dogs and let them go.

For decades and generations now though, they’ve lived wild, scavenging among ghost towns and reactor ruins. Yet when volunteers return, the dogs run toward them, tails wagging. They remember kindness and that they were once our freinds and companions. They don’t know about isotopes or fallout zones, they just know the warmth of a voice and the gift of a hand with treats in it.

Radiation and Reverence

I like the idea that nature takes back what we abandon in an almost surreal and utopia-ish way. Cranes growing ivy up and down it, while playgrounds house wolves and blue dogs. Nature reclaims every crack in the foundations people so carefully built, and time wears down whatever was left behind.

Wolves, boars, horses, foxes all thrive in the absence of us in that fallout area, despite high levels of radiation that should kill them all. It’s one of nature’s strangest truths that if you remove us, life surges back.

The dogs, however, linger where people come and go (the checkpoints, the workers’ lodgings, the memorials), they’re like in-between creatures, half-wild, half-domesticated.

Their DNA could help us understand how chronic, low-dose radiation affects mammals over generations. Which is kinda a question with serious implications for everything from cancer research to space travel. These dogs are holding data that could shape our own future in ways we might not have yet thought about.

Really though, these dogs are survivors, little reminders that even after we screw things up big time, like with Chernobyl, life pushes on. It adapts, heals in weird ways, and yeah, sometimes it even throws in a splash of blue that’s as striking as that lapis lazuli I mentioned earlier. Even if it’s just toilet water.

The Blue Dogs of Chernobyl: Evolution in the Ashes

Evolution by Disaster

Radiation and Reverence

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