It is a catastrophe that still frightens people today. On April 26, 1986 at 1:23 a.m., the unthinkable happened. A reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, sending a cloud of radioactive dust over Europe. As for the human toll, it is still difficult to establish; the UN scientific committee (Unscear) officially recognizes only about thirty deaths. But more than thirty years after this event, researchers have observed a curious mutation in certain animals living in the region.
Indeed, researchers from the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in the United States are studying how wildlife, and more specifically wolves, repopulate the area. They found that canids living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) may have developed anti-cancer abilities. While their results have not yet been published in a scientific journal, they were presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle, Washington, in January 2024.
Following the explosion, the authorities demarcated what is called a “Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (ZET)”. This is an area of 1,000 km2 around the explosion zone. The latter is “chronically exposed to radiation and abandoned by the inhabitants”, note the researchers. This does not prevent life from gradually resuming its course. Thus, “wild animals such as horses, wolves, (…)
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