How Much Radiation Is(n't) Good For You

If you haven’t read this superlative and yet creepy article about the lushly irradiated wildlife around Chernobyl, do so now:

On the surface, Igor says, the wildlife seems to be thriving, but under the fur and hide, the DNA of most species has become unstable.

They’ve eaten a lot of food contaminated with cesium and strontium. Even though the animals look fine, there are differences at the chromosomal level in every generation, as yet mostly invisible.

But some have started to show: there are bird populations with freakishly high levels of albinism, with 20 percent higher levels of asymmetry in their feathers, and higher cancer rates. There are strains of mice with resistance to radioactivity—meaning they’ve developed heritable systems to repair damaged cells.

Covered in radioactive particles after the disaster, one large pine forest turned from green to red: seedlings from this Red Forest placed in their own plantation have grown up with various genetic abnormalities. They have unusually long needles, and some grow not as trees but as bushes. The same has happened with some birch trees, which have grown in the shape of large, bushy feathers, without a recognizable trunk at all.

"Genomes, er, unpredictable," says Igor. "Genome not exactly same from generation to generation. They change."

This is not good for a species. Genomes are supposed to stay the same. That’s what holds a species together. No one knows what these changes could result in.

"Soon or late," Igor says, "new species will evolve."

In other words, new animals could actually be in the making here. The area has become a laboratory of microevolution—"very rapid evolution," says Igor—but no one knows what will emerge or when...