More than 3 decades ago in Ukraine there was an accident of the biggest release of radioactive material- Charnobyl nuclear reactor disaster. Now, Charnobyl is mainly occupied with animals, that are a subject of many researches. In 2016 scientists have observed that a specie of tree frogs- naturally occurring in bright green colour- started having a black tint. What’s more surprising, the closer they got to the most polluted area of Charnobyl, the frogs looked darker or even pitch black. As we find out, animals within only 30 years already started adapting to such habitat and in consequence, frogs were born with more melanin. From this observation scientist found new melanin function- absorbing and dissipating parts of the harmful radiation energy. Some time ago, when I first heard about what happened in Charnobyl I was pretty much terrified of human tendency to destroy everything around us. It was scary just to think about the future of those animals, but after reading this article I feel relieved. Personally, I think it’s mind-blowing how nature- frogs in this case- can heal by itself in such a short period of time. It’s also so hard to imagine where we would be without evolution and how we don’t appreciate it in such situations. Now, since there’s no one living in Charnobyl and animals are successfully adapting, it has become one of the largest nature reserve in Europe with many endangered species in it, and I think it’s astonishing. The lesson I learned from this article is that we are way too good at damaging the environment and also it’s just better to leave it alone.
People are part of the environment too so the solution is probably not to leave it to its own devices but to learn to coexist with other species.
ReplyDeleteAnd unfortunately, as far as I know, unlike some frogs, mammals find it difficult to adapt to high levels of radiation.