The packs of stray gray wolves where they lived in Chernobyl appear to have developed mutations that increase the chances of surviving canceraccording to new research.

Since the area was abandoned after the nuclear disaster in 1986, dogs have thrived in the exclusion zone and the wolf population is reportedly seven times larger than the surrounding areas in Ukraine. Wild animals have been monitored by scientists for many years. Radioactivity is believed to have increased the animals’ chances of surviving cancer, 35 years after the nuclear disaster.

Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University, has been studying wolves for a decade, and her research has found that they have altered immune systems that are strikingly similar to those of cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy.

Love, who presented her work at a conference in Seattle, Washington last month, noted that the “Chernobyl wolves survive and thrive despite generations of exposure and accumulation of radioactive particles in their bodies”. World’s worst nuclear accident released cancer-causing radiation, but her research shows wolves “seem resistant to increased cancer risk”.

Love and her colleagues went to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) in 2014 and had blood samples taken to understand their reactions to nuclear exposure. Her team used special GPS collars to get real-time measurements of where they are and how much radiation they are exposed to, according to their report in January. The findings show that gray wolves are exposed to more than six times the legal safe limit of radiation for the average human worker.

The pandemic and ongoing war in the region prevented the researcher and her fellow researchers from returning to the CEZ. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made their work even more dangerous. “Our priority is that people and partners there are as safe as possible,” she said.

The animals that roam the nuclear exclusion zone and their DNA have preoccupied many scientists around the world. Last year, Dr. Elaine Ostrander, a geneticist from the National Human Genome Research Institute, noted how this work could bring new insights into how to prevent cancer in humans and protect astronauts in space.