00:00Over the last few years, our readers have been completely obsessed with the dogs of Chernobyl
00:04and how they're mutating in real time. So most of these dogs are believed to be descendants
00:11of the pets that were left behind from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. And for a long
00:15time, scientists assumed that the high levels of radiation in the area were what caused the
00:20dogs to have a unique genetic profile from other populations. But research from 2024
00:26tells a different story. And this has to do with a phenomenon known as genetic drift.
00:32And in this situation, it's basically random chance that causes the frequency of certain genes
00:39to vary in one way or the other. They either become extremely common or they disappear in
00:45the population altogether. So the theory is that this has nothing to do with natural selection
00:50and the dogs creating new traits to survive the radiation. It's just random chance.
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