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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Birds in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl are adapting to — and may even be benefiting from — long-term exposure to radiation, ecologists have found. The study, published in the British Ecological Society's journal Functional Ecology, is the first evidence that wild animals adapt to ionising radiation, and the first to show that birds which produce most pheomelanin, a pigment in feathers, have greatest problems coping with radiation exposure.
According to lead author Dr Ismael Galvan of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC): "Previous studies of wildlife at Chernobyl showed that chronic radiation exposure depleted antioxidants and increased oxidative damage. We found the opposite — that antioxidant levels increased and oxidative stress decreased with increasing background radiation."

http://phys.org/news/2014-04-chernobyl-birds-ionis ing.html [phys.org]

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-24 35.12283/abstract [wiley.com]

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