In 1986, the residents of Chernobyl were forced to flee their homes when
the town’s nuclear power plant turned into a disaster zone. The area of Ukraine
has been without a permanent human population ever since, but that doesn’t mean
it’s empty. The landscape is teeming with insects, plant life, and even
radioactive puppies descended from the house pets that were abandoned there 31
years ago.
A new mini documentary from Cloth Map explores the lives of some of
Chernobyl’s cutest occupants. In the “Puppies of Chernobyl,” the tiny animals
can be seen playing, wagging their tails, and running around just like
domesticated dogs. Though the stray dogs tend to gather around places with the
most tourist activity, like Chernobyl’s canteen, contact between humans and
puppies is discouraged. As host Drew Scanlon explains in the video below,
“Visitors are advised not to touch animals in the exclusion zone because they
could carry radioactive particles in their fur.”
According to Newsweek, the radioactivity goes even deeper than that. When
the American nonprofit Clean Futures Fund surveyed dogs in the exclusion zone,
they found pockets of radioisotopes in their bones. The organization has set up
a spay and neuter clinic nearby to keep the line of Chernobyl dogs from
proliferating.
