Chernobyl as a "radioactive paradise"

When people talk about Chernobyl, nobody expects to read or see anything related with adjectives like fascinating, wonderful or fantastic… but today is not one of that days. One of the biggest nuclear accident of the mankind history has created an area uninhabitable for the humans but not for animals and plants, that they have increased the number of specimens. Chernobyl is, nowadays, a radioactive natural paradise.
Last week, a team of scientists published in the magazine “Current Biology” an interesting study with impressive pictures about the different animals and plants that are living in an area contaminated by a high-level radioactive. The objective of the study was analyzing the impact of the depopulation and of the radiation on plants and on the wildlife. 

I think that one of the most interesting conclusions of this project was that the number of animals has increased a lot! I believe that it’s an interesting conclusion because this result show us that the human presence and his economic activities are more harmful to the environment and for the wildlife than the worst nuclear disaster… But, what’s about the radioactivity? We know that there are more animals than there were before the accident but, in which conditions? I mean, they are contaminated or no? Well, the studies show us that the answer is yes, all kind of life in this area is contaminated and in fact, the true is that there are more animals but they are also more radioactive and despite this, the diversity of species is smaller. Although it may seem a disaster for the biodiversity of the area, it isn’t because the predictions were that it wouldn’t be any kind of life in the area. 

Different studies that are also appointed in this project have concluded that the main problem there aren't extravagant mutations as many imagine, but rather other smaller. The biologist Timothy Mousseau, who has been studying the area for years, has just published a very interesting informative video about these small mutations. Mousseau also explains how animals like birds or spiders have developed tumors or small deformations; for example, the insects with more radiation develop spots, the trunks of some trees have different colors than used to have,… summing up, the effects of the radiation are evident in the region but I’m afraid that not in the way we have imagined I mean, there aren’t very strange animals with to heads or fifteen legs.

Another interesting fact of this project is that some animals like wild boars, deer and lynx that live in different regions where it was assumed that the risk of contamination was lower, are also contaminated because they feed on plants and soil fungi, where radiation levels are much higher. 
So we can conclude that this contaminated region, apart from having become a radioactive natural paradise as I have said, is also a mine for biologist being as since the accident, different groups of researchers have made different studies in these areas. 

There is Timothy Mousseau video about the mutations that some animals suffer!