Chernobyl's Radioactive Wild Boar Paradox

Well, we maybe don't have to worry about mutant boars, but we do still have to worry about radioactive mutant mushrooms.

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "mushroom cloud"...

The Chernobyl exclusion zone is the largest unofficial nature reserve in Europe. It's really thriving with wildlife.

Fun Fact: The old source of well water for Surrey, BC Canada actually comes underground from Mt. Baker, and takes decades to get to Canada. Engineers I met there (gathering water) told me that it tests clean for Sesium (almost all the worlds water will show some sesium) but this water is so old it pre-dates Atomic testing!! So clean, clean.

Radroaches ❌ Radboars ✅

I didn't guess shrooms, but immediately thought, "boars DIG."

He is right. I did mushrooms once and I felt radiocative too.

Did a day tour of Chernobyl in 2019. Very cool. And very interesting to know about this. They were very strict about no food or drink during the tour, for fear you would ingest radioactive dust you picked up. In the end, they explained that the dosimeter I wore showed I had absorbed about the same amount of radiation as I would in a flight from New York to London.

How cool; As soon as you mentioned boars being more radioactive than the other animals, my mind went straight to "they're eating it out of the soil when the hunt fungus!"... Such an ego boost to know that's exactly whats going on!!

"Boars don't defy the laws of physics" ... I can't be the only one who's kind of disappointed right? Even if it would have greatly increased the likelihood we would one day see pigs fly.

Does radioactive contamination hurt the boars? Do they have shortened lives? Are they feeble minded? Any physical deformities?

There is so much new in that that already in 2012 in Germany it was established that wild boars can be contaminated due to eating mushrooms and each year a good number of them was hunted in the Thüringian forests and deposited...

"Found right under our noses" ❌ found right under boars snout ✅

Some of those mushrooms are not only bringing the cesium up little by little, they are conzentrating it. That way wild boars have always (since the 50ies) been much more radioactive than deer in any place, so radioactive after 1986 that they - together with the mushrooms - were banned from human consumption in some places here in Austria, while other animals like hare or deer were not.

as far as scishow videos go, this is one of my favorites. it's like watching a murder mystery movie but for science.

Very interesting - one more connection - a few years ago, in Bavaria, south Germany, they forbade the hunters to eat wild boars that they captured, as they found them radioactive. There was a ban after Chernobil but was then lifted for many years only to come back not more than 5 years ago. When I started watching this video I said to myself, the answer is mushrooms, and it was, but the question that springs to me now is what exactly happened back then in the first years of atmosferic testing in the world? How much of this was really expelled and how it still effects us? Was there a testing range in the Chernobil/Mogilev area, so that this is a local effect, or do we all suffer from it as "collateral damage"? Thank you for doing great insightful videos and best regards from Slovenia.

There was also a study of a certain species of catfish in the cooling pond many years ago. They expected them to be smaller than uncontaminated fish. They were actually quite a bit larger on average, but were otherwise normal. It was on an episode of "River Monsters" in 2013. I'm sure by now they've solved that mystery as well - perhaps the influx of deceased animals in the years after the disaster was extra food for many of them, as catfish have a voracious appetite as it is.

Boar are bastards, but the speckled light brown piglets are too cute

All we really need to know is how radiation is effecting the boars.

I have a battery radio from the 70s. . It stopped working two decades ago. But by accident I place of radioactive mushroom on it and suddenly, my radio became active again.