Radioactive wolves, delete-happy dogs and justice for ‘spy pigeon’
RADIOACTIVE CANCER WOLVES
Since 2014 Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist and ecotoxicologist from Princeton University, has been carrying out research on the wolf population living in the 1,000 square mile (2,600 km2) exclusion zone around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. Using radio collars to track the animals, she was able to make “real-time measurements of where [the wolves] are and how much [radiation] they are exposed to”.
She discovered that they were receiving over 11.28 millirems of radiation every day, more than six times the safe limit for humans. She also found that the wolves had evolved altered immune systems and that their DNA had changed significantly, developing areas resistant to increased cancer risk, enabling them to survive and thrive in the extreme environment of the exclusion zone. Love described the finding as “most promising” and hoped it could contribute to cancer prevention in humans. standard.co.uk, 9 Feb 2024.
CANINE LIT CRIT
Celebrated young adult author Dame Jaqueline Wilson narrowly escaped disaster when writing a recent novel. The book, The Magic Faraway Tree: A Christmas Adventure, based on the classic Enid Blyton tales, was almost complete when Wilson agreed to dog-sit a friend’s pets, a pug and a Jack Russell. “I was being mad enough to try to type on a computer where they could get at me,” said Wilson. “This seems unbelievable, but it happened: one dog pressed a button that said on it ‘delete’ and the other pressed ‘delete all’. My actual, almost-finished manuscript disappeared entirely.” Wilson and her partner Trish Beswick attempted to get the manuscript back, but “each time we tried to retrieve it, we were making it harder and harder,” she said. In the end, they needed an IT expert, Gary Freemantle, to rescue the missing text. “God bless Gary – within half an hour he had got it back for me,” said Wilson, who gave him a dedication in the finished book. Commenting on the near-miss, Wilson, who is an ambassador for the Battersea Dogs Home, said: “Never type whilst on the sofa where the dogs can reach the laptop.” telegraph.co.uk, 24 Mar 2024.
TERRIFYING TERRIER
Police were called to a home in Herne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, by neighbours bothered by incessant barking. Arriving at the property, officers could hear s
