Chernobyl Radiation Leaves Male Birds Singing the Blues

One audible legacy of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster is that the woods surrounding the derelict Ukraine power plant are filled with the songs of lonely male birds.

Very high levels of nuclear contamination have killed far more of the female birds, mainly due to the stressful combination of coping with the radiation while reproducing.

Writing in the journal PLoS One, biologist Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina says that after counting the number of females to males around Chernobyl, researchers concluded that lonely bachelors are spending more time calling out for mates that just aren’t there.

The study also found higher percentages of yearlings, rather than more mature birds, meaning the survival rate is relatively low in the contaminated zone.

“It’s what we’ve seen for many years now,” said Mousseau, the director of the Chernobyl Research Initiative at USC, which has sponsored studies on the long-term ecological and health consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. More.