Doc! I saw some articles about dogs in Chernobyl turning blue; is this from the radiation? Wow! Does it make you wonder if Blue (in Blue’s Clues) might be Russian or Ukrainian? Could this explain the Blue Dog Democrats too – were they born near a reactor?
I had not heard of this one – appreciate your bringing it to my attention. And – wow! Dogs enter a radiation area and come out blue? Interesting! I have seen the blue-purple glow from Cherenkov radiation coming from nuclear reactors, high-activity radioactive sources, and spent reactor fuel – but that’s not quite as Smurf-blue as the blue dogs of Chernobyl, so I’m thinking we need to dig a little deeper. Oh – and I think that Blue is just a normal educational stuffed animal.
So here’s the thing – a lot of genes are involved in what color our hair is; at least a dozen and (according to one study), maybe more than 100! But even if it’s controlled by only a handful of genes, it’s hard for random mutations to affect multiple genes in just the right way to make a specific change in appearance. It’s unlikely – but not impossible – that such a change would happen once, turning one dog blue. But for a number of dogs, with different natural hair colors, to all end up with the same shade and tone of blue is highly unlikely.
It basically comes out to a math problem. Say there are 10 genes that would need to be changed to turn a dog’s hair blue. It takes about 20,000 genes to make a dog, so for a random mutation to affect one of the genes involved in changing the color of a dog’s hair to blue the odds are one in 2000 (about 0.05%). And even if a gene is changed, there are DNA repair mechanisms to repair the damage – they’re far more than 99% effective. So for each gene that’s damaged, there’s only a 1% chance (less, actually) that the damage will remain uncorrected, giving a 0.0005% chance that a single gene might be damaged and left unrepaired. And that has to happen 10 times to turn a dog’s fur blue! That’s in the category of something that’s possible – but is highly improbable. There would have to be millions of stray dogs for one of them to turn blue by chance…and that requires an awful lot of dogs; more than there are in the Chernobyl area and likely more than there are in the world.
And after all of that, it seems the mystery has been solved – the dogs most likely were simply rolling around in the blue liquid leaking from a portable toilet. Not as much fun as radiation…but a lot more plausible. As for the Blue Dog Democrats, I’d hate to speculate, but I’m pretty sure that neither radiation nor porta-potty are to blame.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Blue Dog Coalition, here’s what they say about themselves:
The Blue Dog Coalition is an official caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives comprised of fiscally-responsible Democrats, who are leading the way to find commonsense solutions. They are pragmatic Democrats, appealing to the mainstream values of the American public. The Blue Dogs are dedicated to pursuing fiscally-responsible policies, ensuring a strong national defense for our country, and transcending party lines to get things done for the American people.
As to whether or not they meet this aspiration…you’ll have to ask someone else. I’m pretty good at the science and practice of radiation safety, but politics and government are not my strong points. Oh – and I don’t think they’ve been affected by radiation.