November 6, 2025 • 11 mins
Dogs roaming near the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster suddenly turned bright blue, baffling caretakers.
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READ or SHARE: https://weirddarkness.com/blue-dogs-chernobyl/
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.
#WeirdDarkness #ChernobylDogs #BlueDogs #NuclearDisaster #ChernobylExclusionZone #RadioactiveDogs #ChernobylMystery #AbandonedAnimals #StrangePhenomena #ChernobylWildlife
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
I'm Darren Marler and this is weird dark news. Three
dogs appear bright blue on October sixth, twenty twenty five,
in one of the most contaminated places on Earth. The
people who feed these animals every week had never seen
anything like it. They'd been out there the previous week
and everything seemed normal. Then seven days later they come
(00:32):
back and find dogs that look like they've been dipped
in paint. The Dogs of Chernobyl program run by the
Clean Futures Fund, posted videos showing canines with coats saturated
in sky blue coloring. These dogs were roaming through the
Chernobyl exclusion zone, where radiation levels measure six times higher
than what's considered safe for humans. The footage went viral
(00:55):
almost immediately. People started speculating about mutations, artificial intelligence filters,
somebody spray painting the dogs. The team on the ground
had no answers at first, just confused observations and multiple
failed attempts to catch these animals. The Clean Futures Fun
team encountered the blue dogs during their regular sterilization campaign
(01:15):
at the Chernoble site. They run these campaigns multiple times
a year, catching stray dogs, sterilizing them and then releasing
them back into the zone. Its exhausting work in a
place most people would never set foot. When they spotted
the blue dogs, they tried repeatedly to catch them for examination.
These particular dogs proved extremely fearful of people, not just skittish,
(01:35):
but deeply weary, in a way that makes sense if
you consider they're the descendants of animals that survived soldiers
trying to shoot them decades ago. The team would need
tranquilizer darts to have any chance, but during their October
five through thirteen visit, they couldn't even get close enough
to do that. The dogs stayed just out of range,
bright blue and healthy looking, moving through the ruins. Doctor
(01:57):
Jennifer Betts served as veterinary medical director for the Dogs
of Chernobyle program. After the failed capture attempts, she started
investigating the area where the blue dogs kept appearing. She
found an old portable toilet in the same location. The
dogs had apparently been rolling in a substance that had
accumulated on their fur, most likely from the leaking porta potty.
(02:18):
The team couldn't positively confirm their suspicions without catching the
dogs and testing the substance. But all the evidence pointed
that direction. The Clean Futures Fund made it clear on
social media that the blue coloring wasn't from radiation. It
wasn't spray paint either. The dogs showed no signs of distress.
They appeared healthy and behaved normally, continuing to scavenge and
(02:39):
survive in the abandoned landscape. Doctor Betts noted that as
long as the dogs didn't lick the majority of the
substance off their fur, it would likely prove mostly harmless.
Dogs have tougher stomachs than people give them credit for,
but even they do have limits with industrial chemicals. In
twenty twenty one, resonans near Derjenskarushia started seeing a pack
of bright blue dogs roaming streets near an abandoned chemical plant.
(03:03):
Those dogs had been rolling in copper sulfate, a pale
blue chemical used in manufacturing. Nobody had to evacuate, nobody
panicked about radiation. It was dogs doing what dogs do,
which is role in absolutely anything that smells interesting to them,
no matter how toxic or disgusting humans find it. The
Chernobyl incident added a sensational setting to what turns out
(03:24):
to be ordinary dog behavior. Around industrial chemicals. The location
made all the difference in how people reacted mentioned Chernobyl
and everybody's thinking about three eyed fish and glowing mutations
instead of the more mundane reality of dogs rolling in
porta potty chemicals. The Clean Futures FONT program does use
colored markers during sterilization campaigns. They mark dogs to identify
(03:46):
which animals have recently undergone surgery. The markers come in green, red, blue,
or purple and wash off within a few days. The
organization only applies them to the tops of dogs heads,
just a small spot that tells other volunteers this this
particular dog is good for now. The full body blue
coloring discovered in October was completely different. These dogs looked
(04:07):
like somebody had dunked them in a vat of blue dye.
Following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April of nineteen eighty six,
around one hundred and twenty thousand people evacuated from the
surrounding area and the nearby city of Pripyat. Soviet officials
told families they'd be gone for three days. Pack light,
leave everything valuable, You'll be back before you know it.
People left food and water out for their pets, believing
(04:28):
they would return soon enough to collect them. They never
came back, so Viet soldiers arrived with orders to shoot
the abandoned animals. The government wanted to prevent any possibility
of radioactive contamination spreading through pets that might wander beyond
the exclusion zone. Soldiers went through systematically, house by house,
shooting dogs and cats on site. Some animals escaped into
(04:51):
the forests, others hit in the industrial ruins and basements
of abandoned buildings. The ones that survived became the ancestors
of the dogs living there today. The Clean Future Is
Fund estimates approximately two hundred and fifty stray dogs live
around the nuclear plant itself, with another two hundred and
twenty five in Chernobyl City and hundreds more scattered throughout
the exclusion zone. These animals descended from pets that evaded
(05:14):
the liquidators decades ago, and they have managed to establish
stable breeding populations in one of the most contaminated environments
on the planet. Since twenty seventeen, the Dogs of Chernobyl
program has sterilized over one thousand dogs and cats living
in the nearly nineteen square mile radius of the Chernobyl
exclusion zone. The work involves regular visits, setting traps, performing
(05:35):
surgeries and makeshift veterinary stations, and releasing the animals back
into their territory. The organization provides food and veterinary care
to these populations, monitoring the health of the creatures living
where humans can't safely stay for extended periods. Scientists have
been studying these dogs for years, and they keep finding
things that don't add up. Research published in Science Advances
(05:56):
characterized dogs from the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant and Chernoble City
as genetically distinct populations, not just different, but distinct in
ways that don't happen in dog populations living a short
distance apart from normal circumstances. Norman J. Cleman from Columbia
University's Mailman School of Public Health led research analyzing blood
(06:16):
samples from one hundred and sixteen semi feral dogs. The
team collected samples during sterilization procedures conducted in twenty eighteen
and twenty nineteen, coordinating with the Dogs of Chernobyl program
and timing their research around the regular veterinary campaigns. The
study included sixty dogs from the Nuclear power Plant area
and fifty six from Chernobyl City. These two locations sit
(06:38):
just sixteen kilometers apart, close enough that you'd expect dogs
to wander back and forth regularly, but they don't. The
research revealed that dogs from the power plant showed increased
genetic similarity within their own population, while demonstrating clear differentiation
from other groups. Despite their close geographic proximity, the teams
found a little evidence of flow between the two populations.
(07:02):
The dogs apparently were not breeding across these territories. They
stayed in their respective areas, creating isolated populations that were
drifting apart genetically. Climate explained something most people don't realize
about the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The explosion didn't just release
radioactive material. The cleanup and remediation efforts over three decades
(07:23):
released many other toxins into the environment, heavy metals, lead, powder, pesticides,
and asbestos. The dogs living near the plant face chronic
exposure to this cocktail of environmental hazards, not just the radiation.
Studying them is particularly valuable for understanding how animals adapt
to multiple contamination sources simultaneously. A study published in Plus
(07:45):
one in December twenty twenty four investigated whether increased mutation
rates were driving to genetic differences observed in these dogs,
everybody expected to find elevated mutation rates. Radiation causes mutations.
These dogs live in a radio acactive environment. Therefore, they
should show elevated mutation rates driving rapid genetic changes. The
logic seemed air tight. Researchers from the Breen Lab at
(08:09):
North Carolina State University worked with Climen and others to
study large and small scale changes to the genome. They
examined chromosome structure and microsatellite diversity, looking for any evidence
of accelerated mutation rates. They found nothing. The study found
no evidence that a higher mutation rate in the nuclear
power plant dogs was driving genetic divergence between populations. That
(08:32):
result puzzled researchers. The dogs studied in the exclusion zone
tend to congregate where humans work in areas with relatively
low radiation levels. Today, Climate's team couldn't find significant evidence
of radiation exposure in the dogs using full body probes.
The dogs aren't stupid, Climan noted, they hang out where
people will feed them and people aren't working in the
(08:54):
hottest zones. The dogs have apparently figured out how to
survive by staying close to human activity, which happens to
occur in these safer areas, the genetic differences might have
simpler explanations that don't involve radiation at all. In small,
isolated populations like those in the exclusion zone, genetic drift
can cause the frequency of certain gene versions to randomly fluctuate.
(09:16):
Some traits vanish from a population completely, while others become
extremely common just through random chance. Combined with limited breeding options,
that could explain these dog's unique genetic makeup without requiring
dramatic mutations or adaptations. Thousands of people continued working in
the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone until the Russian invasion in twenty
(09:37):
twenty two. They conducted remediation projects, built new facilities for
processing nuclear fuel, and maintained the containment structure over the
destroyed reactor. These workers faced daily exposure to low levels
of radiation and other environmental contaminants, spending hours in the
zone before leaving each day. Climb And hopes research on
these dogs will improve understanding of health risks faced by
(10:00):
humans in disaster response operations. You can't run controlled experiments
on human populations exposed to multiple environmental hazards over decades
that would be deeply unethical. The dogs living in Chernobyl
offer a natural population for studying exactly these kinds of
long term, multi source exposures. They're not lab animals, nobody
(10:20):
deliberately exposed them to anything. They are survivors making do
in a contaminated environment, and scientists can learn from watching
how their populations change over time. The blue dogs of
October twenty twenty five apparently just found an unfortunate place
to roll around. Their bright coloring captured international attention and
sparked speculation about radiation induced changes. Social media lit up
(10:44):
with theories about mutations at real time genetic changes. News
outlets ran stories with ominous headlines. The reality involved dogs
being dogs near a broken porta potty in a place
where wildlife has learned to survive despite decades of contamination.
The team from Dogs of chernobyls still trying to catch
those blue dogs. They'll head back during their next sterilization
(11:05):
campaign and try again. Eventually, those dogs will need to
be caught, sterilized, and released like all the others. When
that happens, the team will finally be able to confirm
exactly what substance turned them blue. Until then, They're out
in the exclusion zone, bright blue and thriving, completely unaware
of the international attention they've generated, living their lives in
one of the strangest places on Earth. If you'd like
(11:27):
to read this story for yourself or share the article
with a friend, you can read it on the Weird
Darkness website. I've placed a link to it in the
episode description, and you can find more stories of the paranormal,
true crime, strange, and more, including numerous stories that never
make it to the podcast, at Weirddarkness dot com. Slash
news
I'm Darren Marler and this is weird dark news. Three
dogs appear bright blue on October sixth, twenty twenty five,
in one of the most contaminated places on Earth. The
people who feed these animals every week had never seen
anything like it. They'd been out there the previous week
and everything seemed normal. Then seven days later they come
(00:32):
back and find dogs that look like they've been dipped
in paint. The Dogs of Chernobyl program run by the
Clean Futures Fund, posted videos showing canines with coats saturated
in sky blue coloring. These dogs were roaming through the
Chernobyl exclusion zone, where radiation levels measure six times higher
than what's considered safe for humans. The footage went viral
(00:55):
almost immediately. People started speculating about mutations, artificial intelligence filters,
somebody spray painting the dogs. The team on the ground
had no answers at first, just confused observations and multiple
failed attempts to catch these animals. The Clean Futures Fun
team encountered the blue dogs during their regular sterilization campaign
(01:15):
at the Chernoble site. They run these campaigns multiple times
a year, catching stray dogs, sterilizing them and then releasing
them back into the zone. Its exhausting work in a
place most people would never set foot. When they spotted
the blue dogs, they tried repeatedly to catch them for examination.
These particular dogs proved extremely fearful of people, not just skittish,
(01:35):
but deeply weary, in a way that makes sense if
you consider they're the descendants of animals that survived soldiers
trying to shoot them decades ago. The team would need
tranquilizer darts to have any chance, but during their October
five through thirteen visit, they couldn't even get close enough
to do that. The dogs stayed just out of range,
bright blue and healthy looking, moving through the ruins. Doctor
(01:57):
Jennifer Betts served as veterinary medical director for the Dogs
of Chernobyle program. After the failed capture attempts, she started
investigating the area where the blue dogs kept appearing. She
found an old portable toilet in the same location. The
dogs had apparently been rolling in a substance that had
accumulated on their fur, most likely from the leaking porta potty.
(02:18):
The team couldn't positively confirm their suspicions without catching the
dogs and testing the substance. But all the evidence pointed
that direction. The Clean Futures Fund made it clear on
social media that the blue coloring wasn't from radiation. It
wasn't spray paint either. The dogs showed no signs of distress.
They appeared healthy and behaved normally, continuing to scavenge and
(02:39):
survive in the abandoned landscape. Doctor Betts noted that as
long as the dogs didn't lick the majority of the
substance off their fur, it would likely prove mostly harmless.
Dogs have tougher stomachs than people give them credit for,
but even they do have limits with industrial chemicals. In
twenty twenty one, resonans near Derjenskarushia started seeing a pack
of bright blue dogs roaming streets near an abandoned chemical plant.
(03:03):
Those dogs had been rolling in copper sulfate, a pale
blue chemical used in manufacturing. Nobody had to evacuate, nobody
panicked about radiation. It was dogs doing what dogs do,
which is role in absolutely anything that smells interesting to them,
no matter how toxic or disgusting humans find it. The
Chernobyl incident added a sensational setting to what turns out
(03:24):
to be ordinary dog behavior. Around industrial chemicals. The location
made all the difference in how people reacted mentioned Chernobyl
and everybody's thinking about three eyed fish and glowing mutations
instead of the more mundane reality of dogs rolling in
porta potty chemicals. The Clean Futures FONT program does use
colored markers during sterilization campaigns. They mark dogs to identify
(03:46):
which animals have recently undergone surgery. The markers come in green, red, blue,
or purple and wash off within a few days. The
organization only applies them to the tops of dogs heads,
just a small spot that tells other volunteers this this
particular dog is good for now. The full body blue
coloring discovered in October was completely different. These dogs looked
(04:07):
like somebody had dunked them in a vat of blue dye.
Following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April of nineteen eighty six,
around one hundred and twenty thousand people evacuated from the
surrounding area and the nearby city of Pripyat. Soviet officials
told families they'd be gone for three days. Pack light,
leave everything valuable, You'll be back before you know it.
People left food and water out for their pets, believing
(04:28):
they would return soon enough to collect them. They never
came back, so Viet soldiers arrived with orders to shoot
the abandoned animals. The government wanted to prevent any possibility
of radioactive contamination spreading through pets that might wander beyond
the exclusion zone. Soldiers went through systematically, house by house,
shooting dogs and cats on site. Some animals escaped into
(04:51):
the forests, others hit in the industrial ruins and basements
of abandoned buildings. The ones that survived became the ancestors
of the dogs living there today. The Clean Future Is
Fund estimates approximately two hundred and fifty stray dogs live
around the nuclear plant itself, with another two hundred and
twenty five in Chernobyl City and hundreds more scattered throughout
the exclusion zone. These animals descended from pets that evaded
(05:14):
the liquidators decades ago, and they have managed to establish
stable breeding populations in one of the most contaminated environments
on the planet. Since twenty seventeen, the Dogs of Chernobyl
program has sterilized over one thousand dogs and cats living
in the nearly nineteen square mile radius of the Chernobyl
exclusion zone. The work involves regular visits, setting traps, performing
(05:35):
surgeries and makeshift veterinary stations, and releasing the animals back
into their territory. The organization provides food and veterinary care
to these populations, monitoring the health of the creatures living
where humans can't safely stay for extended periods. Scientists have
been studying these dogs for years, and they keep finding
things that don't add up. Research published in Science Advances
(05:56):
characterized dogs from the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant and Chernoble City
as genetically distinct populations, not just different, but distinct in
ways that don't happen in dog populations living a short
distance apart from normal circumstances. Norman J. Cleman from Columbia
University's Mailman School of Public Health led research analyzing blood
(06:16):
samples from one hundred and sixteen semi feral dogs. The
team collected samples during sterilization procedures conducted in twenty eighteen
and twenty nineteen, coordinating with the Dogs of Chernobyl program
and timing their research around the regular veterinary campaigns. The
study included sixty dogs from the Nuclear power Plant area
and fifty six from Chernobyl City. These two locations sit
(06:38):
just sixteen kilometers apart, close enough that you'd expect dogs
to wander back and forth regularly, but they don't. The
research revealed that dogs from the power plant showed increased
genetic similarity within their own population, while demonstrating clear differentiation
from other groups. Despite their close geographic proximity, the teams
found a little evidence of flow between the two populations.
(07:02):
The dogs apparently were not breeding across these territories. They
stayed in their respective areas, creating isolated populations that were
drifting apart genetically. Climate explained something most people don't realize
about the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The explosion didn't just release
radioactive material. The cleanup and remediation efforts over three decades
(07:23):
released many other toxins into the environment, heavy metals, lead, powder, pesticides,
and asbestos. The dogs living near the plant face chronic
exposure to this cocktail of environmental hazards, not just the radiation.
Studying them is particularly valuable for understanding how animals adapt
to multiple contamination sources simultaneously. A study published in Plus
(07:45):
one in December twenty twenty four investigated whether increased mutation
rates were driving to genetic differences observed in these dogs,
everybody expected to find elevated mutation rates. Radiation causes mutations.
These dogs live in a radio acactive environment. Therefore, they
should show elevated mutation rates driving rapid genetic changes. The
logic seemed air tight. Researchers from the Breen Lab at
(08:09):
North Carolina State University worked with Climen and others to
study large and small scale changes to the genome. They
examined chromosome structure and microsatellite diversity, looking for any evidence
of accelerated mutation rates. They found nothing. The study found
no evidence that a higher mutation rate in the nuclear
power plant dogs was driving genetic divergence between populations. That
(08:32):
result puzzled researchers. The dogs studied in the exclusion zone
tend to congregate where humans work in areas with relatively
low radiation levels. Today, Climate's team couldn't find significant evidence
of radiation exposure in the dogs using full body probes.
The dogs aren't stupid, Climan noted, they hang out where
people will feed them and people aren't working in the
(08:54):
hottest zones. The dogs have apparently figured out how to
survive by staying close to human activity, which happens to
occur in these safer areas, the genetic differences might have
simpler explanations that don't involve radiation at all. In small,
isolated populations like those in the exclusion zone, genetic drift
can cause the frequency of certain gene versions to randomly fluctuate.
(09:16):
Some traits vanish from a population completely, while others become
extremely common just through random chance. Combined with limited breeding options,
that could explain these dog's unique genetic makeup without requiring
dramatic mutations or adaptations. Thousands of people continued working in
the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone until the Russian invasion in twenty
(09:37):
twenty two. They conducted remediation projects, built new facilities for
processing nuclear fuel, and maintained the containment structure over the
destroyed reactor. These workers faced daily exposure to low levels
of radiation and other environmental contaminants, spending hours in the
zone before leaving each day. Climb And hopes research on
these dogs will improve understanding of health risks faced by
(10:00):
humans in disaster response operations. You can't run controlled experiments
on human populations exposed to multiple environmental hazards over decades
that would be deeply unethical. The dogs living in Chernobyl
offer a natural population for studying exactly these kinds of
long term, multi source exposures. They're not lab animals, nobody
(10:20):
deliberately exposed them to anything. They are survivors making do
in a contaminated environment, and scientists can learn from watching
how their populations change over time. The blue dogs of
October twenty twenty five apparently just found an unfortunate place
to roll around. Their bright coloring captured international attention and
sparked speculation about radiation induced changes. Social media lit up
(10:44):
with theories about mutations at real time genetic changes. News
outlets ran stories with ominous headlines. The reality involved dogs
being dogs near a broken porta potty in a place
where wildlife has learned to survive despite decades of contamination.
The team from Dogs of chernobyls still trying to catch
those blue dogs. They'll head back during their next sterilization
(11:05):
campaign and try again. Eventually, those dogs will need to
be caught, sterilized, and released like all the others. When
that happens, the team will finally be able to confirm
exactly what substance turned them blue. Until then, They're out
in the exclusion zone, bright blue and thriving, completely unaware
of the international attention they've generated, living their lives in
one of the strangest places on Earth. If you'd like
(11:27):
to read this story for yourself or share the article
with a friend, you can read it on the Weird
Darkness website. I've placed a link to it in the
episode description, and you can find more stories of the paranormal,
true crime, strange, and more, including numerous stories that never
make it to the podcast, at Weirddarkness dot com. Slash
news
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