• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Chemistry

Using snakes to monitor Fukushima radiation

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
July 20, 2021
in Chemistry
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
IMAGE
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Researchers placed tiny GPS trackers on rat snakes to track their movements at Fukishima

IMAGE

Credit: Hannah Gerke

Ten years after one of the largest nuclear accidents in history spewed radioactive contamination over the landscape in Fukushima, Japan, a University of Georgia study has shown that radioactive contamination in the Fukushima Exclusion Zone can be measured through its resident snakes.

The team’s findings, published in the recent journal of Ichthyology & Herpetology, report that rat snakes are an effective bioindicator of residual radioactivity. Like canaries in a coal mine, bioindicators are organisms that can signal an ecosystem’s health.

An abundant species in Japan, rat snakes travel short distances and can accumulate high levels of radionuclides. According to the researchers, the snakes’ limited movement and close contact with contaminated soil are key factors in their ability to reflect the varying levels of contamination in the zone.

Hanna Gerke, an alumna of UGA’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, said tracked snakes moved an average of just 65 meters (approximately 213 feet) per day.

“Our results indicate that animal behavior has a large impact on radiation exposure and contaminant accumulation,” Gerke said. “Studying how specific animals use contaminated landscapes helps increase our understanding of the environmental impacts of huge nuclear accidents such as Fukushima and Chernobyl.”

Why are snakes a good indicator of radioactive contamination?
James C. Beasley, Gerke’s advisor during the study, said snakes can serve as better indicators of local contamination in the zone than more mobile species like East Asian raccoon dogs, wild boar and song birds.

“Snakes are good indicators of environmental contamination because they spend a lot of time in and on soil,” said Beasley, associate professor at SREL and Warnell. “They have small home ranges and are major predators in most ecosystems, and they’re often relatively long-lived species.”

The team identified 1,718 locations of the snakes while tracking them for over a month in the Abukuma Highlands, approximately 15 miles northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The paper’s findings reinforce the team’s previous study published in 2020, which indicated the levels of radiocesium in the snakes had a high correlation to the levels of radiation in the soil where the snakes were captured.

How to track snakes
To determine where the snakes were spending their time and how far they were moving, the team tracked nine rat snakes using a combination of GPS transmitters and manual very-high frequency tracking. Beasley said VHF transmitters allowed the team to physically locate a snake every few days to identify if it was underground or in arboreal habitat.

The researchers placed the transmitters on the rear back of the snakes. Tape was initially placed around the snakes. Then superglue was used to ensure the transmitters were secured to the tape. This allowed the transmitters to easily be removed from the animals at the conclusion of the study.

Working in the hilly, rugged terrain of abandoned villages and farms, the team located snakes in trees, grasslands and along roadside streams. Gerke said the snakes avoided the interior of conifer forests but were often found in deciduous forests, along forest edges and inside of abandoned buildings. More than half of the tracked snakes, she said, spent time in abandoned barns and sheds, which can help shield them from contamination in the surrounding soil.

During winter months, their risk of exposure likely increases when they seek shelter underground, close to the more heavily contaminated soils. Future work to clarify the link between the micro-habitat use of species like snakes and their contaminant exposure, as well as the potential health risks to snakes and other wildlife due to increased radiation exposure, will be critical to understanding the effects of the Fukushima Daiichi accident on local wildlife populations.

###

Thomas G. Hinton served as coauthor on the study, Institute of Environmental Radioactivity, Fukushima University, Fukushima, Japan; Centre for Environmental Radioactivity, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Faculty for Environmental Sciences and Nature Research Management, Aas, Norway.

The full study is available online at https://meridian.allenpress.com/copeia/article-abstract/109/2/545/467583/Movement-Behavior-and-Habitat-Selection-of-Rat?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Media Contact
James C. Beasley
[email protected]

Original Source

https://news.uga.edu/using-snakes-to-monitor-fukushima-radiation/

Related Journal Article

http://dx.doi.org/10.1643/h2019282

Tags: BiologyEarth ScienceEnergy SourcesEnergy/Fuel (non-petroleum)Nuclear Physics
Share15Tweet9Share3ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

New Study Uncovers Why Modern Proteins Were Selected by Nature

New Study Uncovers Why Modern Proteins Were Selected by Nature

September 29, 2025

Global Call to Advance Robust and Reproducible Polyphenol Research to Launch Next October in Malta at Polyphenols Applications World Congress and Iprona

September 29, 2025

Physicists Narrow the Search for Elusive Dark Matter

September 29, 2025

Lab Breakthrough in Mimicking Star Formation Wins Prestigious John Dawson Award

September 29, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    87 shares
    Share 35 Tweet 22
  • Physicists Develop Visible Time Crystal for the First Time

    73 shares
    Share 29 Tweet 18
  • How Donor Human Milk Storage Impacts Gut Health in Preemies

    58 shares
    Share 23 Tweet 15
  • Scientists Discover and Synthesize Active Compound in Magic Mushrooms Again

    56 shares
    Share 22 Tweet 14

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Psychological Interventions Boost Type 2 Diabetes Outcomes

Ensuring Data Integrity in Cross-Platform Athlete Case Deduplication

Educational Video Boosts Awareness of Testicular Torsion

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 60 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.