28 réponses à ce sujet

[Chuvvy]

So it begins...

[Lord Phoebus]

Mutations such these occur every day with or without exposure to radiation. It's also impossible to tell what caused this mutation, it could be a natural replication error, heavy metals in the water, pesticides on the vegetation etc. However given the birth rates of rabbits this isn't really a huge deal. There will be genetic damage and deaths caused by this disaster, but the more serious defects will not pass their genes to the next generation which will mitigate the damage somewhat.

[naughty99]

recently I learned that all the freaking HDCam SR tapes are sold out all over the world because of this damn earthquake!

this is causing me a lot of headache

[Chuvvy]

Lord Phoebus wrote...

Mutations such these occur every day with or without exposure to radiation. It's also impossible to tell what caused this mutation, it could be a natural replication error, heavy metals in the water, pesticides on the vegetation etc.

Yeah, or, more likely, it could be the nuclear power plant that is currently bleeding radiation into the atmosphere. And I don't think it's incredibly common for something to be born with out ears. That's like saying this is common. Behold, the after affects of Agent Orange. Google it for more shocking images.

Modifié par Slidell505, 01 juillet 2011 - 05:59 .

[GodWood]

Dawww

[mad825]

Slidell505 wrote...

Yeah, or, more likely, it could be the nuclear power plant that is currently bleeding radiation into the atmosphere.

The aftermath of an event like Fukushima or Chernobyl is that the local vegetation and animals becomes contaminated. At the lower parts of the food chain, the plants will absorb radiation via the soil which is then consumed by herbivores and so forth…

Still, it’s not like Japan wasn’t irradiated before Fukushima. They are still suffering from the effects of radiation that was released back in the 1940s by the nuclear bombings.

Modifié par mad825, 01 juillet 2011 - 06:48 .

[lobi]

Come back when you find one six feet tall firin teh lazor out its eyes.
www.smh.com.au/news/russia/a-day-in-the-halflife-of-chernobyl/2005/08/24/1124562907092.html

Modifié par lobi, 01 juillet 2011 - 07:11 .

[Chuvvy]

lobi wrote...

Come back when you find one six feet tall firin teh lazor out its eyes.

[lobi]

Is that you cosplaying at the last Furry/Hentai convention? You can find heaps of mutations around caused by chemicals rather than rads.
Also breeding will do it and

stupidity.

Modifié par lobi, 01 juillet 2011 - 07:23 .

[Chuvvy]

lobi wrote...

Is that you cosplaying at the last Furry/Hentai convention? You can find heaps of mutations around caused by chemicals rather than rads.
Also breeding will do it www.google.com.au/search

You haven't seen Donnie Darko?

[lobi]

Slidell505 wrote...
You haven't seen Donnie Darko?

?
IMDb say's that was Ten years ago and rated R so, thats a no.

[Swordfishtrombone]

Slidell505 wrote...

Lord Phoebus wrote...

Mutations such these occur every day with or without exposure to radiation. It's also impossible to tell what caused this mutation, it could be a natural replication error, heavy metals in the water, pesticides on the vegetation etc.

Yeah, or, more likely, it could be the nuclear power plant that is currently bleeding radiation into the atmosphere. And I don't think it's incredibly common for something to be born with out ears. That's like saying this is common. Behold, the after affects of Agent Orange. Google it for more shocking images.

Lord Phoebus had a point. While it is certainly possible that this mutation was caused by the extra radiation due to the nuclear accident, there's no way of attributing individual cases like this to a specific cause. All you can do is observe the frequency of such mutations in the animal populations, and if you see a statistical increase, then you can say that some of the additional mutations beyond the normal rate of such mutations is almost certainly due to the extra radiation from the accident.

Animals - and humans - with debilitating mutations have always been born. Not at a great frequency, but still. When you have fast breeding animal, you see the more dramatic kind of mutations more often, simply because of the numbers.

The danger, after such an event, is that we fall for an error we humans, as pattern seeking animals, are very prone to: anomaly hunting. That is, looking for aberations that confirm our expectations or fears, thus noticing such things as mutant rabbits, when before the accident, such things would have gone below our radar.

It's the same thing that happens with climate change deniers and those that accept climate change - those that accept climate change note each hot summer, and attribute it to climate change, whereas every climate change denier notices every cold winter, and uses it to confirm their notion that the whole thing of global warming is nonsense.

Both miss the fact that cold spells and hot waves are things that happen with or without climate change, and that you can't positively attribute any specific event to climate change or lack thereof - you can only observe it statistically, looking at the frequency of anomalous weather events, and the average temperature of the Earth over longer periods of time.

[Lord Phoebus]

Slidell505 wrote...

And I don't think it's incredibly common for something to be born with out ears. That's like saying this is common. Behold, the after affects of Agent Orange. Google it for more shocking images.

[sarcasm]Yes, because people are never born deaf, without eyes, without ears, without certain bones being formed, etc.[/sarcasm]  I'm not saying that a beta particle couldn't have penetrated the nucleus of a germ line cell of rabbit and damaged the DNA causing a gene to not be expressed when that cell underwent meiosis.  I'm saying that just because an aberration is born in an irradiated area doesn't mean that the irradiation caused the aberration, because abberations happen outside of irradiated areas too.  What you have to look at is how many more aberrations occur in the irradiated area relative to the "clean" areas.  That kind of data won't be available for years. A single rabbit with no ears, is sad, but statistically meaningless, we won't know how bad the damage is until we have more data. 

With Chernobyl we still have no idea how many people will die from radiation exposure, the number that can be directly attributed to radiation is 68, but estimates range from 4000 to 1.4 million depending on the study and the methods used.  We do have drugs and treatments for dealing with cancers and radiation exposure as well as methods for decontaminating areas than were not available when Chernobyl occured (the workers who decontaminated Chernobyl were not given radiological protective gear), so the human toll will likely be lower.  Part of the problem is that a lot of the data for the effect of radiation on humans was derived from Hiroshima (high dose acute exposure, e.g. 1 Sievert in a day), and the data that exists for low dose chronic exposure (e.g. 1 Sievert over 50 years, mostly derived from people living with radon in their basements) indicates that the Hiroshima data exaggerates the effects of low dose radiation.

Modifié par Lord Phoebus, 01 juillet 2011 - 08:37 .

[slimgrin]

Thats nothing...

 

Modifié par slimgrin, 01 juillet 2011 - 11:57 .

[jamesp81]

You know, I think I saw in this in a movie once. This is where the zombie apocalypse starts.

I hope you all have plenty of ammo.

[jamesp81]

Lord Phoebus wrote...

Slidell505 wrote...

And I don't think it's incredibly common for something to be born with out ears. That's like saying this is common. Behold, the after affects of Agent Orange. Google it for more shocking images.

[sarcasm]Yes, because people are never born deaf, without eyes, without ears, without certain bones being formed, etc.[/sarcasm]  I'm not saying that a beta particle couldn't have penetrated the nucleus of a germ line cell of rabbit and damaged the DNA causing a gene to not be expressed when that cell underwent meiosis.  I'm saying that just because an aberration is born in an irradiated area doesn't mean that the irradiation caused the aberration, because abberations happen outside of irradiated areas too.  What you have to look at is how many more aberrations occur in the irradiated area relative to the "clean" areas.  That kind of data won't be available for years. A single rabbit with no ears, is sad, but statistically meaningless, we won't know how bad the damage is until we have more data. 

With Chernobyl we still have no idea how many people will die from radiation exposure, the number that can be directly attributed to radiation is 68, but estimates range from 4000 to 1.4 million depending on the study and the methods used.  We do have drugs and treatments for dealing with cancers and radiation exposure as well as methods for decontaminating areas than were not available when Chernobyl occured (the workers who decontaminated Chernobyl were not given radiological protective gear), so the human toll will likely be lower.  Part of the problem is that a lot of the data for the effect of radiation on humans was derived from Hiroshima (high dose acute exposure, e.g. 1 Sievert in a day), and the data that exists for low dose chronic exposure (e.g. 1 Sievert over 50 years, mostly derived from people living with radon in their basements) indicates that the Hiroshima data exaggerates the effects of low dose radiation.

What data we do have, as you say, suggests low dose chronic rad exposure is not nearly so dangerous as was previously thought.

Another thing that's interesting is how the vegetation and animal life has moved back in the area around Chernobyl and adapated to the radioactive conditions.  There's even a fungus growing near the plant that feeds off the ionizing radiation in a manner similar to plants that feed off sunlight.

As I said above, though, this is how it starts.  Keep plenty of ammo onhand

[Cutlass Jack]

I'll be slightly more worried when a human is born with bunny ears...

Modifié par Cutlass Jack, 01 juillet 2011 - 05:20 .

[HoonDing]

Killer bunny!

[Seagloom]

"Arcanum" was an awesome in part because its succor beast spell summoned a vorpal bunny with a high magic stat. I love how adorable and vicious that rabbit is.

The rabbit with no ears looks strange, but definitely cute. I just hope the poor thing's life is not too adversely affected without hearing. Rabbits rely on their eyes and ears way more than we do. Fortunately it looks like they are keeping the animal in captivity where those senses are irrelevant to survival.

[TheKillerAngel]

It looks a lot like a Guinea Pig.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

Ok, the unexpected natural damnation is happening. Evacuate the Fukushima at once and forever ...

[Swordfishtrombone]

Seagloom wrote...
The rabbit with no ears looks strange, but definitely cute. I just hope the poor thing's life is not too adversely affected without hearing.

Having no external ears does not mean not having hearing - I'm pretty certain that the genetic structures that guide the formation of the external structures of the ear are not the same genetic structures that guide the formation of the mammalian inner ear.

Thus it is unlikely that the loss of the external ear would be accompanied by the loss of hearing in this rabbit - it most probably still has ear-holes and complete inner ear structures.

In the wild, of course, the loss of the outer ear for a rabbit would be detrimental, as they can use those ears to pinpoint the source of a sound, and for amplification, but in a pet-rabbit it's probably of little consequence.

[Seagloom]

Thank goodness for small mercies then. I would hate to see that rabbit fend for itself in the wild. The ones around here struggle enough with their ears.