Nuclear Accidents Kill Brightly Colored Birds Most One of the
birds in the study. CREDIT: Timothy Mousseau The brighter the
bird, the less likely it is to survive the devastating effects
of radiation exposure, according to a new study that examined
avian populations around the 1986 nuclear disaster site at
Chernobyl, Ukraine. The same chemicals that some birds use to
color their feathers are also used to mop up the cancer-causing
free radicals that bombard them upon exposure to radiation, so
when birds hijack these chemicals for their plumage, they have
less left over for protection, the scientists said. Previous
research has suggested that animals deficient in chemicals
called antioxidants are more likely to suffer DNA damage in the
presence of radiation than other animals, because antioxidants
soak up the damaging free radicals that radiation creates in the
body. Anders Møller, an ecologist at the Université Pierre et
Marie Curie in Paris, and Timothy Mousseau, a biologist at the
University of South Carolin