Japan's EARless Rabbit! Because of radiation??? Mutation??? :O

From: Muessig (2011) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/09/earless-rabbit-japan_n_873552.html#s295521&title=Elephant_Votes_in

It's no Godzilla, but an earless rabbit allegedly born near Japan's severely-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has become the latest poster child for the side-effects of radiation exposure...

Though the longterm environmental effects remain unclear, there's no denying that the radiation emitting from Fukushima Dai-ichi, about 140 miles northeast of Tokyo, poses a major health risk.

However it's hard to say whether this earless bunny's strange appearance can be blamed on radiation, according to F. Ward Whicker, professor emeritus at Colorado State University's Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences.

"Yes, radiation can cause mutations that can be occasionally expressed as obvious birth defects, such as shown in the video(above)," Whicker wrote in an e-mail. "However, to say this is the result of contamination from the Fukushima accident is a stretch, because natural radiation, as well as many other chemical substances in the environment and other factors, can also be mutagenic."...

But nuclear historian Richard Rhodes says a link between the earless rabbit and radiation "is highly unlikely."

The evidence, Rhodes says, can be found in research conducted in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"In the years after World War II, there was a major American commission that looked into the health ramifications of the atomic bombings, and it found no genetic changes in the populations of Hiroshima or Nagasaki," said Rhodes, who has written extensively on the bombings. "There were no birth defects attributed to the bombing, and no genetic consequences."

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I'm sorry for citing almost all of the article. We all know what happened to Fukushima Dai-chi, the radiation leak that happened to the nuclear power plant. And we can't take the idea of this not having an effect to the location where the rabbit was discovered. But also the situation from the World War II, it also makes sense. While I was searching and discovered this, I freaked out! Funny, but what if they studied this carefully and discover that it was the cause of the radiation nearby? Amusing yet scary.

MONG