An old gaunt dog was spotted at a barn in a town in Fukushima Prefecture last August, apparently feeding off the carcasses of cattle abandoned after the nuclear disaster started in March 2011 at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.
Naoto Matsumura, who had seen the dog, thought it a miracle that the animal had managed to survive in Tomioka, which is in the 20-km exclusion zone set up around the crippled power plant.
Residents had been ordered by the government to evacuate due to high levels of radiation.