The wolves are exposed to cancer-causing radiation as they roam the wastelands of the abandoned city - with researchers finding part of their genetic information seems resilient to increased risk of the disease.
If you have an extremely high infant mortality rate, it won’t take that long.
If the radiation kills of a high enough percentage of individuals without cancer resistance it won’t take long at all.
Theoretically you could do it in only 2-3 generations if you had environmental factors that could give 100% of individuals without resistance cancer.
And that trait does exist in nature already, it’s just rare and mostly useless until environmental pressures only allow those individuals to reproduce.
If you have an extremely high infant mortality rate, it won’t take that long. If the radiation kills of a high enough percentage of individuals without cancer resistance it won’t take long at all.
Theoretically you could do it in only 2-3 generations if you had environmental factors that could give 100% of individuals without resistance cancer.
Only if you have some individuals with [cancer or whatever] resistance though.
Everyone has “cancer or whatever” resistance. That’s why DNA works, it has repair mechanisms.
Getting cancer is when that mechanism either fails or isn’t good enough to repair the damage.
Radiation can cause an excess of damage or different type of damage than what your natural mechanism is capable of fixing.
And that trait does exist in nature already, it’s just rare and mostly useless until environmental pressures only allow those individuals to reproduce.