HOME |
RSS | 
The Eisriesenwelt is an enormous cave system south of Salzburg, Austria. It’s forty-two kilometers long, the first kilometer of which is covered in wondrous ice formations. The cave is open to visitors during the summer, so visit if you’re in the area. Check out more pictures at the link.
Link -via American Digest | Official Website | Photo: Eisriesenwelt GmbH
Comments Off
Near Orda, a Russian village in the Ural Mountains, you can find an enormous underwater gypsum cave. It’s one of the largest in the world, with galleries stretching as far as five kilometers. Victor Lyagushkin led a team of divers deep inside to photograph this natural wonder. You can view many beautiful pictures of it at the link. Link -via Fubiz
The Marble Caverns, as the name translates to English, are in General Carrera, a lake that straddles the border of Argentina and Chile. The lake has thrown gravel against the blue marble cliffs for millions of years, gradually carving these beautiful grottos. See more pictures at Environmental Graffiti. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend
(Image credit: Flickr member Nicolas Aracena)
Comments Off 
Cave animals just might be some of the strangest animals on Earth. Adapted to living somewhere with little to no light and practically no vegetation, these animals have evolved to survive in extreme environments and the results are often unbelievable.
A troglobite is an animal that exclusively live in caves and has adapted to its dark surroundings. Most troglobites cannot survive outside of the cave environment. Interestingly, while they never leave the cave environments, their lives are dependent on the world outside of the cave. Roots growing from plants above the surface, streams flowing from outside the cave and trogloxenes, and animals that use caves for shelter but travel outside the cave for nourishment are the only things that make life inside of caves possible. Roots allow nutrients to drip into the caves, streams bring in fresh food and dead animals and trogloxenes provide nutrient-rich feces and corpses that feed bacteria, insects and fungi that serve as the base of the cave’s food chain.
Because caves provide such a stable environment, many troglobites have lost the ability to adapt to temperature and humidity changes, which means most of these animals can only live in specific parts of their caves and many of them are endangered because they cannot branch out of their territory. Most troglobites survive in caves with humidity levels between 95 to 100 percent, but those that live in tropical areas deal with higher temperatures that result in more evaporation, thus, lower humidity levels.
There are currently 7,700 known species of trilobites, but because scientists estimate that 90% of caves are still undiscovered due to a lack of visible entrances, many animals living in caves have yet to be discovered. Just recently, scientists discovered 225 new caves and 30 new species in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California.
Because there are so many cool cave animals, this article is really long, resulting in a two part series. This is part one, so if you’re hunting for part two, you can find it on my blog, Rue The Day.
Images via Arne Hodalic [Wikipedia] and pfulton [Flickr]
While they may not spend their entire lives in caves, bats are one of the most important supporters of cave ecosystems. Their feces, dropped food and dead bodies provide food for insects, bacteria and fungi that support the carnivores in the cave. In some caves, the bat droppings pile up as high as one hundred feet. The guano is incredibly nutritious, making it a good cornerstone of any cave diet. In fact, a quarter-pound of it has more nutrients and protein than a Big Mac.
Bats are the only mammals in the world that can fly, but there are so many types that they actually represent twenty percent of all mammal species. Their ability to fly has enabled them to become some of the most widely distributed mammal groups in the world. They live everywhere on earth except a few isolated islands, the Arctic and the Antarctic.
While the stereotypes says all bats are blind, none are actually blind. Their small, underdeveloped eyes provide enough visual cues to help the bats navigate their routes beyond the area their echolocation can reach. Some species can even see ultraviolet light.
more …
Hang Ken, a cave rediscovered in Vietnam last year, may be the largest in the world:
Surrounded by jungle and used in the Vietnam war as a hideout from American bombardments, it is so large that it could hold a block of 40-storey skyscrapers. Its entrance was only rediscovered last year.
The photograph was taken by a British expedition returning to the rugged Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park near the border with Laos.
The cave, lit from above through a skylight, is one of a network of some 150 connected caverns, many still not surveyed, in the Annamite mountains.
Story Link and Slideshow via Super Punch | Photo: National Geographic/Carsten Peter
The remote Mustang caves of Nepal are yielding treasures and artworks that lead explorers to think it may be the legendary Shangri-La. Expeditions in 2007 and 2008 found 15th-century paintings, religious texts, and skeletons. The expeditions were led by US researcher Broughton Coburn and veteran mountaineer Pete Athans.
The unusual treasures have led Coburn and his team to suggest that the Mustang caves could be linked to “hidden valleys” thought to represent the Buddhist spiritual paradise known as Shambhala.
“Shambhala is also believed by many scholars to have a geographical parallel that may exist in several or many Himalayan valleys,” Coburn said.
“These hidden valleys were created at times of strife and when Buddhist practice and principals were threatened,” Coburn said. “The valleys contained so-called hidden treasure texts.”
Elaine Brook, author of Search for Shambhala, said the hidden valleys of Mustang indeed “have some of the characteristics of the mythical land of Shambhala.”
For his 1933 novel, Hilton used the concept of Shambhala as the basis for his “lost” valley of Shangri-La, an isolated mountain community that was a storehouse of cultural wisdom.
PBS will air two specials about the Mustang caves tonight. Link
(image credit: Kris Erickson)
