Alabama cavefish

Known only from Key Cave, on Tennessee Valley Authority land in Lauderdale County, northwest Alabama, and widely counted among the rarest cave fish in North America. Searches of more than a hundred other caves in the area have found no confirmed second population. It has no eyes and practically no pigment and reaches only 30 to 58 mm. Its food arrives from outside: adults move toward water disturbed by falling droplets or bat guano, so the bats roosting in the cave are part of its life support. Falling and degraded groundwater threaten it, and much of the land that feeds water into the cave remains unprotected.