Items11The creator’s order
  1. 1OlmOlmThe only vertebrate in Europe that lives its whole life in caves, the olm is a pale salamander of the underground waters beneath the karst of Slovenia and the western Balkans. Its eyes are atrophied and covered with skin, yet it still senses light through the skin of its whole body and relies on…0
  2. 2LeptodirusLeptodirusLeptodirus hochenwartii, the narrow-necked blind cave beetle The first cave insect ever described. An assistant lamplighter, Luka Čeč, found it in Postojna Cave in 1831, and Ferdinand Schmidt named it the following year, which helped start the scientific study of cave life. It has no eyes and no…0
  3. 3Cryptops speleorexCryptops speleorexMovile Cave in Romania was cut off from the outside world millions of years ago, and workers came upon it only in 1986. Nothing there runs on sunlight: its food chain starts with bacteria living on carbon dioxide and methane, in air that may hold about half the usual oxygen. This venomous…0
  4. 4Plutomurus ortobalaganensisPlutomurus ortobalaganensisThe record for depth. This eyeless springtail was collected about 1,980 meters below the surface in Krubera-Voronja Cave in the western Caucasus, and when it was described in 2012 it was the deepest land animal known. It lives on fungi, far beyond the reach of any plant. Unusually for a deep cave…0
  5. 5Mexican tetraMexican tetraMexican blind cavefish, the cave form of the Mexican tetra One species, two ways of living: a silvery, sighted river fish and pale, eyeless fish in 29 deep caves in Mexico. That makes it one of the clearest natural experiments in cave evolution. Cave fish are born with eyes that degenerate as they…0
  6. 6Waterfall climbing cave fishWaterfall climbing cave fishA tiny loach from the Tham Maelana and Tham Susa karst of northern Thailand that walks. It climbs steep rock in fast-flowing waterfalls using the same diagonal gait as a salamander, braced by a robust pelvic girdle with features usually linked to land vertebrates. It is depigmented, has no visible…0
  7. 7Xibalbanus tulumensisXibalbanus tulumensisRemipedes are blind, cave-dwelling crustaceans of flooded caves along the coasts of Mexico and Central America, places reached only by cave divers. This species, from the Yucatán, gave the group its claim to fame: a 2013 study showed it was the first crustacean known to use venom to capture and…0
  8. 8Texas blind salamanderTexas blind salamanderFound only in the water-filled caverns of the Edwards Aquifer around San Marcos, Texas, this salamander is smooth and unpigmented, with a large, broad head, reduced eyes and long, slender limbs. It keeps its external gills throughout life and averages about 12 cm long. It was listed as endangered…0
  9. 9Kentucky cave shrimpKentucky cave shrimpA shrimp about 1.25 inches long that lives only in the immediate vicinity of Mammoth Cave National Park, in the lowest water-filled passages. It has no eyes and no pigment in its shell, which makes it transparent and very hard to spot. It finds food with its antennules, grazing the microbial films…0
  10. 10Alabama cavefishAlabama cavefishKnown 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…0