Cave fish time!!

Cryptotora thamicola or the waterfall climbing cave fish are extremely rare, found in only eight caves on the border of Thailand and Myanmar. Like most cave fish they are blind and pigmentless but what makes them special is there ability to cling to walls and climb up flowing water.

"A Kind of Blindness, A Kind of Sight" by Jaclyn Kolev Brown

White Cave Velvet Worm (Peripatopsis alba), family Peripatopsidae, endemic to 2 cave systems in South Africa

Live bearing (viviparous).

Vulnerable, rare.

photograph by Rodrigo Ferreira

Grjótagjá Cave, Iceland by Sergio Thor Miernik

Running through the Caves and avoiding the arrows

Cueva de Arpea, Spain. A neat cave in the hinge of an anticline. (credit: Ángel M. Felicísimo)

Percentage of Spanish population residing in caves, 1963.

Onondaga

📷: @sjscoyote , 2010

📍: Onondaga Cave State Park, Missouri

📍Alaska, USA 🇺🇸

Texas zoo hatches brood of rare, ghostlike crayfish species

The hatchlings also mark the second-ever breeding of a blind, white, and 'cave-adapted' crayfish.

Another Texas zoo is celebrating a historic milestone in the restoration of a critically endangered species. This week, the San Antonio Zoo announced the births of 47 Oklahoma Cave Crayfish (Cambarus tartarus). Born at the zoo's Center for Conservation and Research (CCR), the crayfish are the first-ever to be hatched under the care of humans. 

Known as one of the rarest crayfish species in North America, the Oklahoma Cave Crayfish is no more than three inches in length, with a white or colorless appearance, according to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. The crayfish, which have no external eyes, thin pinchers and legs, are most at risk from groundwater pollution. Direct disturbance of their caves, which are limited to a single county in northeast Oklahoma, is also a critical threat. The state has listed the species as "state endangered." However, the species is undergoing review for possible inclusion on the endangered species list by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service...

Read more: https://www.chron.com/life/wildlife/article/texas-zoo-rare-crayfish-18364707.php

Rationally, I know that an elevated rate of mysterious disappearances tends to correlate geographically with large cave systems because caves are absurdly dangerous all by themselves and people won’t stop trying to prove otherwise, and if you fuck up while caving they usually never find the body, but in my heart I know it’s because there’s Things™ down there.

Rutshellir Cave, Iceland (by Job Savelsberg)

See more of Iceland.

diavolaangelica

Unicorn Blind Cave Fish (Sinocyclocheilus longicornus), family Cyprinidae, order Cypriniformes, found in caves in Guizhou Province, China

Discovered in 2023.

photograph via: Sinocyclocheilus longicornus (Cypriniformes, Cyprinidae), a new species of microphthalmic hypogean fish from Guizhou, Southwest China (pensoft.net)

Waitomo Caves, New Zealand by Steve Weston