Growing up, we (meaning: kids growing up in Yugoslavia) all learned about the strangest animal of our country - the cave-dwelling White Olm Proteus anguinus, that we called Man-fish (Covecja ribica).
But what do I know? Darren Naish knows much more about it - and after reading his post (an updated version of his older post) you will see for yourself what a cool and crazy animal this is.
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One of the most unusual and interesting of amphibians has to be the Olm (Proteus anguinus), an unusual long-bodied cave-dwelling salamander from SE Europe [adjacent image from the Devon Karst Research Society]. Olms were the first specialised cave-dwelling animals (so-called…
Image of eyeless Mexican tetra fish from www.seriouslyfish.com by H-J Chen.
The metabolism of most animals follows a circadian rhythm that differs between the day and night. Mexican cavefish living in constant darkness, lost this circadian rhythm some time ago. In a newly published study in PLOS…
Glow worms glimmer on cue:
University of Queensland researcher and lecturer Dr David Merritt has discovered that Tasmanian cave glow-worms are energy conservationists: they switch their lights off at night-time.
The discovery was made during a partially funded UQ Firstlink study, which revealed…
Earlier this year (July) my children's book on Mesozoic reptiles - Dinosaurs Life Size - appeared in the shops. People seem to like it (yikes, even if some of the 'life sized' animals are scaled wrong). July also saw the publication of Dorling Kindersley's Know It All (Baines 2010): I didn't write…
Fascinating! I've been interested in olms since I read Willy Ley's book as a kid.
Now to visit Darren (who originally led me here).