Which Animals Live in Caves?

Cave-dwelling animals, also known as cave animals, refer to animals that live in caves. There are terrestrial and aquatic animals, most of them don't like sports, and their vision is degraded, but other sensations are developed, such as smell.

Cave-dwelling animals are animals that live in caves. It mainly includes planarians, gastropods, ploids, spiders, pseudoscorpions, blind spiders, crustaceans, and insects in the order Invertebrates, Coleoptera, and Orthoptera B; Cave animals are mostly bats, fish, tadpoles and frogs. In the special environment of the cave, cave animals are characterized by less pigment, eyeball degradation, longer antennae, and slower metabolism.

According to the time characteristics of cave animals living in the cave, most scholars divide them into 3 categories:

Korean animals (tro ~ gloxens): do not complete their life cycle in the cave, but use the cave as a good place for wintering and refuge, such as moths, mosquitoes, raccoons, etc. These animals often rest at the entrance of the cave Low light band.

Troglophiles (troglophiles): They can live inside or outside the cave, such as earthworms, some crustaceans, etc., the body color of these animals has not changed much.

True (full) cave animals (imglohiles): live in the dark areas of the cave and complete their life cycle in the cave. Their body color is transparent and their eyes are degraded. Typical true cave animals have unique morphology, physiology, behavior, and life history to adapt to the cave environment. ^[1]

Cave animals can be divided into three categories:

Accidental cave animal : This is not a cave animal, but lost its way into the cave for accidental reasons;

Periodic cave animals ( trogloxens ): Animals such as bats use caves as nests, as breeding places, in caves during the day, and out for food at night. Since feces are excreted in caves, this is also an important nutrition provider for other animals;

Troglophile : includes both species that can live normally on the ground and inside the cave, with almost no difference in form and ecology from the ground, and also includes those that lose pigment, are physiologically specialized, and almost outside the cave. Unseen species. Therefore, there is no strict boundary between the following types (4). The burrowing species that eat bat feces here are called guanobiont ;

Troglobiont : A species that spends its entire life in a cave and cannot survive on the ground. Almost no eyes, thin skin, no pigments, degenerate and deformed respiratory organs, slow metabolism, limbs, antennae, slender tentacles, etc., are the common characteristics of these animals. These are compatible with the special environment of the cave, especially the lack of sunlight and near-saturated humidity, constant temperature, and limited sources of nutrients. What is more prominent is that the boundary between aquatic species and terrestrial species has become less obvious. In insects, many species that have become larval stages do not peel and do not eat. Generally, spawning is reduced and life expectancy is longer. True cave animals are only found in a relatively limited group of animals, and they are all carnivorous or omnivorous. In many cases, because the cave becomes a completely isolated environment, the differentiation of species and subspecies is easy to occur, and different unique cave species are often produced in different caves. It can be considered that these animals are ancestors derived from terrestrial animals, and the animals that live in underground fissures are the result of the special evolution of settlement in secondary caves.

The burrowing owl (burrowing owl), also known as the burrowing owl, is a bird of the nymphalidae and the family Amaranthidae. The body is thin and the legs are quite long. The adult corpse carcass is 28 centimeters long. It uses a hole abandoned by rodents as a nest, or makes holes by itself. It likes to decorate its own nest with a variety of animal odors. The range of activities is on open grasslands and farming plains. I like to eat large insects, such as some beetles and small animals such as sparrows and mice. Distributed in the Americas.

Because the cave has less biomass and fewer food sources, the cave food chain is generally simpler than the ground, but because of lack of food, cave animals must make full use of the hard-won food, which has caused cave animals. The omnivorous nature of eating almost everything, which in turn complicates the food chain.

In a cave environment, photosynthesis cannot take place, so the biological nutrients at the base of the food chain must be brought from the ground, that is, outside the cave. These materials include all kinds of animal and plant residues that enter directly from the sinkhole or are carried by the underground river, and the dung of bats and golden swallows that inhabit the cave. They can be directly eaten by some true cave animals and hi cave animals. At the same time, they also reproduce a large number of microorganisms such as fungi, bacteria, actinomycetes, etc. A large part of these microorganisms exist as decomposers, including animals, plant residues, dung, etc It breaks down into nutrients that can be eaten by other organisms, and they themselves are the food of other organisms. Therefore, the microorganisms and the dung, clay, etc. containing them constitute the first stage of the cave food chain. The second level of the cave food chain is horse land, crickets, and wingless insects in dry cave passages; in the water are flatworms, amphipods, and crustaceans. The third level of the cave food chain is represented by dung beetles, crickets, and beetles on the dry cave passages. They eat smaller animals, such as horses and crickets, and also feces and animals and plants that have been washed into the cave. Debris and dead bats; in water bodies, cave blind fish, clams, etc. are representatives of this level. The animals at the top of the food chain pyramid probably counted spiders and holes. They can eat any other animal in the cave, and they have very few enemies themselves. Only when they die will the remains become a delicacy for other animals.

Cave creatures are biological groups that grow and develop in cave environments that are dark and weak, relatively constant temperature and humidity. According to the four-boundary classification of living things, cave creatures can be divided into prokaryotes, fungi, lower plants and animals. Prokaryotes include cyanobacteria and bacteria. Most of cyanobacteria are distributed in the cave entrance or weak light zone. The bacteria are divided into autotrophic and heterotrophic types. In the deep part of the cave are chemical energy autotrophic bacteria and heterotrophic bacteria. Light energy autotrophic bacteria live in the light zone, and fungi are heterotrophic bacteria, which feed on the decomposition of animal carcasses and excreted feces. Cave plants are mainly lower plants such as ferns, moss, lichens, and algae, which are distributed in the cave entrance and low-light zones. In some tourist caves, there are also light plants. In the middle of the 20th century, based on geology, speleology, and biology, a relatively independent discipline, cave biology, was developed. ^[1]