The inhabitants of the Movile Cave are like no others on satellite Earth . After being cut off off from the rest of the world some 5.5 million years ago , a unique ecosystem has sprung up here , despite the total lack of sun and toxic atmosphere that would prove too harsh for most telluric animals .
locate just a few miles west of the Black Sea in Romania , the Movile Cave was first discovered by humans in 1986 when worker of the Socialist Republic of Romania were looking for new ground to build a nuclear superpower plant life . today , it is blocked off by the authorities and only approachable with special permission , although the central caverns are of course “ guarded ” by a series of vertical shafts and minute limestone tunnels .
Once in the depths of the cavern , the breeze contains less than one-half of the amount of atomic number 8 chance in open tune and is brimming with high levels of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide . It is also pitch black and has n’t see a beam of sun for millions of years .
Scientists exploring the Movile cave in 2020. Image credit: Mihai Baciu, GESS LAB, Mangalia (CC-BY 4.0)
Thanks to this cocktail of super - harsh condition , the website has proved to be a goldmine for biologists . One of the first attempts to document this flaky ecosystem can be found in a newspaper written in 1996 by a trio of biologist from the University of Cincinnati and publish in the journalScience .
Within this harsh environment , biography seems to be booming . In the 1996 survey , the three scientists identify 48 metal money – 33 of which were totally unique to this one cave . Along with coinage of spider , pseudoscorpion , woodlice , centipede , later studies have also regain thatleeches , snails , and manyother speciesinhabit the cavern .
Most of the teeny animal in the cave have no vision and lack paint . After all , who want sight or to look pretty in the sales pitch black ? They ’re also , on the whole , a spindly crowd , with extra - farsighted limb and antenna that help them voyage in the darkness .
As if this cave was not alien enough , it was the first Din Land - base ecosystem to be happen upon that relies on chemosynthetic bacteria . Most ecosystems requirephotosynthesisto harness energy from sun . However , since there ’s no natural luminousness in the cave , the bacterium require to get their energy and carbon directly from chemic reactions , such as the oxidation of sulfide or the oxidation of ammonium ion .
In this sense , the Movile Cave is more comparable tothe freaky ecosystemswe line up living in extreme bass sea environments near hydrothermal vent .
“ The Movile Cave system is similar to deep ocean vents in have a chemoautotrophic food base and a diverse biology . However , the cave system appear to lack the symbioses between chemo - autophytic microbes and beast so characteristic of deep sea venthole community , ” the researchers from the University of Cincinnati reason out in the 1996 Science theme .
There are still many mysteries that lie late within the Movile Cave . Even after decade of knowing it exists , researcher believe there are still many more denizen to discover , some of whom could entertain insights into evolutionary biology and even the nature of life itself .
An earlier version of this clause was firstpublishedin May 2016 .
