A salamander in an underwater cave in Bosnia and Herzegovina remained still for 2,569 days. That’s seven years and two weeks.
Scientists tell us that olms (Proteus anguinus) are
the only species of their genus. They live for more than a century; their
reproductive cycles take around 12.5 years to complete. They also move very slowly.
In a study published in the Journal of Zoology,
researchers now know just how slowly.
Divers tagged adult olms. The research team then tracked the
movements of nineteen individual olms, some for eight years. Most moved around
sixteen feet a year; the most active traveled 125 feet in 230 days.
One olm did not move an inch during a seven-year timespan.
The researchers explained that olms do not need to move. They require little oxygen and can go several years without food. Scientists note that the creatures are “very energy cautious and limit their movements to the minimum.” I would agree.
I am impressed by this report that a salamander can remain
motionless for more than seven years, but I am even more impressed by
scientists who would conduct such a study. “Zoologist specializing in the
study of olms” was not a vocation of which I was aware before reading the
article.
It turns out, there are twenty-six branches of zoology (see this BioExplorer article for the list.) One of them, entomology (the study of insects), has ten sub-specialties. (If your home has termites, you’ll be especially grateful for isopterologists).
How zoologists encouraged my soul
Reading about the motionless salamander and the scientists
who found him, I was reminded of a chapter in Scripture I presume most readers
skip over. Nehemiah 3 lists the various groups who worked together to rebuild
the walls of Jerusalem. It’s a litany of names and locations that mean little
to us today.
But these people were the difference between life and death in
their day.
In the ancient world, walls made a city secure. In…
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