Weird Places: Movile Cave

In 1986, a drill searching for a power plant site in Romania broke into Movile Cave, a pocket of limestone near the Black Sea that had been sealed off from the surface for an estimated 5.5 million years. The air holds less than half the normal oxygen and stinks of hydrogen sulfide. There is no light at all. And it is full of life. This video goes down the shaft and into the air bells: bacteria that live on poison instead of sunlight, pale grazers, eyeless spiders, the only cave-dwelling water scorpion on Earth, and the blind venomous centipede known as the king of the cave. Then how these animals got trapped, how they changed, and why scientists see Movile as a model for early Earth and for life on Europa, Enceladus and Mars. Facts from published research on Movile Cave, including the 2020 description of Cryptops speleorex. The age of the cave's isolation and the number of species are still debated, and the narration gives the ranges. Subscribe for more of what Earth hides beneath the ice, the sand, and the rock #movilecave #sealedcave #caveanimals #romania #hiddenecosystem #astrobiology #whatearthhides