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Olm — printable fact sheet
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Olm
Proteus anguinus
Proteus anguinus lives its entire life underwater in the flooded karst caves of the Dinaric Alps, in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it may be the longest-lived amphibian on Earth: demographic work on a Vieux Chateau population in France estimates a lifespan of ar…
Did you know?
- Despite being completely blind, olms can detect electrical fields and minute chemical changes in the water to locate prey.
- A black subspecies, Proteus anguinus parkelj, was discovered in 1986 near Crna Jama in Slovenia; it has functional eyes and dark pigment, and it lives just a few kilometres from the blind white form. Olms lay only a few dozen eggs at a time and may reproduce just once or twice a decade, which makes the population extremely slow to recover from pollution of the aquifer. Postojna Cave in Slovenia keeps olms on public display, and a 2016 clutch there was watched by webcam by hundreds of thousands of people.
What I learned
Draw the olm
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