Beneath the limestone hills of Postojna, Slovenia is an underground cave with an underground river running through it. Along with crickets, millipedes and beetles, young dragons dominate the world’s most biodiverse cave, according to National Geographic. These nearly transparent water-dwelling salamanders are officially known as proteus anguinus . As the top predator in their world, axolotls can be 30 cm long, have the ability to regenerate limbs, live up to 100 years old and fast for decades.
Postojna Cave Park is home to blind lizards often referred to as “baby dragons” due to their resemblance to legendary creatures.
Postojna Cave is the habitat of rare young dragons. (Photo: Xinhua)
Postojna management recently announced that 30 baby lizards were born in the cave, a record for survival.
In the wild, scientists estimate that only 2 out of 500 lizard eggs hatch successfully. At Postojna, at least 30 to 43 eggs hatched, double the rate in 2016 and helping to confirm that the care efforts of Postojna staff have made a difference.
Salamanders have the ability to regenerate limbs and live a long time. (Photo: Alamy)
With a terrain consisting of countless sinkholes and deep dark caves, in the past, local residents believed that dragons lived here. They think the warm mist that spews from the cave in winter is the giant creature’s breath, although in reality, it results from the stable temperature inside the cave.
When the river flowing out of the cave flooded and carried away the drowned lizards, the people saw them as the young of a larger dragon lurking in the cave.
Today, they remain an enigmatic species, listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) due to a lack of data. Scientists even struggle to determine how many individuals live in the tiny territory in the Dinaric Alps that stretches along the Adriatic coast from northern Italy to Albania. Their aquatic habitat is threatened by chemical pollutants, fertilizers that permeate the rock layer with high permeability and are absorbed by lizards.
