![]() But it was clear that they were hunting, in total darkness,” Bayona Miramontes said. … I looked up to the ceiling of the cave and I saw snakes hanging down, some of them moving rhythmically, others with a bat in their mouth, and others with nothing. ![]() “We decided to go in, and it was a great surprise. But during a nighttime bike ride four months later, he and his assistant saw a mass exodus of bats flying out of the opening. The biologist and his team had only visited the cave during the day, entirely missing the pitch-black feeding cycle. And I saw that it had a huge potential for tourism.” Once he obtained permission from local leaders to venture inside, he said, “nobody wanted to accompany me and I went alone, finding a lot of bats and remains of antique pots which were believed to be of Mayan origin. The villagers showed him a cave that no one ever entered because age-old legends warned of evil spirits living there. I was told to conduct a survey of the local cultural, history and water resources in the area to evaluate its resources,” he said. “The local community came to the technological institute where I was working in search of alternative ways to approach the jungle in a sustainable way. The Covid-19 pandemic has closed the cave, for now, but it will reopen when the health department of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo allows tourism again.īayona Miramontes recalls how he and his assistant made the discovery. To protect this unique ecosystem, no more than 10 visitors are allowed inside at a time. When a bat is too big to drag inside, the snake expertly breaks its wings.Ī Mayan community in Kantemó, a Yucatán peninsula settlement so small that it has only one church, has been protecting the slithery predators’ environment, said Bayona Miramontes. The reptiles live in crevices in the cave wall. “These snakes do not see or hear, but they can feel the vibrations of the bats flying, and they use that opportunity to hunt them with their body, suffocating their victims before gobbling them down.” The technique of the yellow-red rat snake is frighteningly precise, Bayona Miramontes said. When a bat’s wing brushes by, the snake instantly strikes, clamping its prey in its jaws and devouring it. And clinging to the cave’s roof among the bats dangle thousands of sightless snakes. ![]() On the rock ceiling hang untold hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of bats. When the bats return from nighttime feeding, some become food for the snakes.Ĭarved from rock by rainfall and runoff over millions of years, the cave is carpeted in bat droppings. The “cave of the hanging snakes” has a 65-foot wide mouth from which thousands of bats of seven different species swarm out every night, seeking food in and around Lake Chichancanab, some 2 miles away. Once again, the Central American jungle has been peeled away to reveal another species, another hidden natural world. The cave, many miles inland from the famous Mayan ruins of Tulum, is unknown to virtually all tourists and a genuine surprise to scientists. His wandering flashlight beam first discovered the cave and strange animals living inside. “This is the only place in the world where this happens,” said Arturo Enrique Bayona Miramontes, the biologist who discovered it. The inky black cave is a unique ecosystem. Less than 180 miles from Cancun’s spectacular beaches, through a nearly roadless stretch of mosquito-crowded jungle, lies a mysterious dark cave that is home to a species of blind, deaf snakes that feed mainly on flying bats. Bats do not see the full range of color that we do, and some species can see only two colors at a time or none.La siguiente nota es de esos eventos que me llenan de mucho orgullo y me llena de mucha satisfacción por la transcendencia que representa, para los que no están familiarizados, mi asombro se debe al hecho de que mi nombre figure en Newsweek, los que saben no me dejarán mentir, de ahí ique la nota se encuentre en inglés. Bat eyes also have many rod cells that respond to very low light, providing them with heightened night vision. It is also helpful for bats who feed off nectar from flowers, as flowers have been found to reflect UV waves. This helps bats navigate at night with low UV light from the moon. Many bats have UV-sensitive cone cells, which enable them to respond to UV light, which is usually not visible to humans. Like humans and other mammals, bats have photoreceptors called rods and cones. This good night vision is due to the type of photoreceptors (nerve cells that respond to light) in bat eyes. Most bats can see adequately during the day and can see far better than humans can in low light, such as at dawn, dusk, and nighttime. We’ve probably all heard the expression “as blind as a bat.” But have you ever stopped to think whether bat eyesight is really that bad? Are Bats Blind?
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