Discovering Caves with BBC - Assignment Example

When getting inside a cave on foot, it’s not always safe. For example, the de Villa Luz cave in Mexico which has white-colored water inside is full of unhealthy gases, specifically hydrogen sulfide which only bats, which live very up, near the cave’s ceiling can survive. Even when getting inside a quite safe cave, it seems to be a great danger. As well as most of Earth's surface, caves are made from rocks, particularly limestone. Limestone can be deformed, mostly by flowing water, but still, it’s a hard rock and cave visitors can crash themselves, or damage the equipment. Maybe the risk is worth it when discovering new wonderful places and filming a documentary program to show to other people, but it’s odd to see how people risk their lives for a delicious soup. Yet there are caves in Asia, where birds named cave swiftlets live. They build nests, and people risk their lives to get those nests and use them for specific soup cooking.

Except for birds, caves are highly populated with insects. The cave food chain generally, looks very disgusting. For example, there are caves in Mexico with cave floors almost made of beats. Those beats feed by eating bats’ excrement, or simply by eating dead bats. Another disgusting example can be found in Waitomo caves. Those caves look very beautiful when taking a panorama view. It’s dark there and millions of glowing dots are shining in the darkness like it’s a starry night. Yet in fact, they are glowing worms that do the shining. From their slim they make nets, generally looking like draperies. It’s a worm’s way to catch food, primarily insects.

Remarkably, how beautiful those draperies look from a distant view and how disgusting they are when looking closely. Yet not all cave creatures are so disgusting. There are beautiful crabs, angel fishes, and blind salamanders which live in caves of Texas. They are white because they live only in specific cave conditions without any sunshine and have no eyes because they don’t need them anymore. Naturally, those creatures had eyes, but as they live so specifically and so isolated, they evolved into a no-eyes version.

Despite there being a lot of information on biology in this BBC documentary episode, the main idea is geographical. People are so used to living at a surface, that they never discover what’s underground, or deep inside mountains, or deep undersea. If going deeper into the Earth, it’s usually only for a profit reason: rocks are studied to retrieve some goods. Yet geography does not only mean surface: there’s a quite specific world inside a cage too, with its specific laws and wonders. Read More