Hypogean fauna
Caves and tunnels are inhabited by very specialised organisms that, over the centuries, have developed characters that make them particularly suitable for this environment. Most of these animals are invertebrate: anellida, molluscs, insects, crustaceans and arachnida, sometimes also amphibians, reptiles and some species of blind fish. These creatures have no eyes or breathing apparatuses. They breathe straight through the pores that compose the tissue that coats their body. To “observe” the surrounding word, they have very sensitive relation organs all over their bodies. The hypogean environment is saturated with humidity and has a constant temperature. The animals that live there are used to consuming as little energy as possible. This is why their reproductive cycle is much slower than that of the other animals: for instance, they lay few, but very large, eggs.
Special reports
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8 July 2022
Who’s coming to dinner
A shark in my hamburger Summer is finally here! As usual, we have waited for it all year long and…
10 February 2020
Coral turns pale!
The coral reef is one of the ecosystems with the richest biodiversity...
2 July 2014
A hoax? No thank you, I prefer to find out myself!
In Italian, bufala: a hoax, also means a female buffalo...
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30 July 2020
Holidays, yes! but they must be sustainable!
We have been speaking of sustainable behaviours to apply to our daily life, but what happens when we unplug and…
10 October 2022
Spider lullaby
There are spiders that weave a classic web, that one we all know, to catch prey. There are others who…
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19 September 2022
Double blow to dinosaurs
The Main Asteroid Belt is between Mars and Jupiter, an enormous ring consisting of millions of large and small rocks…
24 May 2022
Amphibians in peril
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warns: the extinction rate of amphibians is about 200 times greater than…
8 March 2022
8 March. We remember Rosalind Franklin, the great female DNA scientist.
DNA was first isolated by Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss biochemist in 1869. It was a brilliant, but not complicated operation:…
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8 July 2022
Who’s coming to dinner
A shark in my hamburger Summer is finally here! As usual, we have waited for it all year long and…
10 February 2020
Coral turns pale!
The coral reef is one of the ecosystems with the richest biodiversity...
-
2 July 2014
A hoax? No thank you, I prefer to find out myself!
In Italian, bufala: a hoax, also means a female buffalo...
30 July 2020
Holidays, yes! but they must be sustainable!
We have been speaking of sustainable behaviours to apply to our daily life, but what happens when we unplug and…
-
10 October 2022
Spider lullaby
There are spiders that weave a classic web, that one we all know, to catch prey. There are others who…
-
8 July 2022
Who’s coming to dinner
A shark in my hamburger Summer is finally here! As usual, we have waited for it all year long and…
-
10 February 2020
Coral turns pale!
The coral reef is one of the ecosystems with the richest biodiversity...
-
2 July 2014
A hoax? No thank you, I prefer to find out myself!
In Italian, bufala: a hoax, also means a female buffalo...
From the Multimedia section
Facts
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Ant and fish activities
A small insect like the antilion, digs funnel shaped traps in the sandy ground when it is in the larva…
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Life from space
According to some scientists life has always existed in the Universe just like the Universe...
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11 May 2011
Ant and fish activities
A small insect like the antilion, digs funnel shaped traps in the sandy ground when it is in the larva…