The Baby Dragons of the Caves
After heavy rains in Slovenia, pale, blind, snake-like creatures with tiny legs were washed out of the caves. People said they were the young of dragons.
What was reported
In 1689, the scholar Janez Vajkard Valvasor wrote that people near Vrhnika believed dragons lived deep underground, because after floods, small pale creatures were washed out of springs, and they looked like baby dragons.
The creatures were olms: blind salamanders up to 30 centimetres long, with pinkish-white skin and feathery red gills, that live their whole lives in the dark waters of caves.
Explanations offered
Olms live only in the caves of the Dinaric Alps. They can live for a century, and survive up to ten years without food. A colony at Postojna Cave is watched by scientists, and in 2016 people around the world followed the hatching of olm eggs there.
- When
- Described in 1689
- Where
- Postojna, Inner Carniola, Slovenia
- Witnesses
- Slovenian villagers, and a 17th-century scholar
- Status
- Explained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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