{"id":335,"date":"2026-03-29T00:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T00:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/two-kilometers-beneath-our-feet-this-land-animal-lives-at-a-record-depth\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T00:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T00:38:09","slug":"two-kilometers-beneath-our-feet-this-land-animal-lives-at-a-record-depth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/two-kilometers-beneath-our-feet-this-land-animal-lives-at-a-record-depth\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Kilometers Beneath Our Feet: This Land Animal Lives at a Record Depth"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><\/figure>\n<p><strong>While some aquatic species are known to thrive at the depths of the planet&#8217;s deepest ocean trenches, the terrestrial record holder in this field hides at the bottom of a Georgian cave.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Plutomurus ortobalaganensis<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Named <em>Plutomurus ortobalaganensis<\/em>, this record-holding creature was discovered in 2010 by the Iberian-Russian CaveX expedition while it explored the Krubera-Voronja cave system, located in the Western Caucasus and regarded as one of the deepest on Earth.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">No reward required: raccoons solve puzzles purely for fun<\/span><\/section>\n<p>Described two years later in the journal <em>Arthropod Reviews<\/em>, it is a springtail\u2014an arthropod that resembles an insect but actually belongs to a distinct branch of the tree of life.<\/p>\n<p>Found precisely 1980 meters below the surface, <em>P. ortobalaganensis<\/em> measures no more than 4 millimeters in length. Equipped with six legs and blind, it mainly feeds on tiny species of fungi, bacteria, and decomposing organic matter, making it a crucial link in this deep cavernous ecosystem.<\/p>\n<p>Another notable anatomical feature: the top of its head bears a pair of elongated antennae, which it uses to detect chemical signals and navigate a complex, lightless environment.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">Long-forgotten, Giraffatitan&#8217;s tail is revealed to be mobile, raised, and functionally richer than expected<\/span><\/section>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"730\" height=\"532\" src=\"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Two-Kilometers-Beneath-Our-Feet-This-Land-Animal-Lives-at.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1004306\"  ><\/figure>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Colonisation r\u00e9cente<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>While most species living in total darkness are devoid of pigmentation, it turns out that the exoskeleton of <em>P. ortobalaganensis<\/em> bears a slightly grayish hue, suggesting that it colonized the deeper sections of Krubera-Voronja relatively recently from an evolutionary standpoint.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, the <strong>record<\/strong> for the <strong>terrestrial animal<\/strong> evolving at the deepest known depth was held by a worm species found at depths of up to 1,300 meters in a gold mine in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Under the waves, amphipod species thrive at depths beyond 10,000 meters. To withstand these extreme conditions, it turns out that abyssal creatures have developed several essential adaptations.<\/p>\n<section class=\"incontent-related\"><span class=\"incontent-related__title\">Read also<\/span> <span class=\"incontent-related__desc\">In Cambodia, caves yield 11 unknown species and reveal an ecosystem richer than previously imagined<\/span><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[326,241,328,166,257,272,327,259],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-animal","tag-beneath","tag-depth","tag-feet","tag-kilometers","tag-land","tag-lives","tag-record","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}