Olm in the United Kingdom?

DesertRhino150

DesertRhino150

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
I was looking around at the history of olm (Proteus anguinus) in captivity and found several references to them in Kent's Cavern, Torquay. On looking around further, I found a website that mentions the show cavern having a cave zoo featuring only troglobite animals, primarily insects and amphibians. It seems this website was updated recently (July 2014). I was wondering if anyone knew if olm have ever been kept at Kent's Cavern and, if so, are they still there?

Show Caves of Great Britain: Kents Cavern

There is also this page on the same website that shows the natural range of olm along with the six caves around Europe that either keep them in captivity or have released them.

http://www.showcaves.com/english/explain/Biology/ProteusAnguinus.html
 
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Its funny you have brought this up,as myself and a few other from this site were discussing this a few weeks ago.So one of us contacted Kents Cavern to ask if they have any Olm,but they said that they had never had them and had no plans to get any!!
 
Has anyone on here been to Kent's cavern recently? I'm tempted to try and visit in a few weeks to see their 'cave zoo' if it's still open. :)
 
How could olms be legally sourced?

And how many cave dwelling species are regularly available to zoos? Cave crickets, blind cave tetras, Somali and Omani cave fishes? Its not a huge selection.
 
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