The caverns never disappoints if you are at all interested in the geological formations under the earth. The cave was formed with sulfuric acid and that is unique in its own right for a cave. Most caves are formed from limestone being “melted” away. You have two options to get into the cave one being on two feet the other is by elevator. Time for me was limited so I chose the fast way of elevator going down the over 750 feet into the cave floor. When you reach the bottom you have to go through an air lock system to keep the humidity at a constant level. The air lock is two doors with a waiting area between the doors and only 1 door can be opened at a time. Once you are in the cave you will walk along a path with rails on either side to prevent someone from go off the path. Note that touching the rock formations will cause harm to the formation so please keep your hands to yourself. Additionally, if you must talk please whisper as sound travels in the cave. The walk path in the cave is over 1.5 miles and even has some elevation gain / loss but it less than 100 feet total within the cave. The park system has put lights to highlight some of the more interesting features in the cave. A second benefit of the lighting is that you are not in complete darkness as that is what is cave is without man made light.
The cave is home to over 10,000 bats and most of these bats do migrate to Mexico for the winter. The bats are small in size with a wing span of just over 11 inches but a body of the side o three nickels end to end. They eat moths each night and these moths attach corn crops. Bats help farmers with not needing as much pesticides to protect their crops in the growing season. Bats will also travel up to 30 miles per night in order to each. These particular bats only fly and need a drop of 4 feet in order to get the lift to fly hence why they don’t go to the ground. The mom bat gives birth in the cave and spends a few minutes getting accustomed to their baby after birth then heads out of the cave for feeding. Mom will only feed her pup and she leaves the pup in the cave with the other thousands of pups but she will know which one is her’s with sight, smell and her keen radar. The pup will eat 1.5 times mom’s body weight in milk per day so mom needs to make sure she is fed every night. The pup is born at 1/2 of the mom’s length and about 1/4 of her weight. Mom weighs only about 4 ounces. The mom during birth will hang upside down by two fingers and use a wing to “catch” the baby when it comes out. I think that the birthing of something this big is tough on the mom. When the baby is trying to fly it is a sink or swim situation. The pup will drop the 4 feet to begin to fly and if they don’t fly but land on the floor they will be eaten by a beetle. Bats live on average 14 years but they do have predators in the area mainly owls. The owl will have plenty of bats to choose from in this cave as there are over 10,000 bats. The cave has had bats living inside for over 40,000 years, confirmed by dating the dung of the bats. Not a job I would want to do collecting bat dung to reach the bottom, then review the of the dung. If in the park it is a must see to watch the bats come out of the cave. If you are watching them come out please no phones, cameras or other electronic device turned on. Also you have to remain quiet as noise may make the bats go back inside the cave.
