Deep under New Mexico, there is a cave that breathes.
As the atmospheric pressure outside of Lechuguilla Cave changes, air is forced in and out of the cave. While air flows through most caves, this is usually caused by changing temperatures rather than air pressure.
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This type of cave is rare, but most breathing caves have been found in the US, as well as two in Europe and one in Malaysia.
They are also usually very long, as four of the ten longest caves in the world are breathing caves.
Lechuguilla Cave is the ninth-longest explored cave in the world, measuring 152.11 miles (244.80 kilometres) long and 1,588.6 feet (484.2 metres) wide – although not all of it has been fully explored by humans.
Argon-argon dating of minerals in the cave has indicated that the cave formed around five million years ago. It extends deep enough into the Guadalupe Mountains that scientists may study five separate geological formations from inside the cave.
Access to Lechuguilla Cave is severely limited, but if you were to visit, you must hike across the Carlsbad Caverns National Park, then drop down 17 metres into its entrance.
While most known caves are epigenic (caves that are formed by surface water dissolving the rock), Lechuguilla Cave is hypogenic (where water rises from below, mixes with rainwater and dissolves the rock).
- It’s made up of 1,000 miles of tunnels and was once thought to be the gateway to the underworld – but remains largely unexplored
- Camera traps film predators descending on cave filled with 40,000 bats. What happens next is staggering
This may contribute to the cave’s vast amounts of gypsum and sulphur formations. Rare formations, such as lemon-yellow sulphur deposits and gypsum chandeliers, can reach up to 20 feet (6.1 metres).
The cave also contains a bacterial strain that has been isolated for four million years, yet is naturally resistant to many modern antibiotics.
The BBC’s Planet Earth film crew explored the cave in the early noughties to capture footage of this incredible environment. They spent two years negotiating permission to film.
Once inside the cave, they transported filming equipment for eight hours through narrow passageways.
- It's a staggering 300 metres underground, features amazing 11-metre-tall crystals – and has a deadly 90% humidity level
- It's 3 million years old, the size of Vikos Gorge and is home to one of the world's weirdest animals – the 'human fish'
“Once we’d descended Boulder Falls, an adrenaline-fired abseil of 60 metres in utter blackness, we began to get a glimpse of why we were here,” said Huw Cordey, the producer, said in a BBC press pack.
“Glacier Bay Cavern was well named. The floor looked as if it was formed from huge chunks of carved ice. It was quickly followed by other chambers whose names neatly sum up the feelings of the first explorers – places like Snow White’s Passage, Tinseltown, Land of Awes and Prickly Ice Cube room.
“While all the decorated caverns we’d seen were undoubtedly spectacular, nothing could quite prepare us for the Chandelier Ballroom, where six-metre-long collections of hand sized crystals hung from the ceiling.
“The sight was utterly other-worldly. I felt as if I’d been miniaturised and stuck in a large empty freezer compartment.”
Top image: Chandelier Ballroom in Lechuguilla Cave. Credit: Dave Bunnell, CC BY-SA 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
