The longest lava cave in Southeast Asia in Dong Nai
The Institute of Tropical Biology has just announced the discovery of a lava cave considered the longest in Southeast Asia in Dong Nai province.
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The highest and widest section inside Bat Cave 1. Photo: Torsten Kohn. |
Researchers from the Institute of Tropical Biology and the Berlin Speleological Society, Germany, have surveyed 11 lava caves with a total length of 1.8 km since February, including Bat Cave, located in Hamlet 8, Phu Loc Commune, Tan Phu District.
Bat Cave is separated by a collapse and fault, creating two caves: Bat Cave 1 and Bat Cave 2. The widest recorded place of Bat Cave is up to 4 m high and 10 m wide.
Mr. Truong Ba Vuong, a member of the survey team, said that the survey team discovered a 437 m long, continuous, unbroken section in Bat Cave 1.
"Including the collapsed part (between bat cave 1 and bat cave 2), this cave has a total length of 545 m and is considered the longest lava cave in Southeast Asia," said Mr. Vuong.
Before the discovery of this cave in Vietnam, the longest lava cave in Southeast Asia was Gua Lawah cave in Indonesia, which is 400 m long.
The team of scientists also discovered several species of bats in the cave with populations of up to thousands, along with other animals belonging to the spider, centipede, scorpion, cave cricket, fly, and weasel-like mammals.
However, the research team is concerned that local people often trap bats with nets to eat, affecting the bats' habitat, while bats are animals that also contribute to catching flies and mosquitoes and pollinating fruit trees.
A lava cave is a cave formed during the tectonic process of a volcano. A lava cave is created when the surface of a lava flow cools and forms a hard crust, while the lava inside remains hot and liquid beneath this crust for various reasons. This process creates typical tube-shaped cave passages near the surface that are only known when the cave mouth collapses.
According to VnExpress - LY
