Do you ever feel as if you haven’t moved for ages? It can feel quite horrible. When you do start moving away, you can feel all uncomfortable and stiff. Often, limbs can feel numb and it can take a few steps to get your motion again.
Ever had to spend a few days, or weeks, in bed due to an illness or injury? Then you will know just how weak you feel after all of those days in the bed. However, imagine staying still for seven whole years.
That’s what this particular salamander managed to do. It sat in the same spot for seven whole years, just doing nothing whatsoever.
With the ability to live for years, olm salamanders can live for far longer than the seven years it was able to sit and do nothing for.
They were caught in an amphibian cave in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Spotted by Gergely Balazs and his team at the Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary, the find was a major discovery.
Cave salamanders are known to help keep their spot for a long time period, but seven years? Even that broke all known previous records.
Olms are able to go for a long time without food, and they aren’t exactly the life and soul of the animal kingdom. In fact, they tend to just enjoy hanging about on their own and not doing anything in particular. Sounds like my kind of life, if I am being perfectly honest!
They are not the prey of any particular animal, either, meaning that they can move around at their own pace and leisure. They do tend to move around to find a mate, which they do around six times in their 100-year lifespan.
It’s an interesting find and one that can give us a clear example of just how unique the animal kingdom is. No matter how much or little we think we know about a species, there is always something new to learn.
So, how long do you think that you could sit in one place for without moving?