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
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.
I have driven past Kents Cavern on the way to/from Living Coasts, but I have never stopped. The website at http://www.kents-cavern.co.uk/ makes no mention of an animal collection.
I've also contacted the site, who have informed me that they have never kept any live animals at all.
