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Far from feeling any surprise that some of the cave-animals should be very anomalous, as Agassiz has remarked in regard to the blind fish, the Amblyopsis, and as is the case with the blind Proteus with reference to the reptiles of Europe, I am only surprised that more wrecks of ancient life have not been preserved, owing to the less severe competition to which the inhabitants of these dark abodes will probably have been exposed.
Far from feeling any surprise that some of the cave-animals should be very anomalous, as Agassiz has remarked in regard to the blind fish, the Amblyopsis, and as is the case with the blind Proteus with reference to the reptiles of Europe, I am only surprised that more wrecks of ancient life have not been preserved, owing to the less severe competition to which the inhabitants of these dark abodes will probably have been exposed.
Nature, therefore, has in this case compensated the amblyopsis for his loss of sight by endowing him with a highly developed organ of feeling. Better known than the blind fish and the blind crab of Kentucky is the Proteus anguineus, a kind of salamander, of a pale rose color, endowed with gills and found in the Adelsberg grotto in Austria.
White crayfish moved back and forth on the sand at the edge of Echo river and backed away from us when we tried to procure one for a specimen. His subterranean home has seemingly not affected his habits. This cave also contains a fish known to scientists as "Amblyopsis Speloens," meaning "A weak-eyed cave dweller."
It is said, however, that Chologaster agassizii, which is not blind, lives in the underground streams of Kentucky and Tennessee, but I think it is open to doubt whether it is a species entirely confined to darkness. Another point which Loeb omits to mention is the absence of pigment in cave animals, especially Vertebrates such as Amblyopsis and Proteus.
Far from feeling surprise that some of the cave-animals should be very anomalous, as Agassiz has remarked in regard to the blind fish, the Amblyopsis, and as is the case with the blind Proteus, with reference to the reptiles of Europe, I am only surprised that more wrecks of ancient life have not been preserved, owing to the less severe competition to which the scanty inhabitants of these dark abodes will have been exposed.
Even those among the Amblyopsidae which live in the open have the tropisms of the cave dweller. But these latter are not blind, and the argument only tends to show that the blind fish Amblyopsis entered the caves before it was blind. Nocturnal animals generally must be said to be negatively heliotropic, but these usually have larger and more sensitive eyes than the diurnal.
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