This story originally appeared in bioGraphic, an online magazine about nature and sustainability powered by the California Academy of Sciences.
Story by Katie Jewett | Photographs by Luka Dakskobler
Gregor Aljančič enters a concrete tunnel and descends into a subterranean world below the city of Kranj, in northern Slovenia. Lamps illuminate his one-minute walk down the claustrophobic passageway, which fades to pitch black as he reaches the main chamber of Tular Cave Laboratory. The 50 year-old has visited the laboratory since boyhood, when he came with his father, the lab’s founder, and he knows its occupants well. The reinforced natural cave, once a World War II air raid shelter for a factory, now serves as a safe haven for blind salamanders known as olms (