- My name is Monica and my question is,
why is it important to learn about caves?
- Interesting.
Thanks, Monica.
- That's a great question, as well.
- Why is it important?
- Thank you, Monica.
So, there's so many different reason why learning
about caves, super important.
There's a lot that we can learn from caves.
We learn about where our, our water can come from.
Ah, we can learn about, um, past climates.
We can learn, um, we can be inspired to make beautiful art.
So there's a whole range of reasons why.
- Different ecosystems.
So even though you think this cave, it's bare,
and there's only, you know, stalagmites hanging
from the ceiling, there are many animals
that use the cave to live here and microbes.
And like Barb said, there are also fossils.
So caves are great repositories for different artifacts.
And we had found fossils that date, you know,
from millions of years.
We're also finding baskets or different things that other
humans left behind when they were living on caves.
And it's important to preserve them.
So there's so much to caves, not just a dark,
you know, hole in the ground.
(laughter)
- Thank you for that question and interesting follow-up.
This one came from online from Gilmore Academy
because it's an interesting follow-up.
There in Mills, Ohio by the way.
Lots of Ohio love today.
Um, do you think that there are
plant and animal species that we haven't discovered yet?
- Oh, absolutely.
We're always finding new things.
That's why it's always the best thing to do
is to be very careful if you ever enter a cave
and you happen to may be the first one,
to always report it to the owner or to a scientist,
or someone, because there may be
something brand new that's in there.
And even though caves may not be, um,
named after people, but fossils can be.
(laughter)
Remember that.
So, yeah.
- Yeah, there is.
- It's always, yeah.
- Yeah, and there's so many caves acro-, around the
world that haven't been discovered yet.
Um, there's still the possibility to find new caves,
and with those caves, new species and new,
new things that live there in those environments, so.
- Fascinating.