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Subterranean fauna is found worldwide and includes representatives of many animal groups, mostly arthropods and other invertebrates.However, there is a number of vertebrates (such as cavefishes and cave salamanders), although they are less common.
A troglobite (or, formally, troglobiont) is an animal species, or population of a species, strictly bound to underground habitats, such as caves.These are separate from species that mainly live in above-ground habitats but are also able to live underground (eutroglophiles), and species that are only cave visitors (subtroglophiles and trogloxenes). [1]
A so-called "cathedral" mound produced by a termite colony. Structures built by non-human animals, often called animal architecture, [1] are common in many species. Examples of animal structures include termite mounds, ant hills, wasp and beehives, burrow complexes, beaver dams, elaborate nests of birds, and webs of spiders.
Surface-dwelling animals tend to have longer fur with a natural tendency for the nap to lie in a particular direction, but to facilitate their burrowing lifestyle, mole pelts are short and very dense and have no particular direction to the nap. This makes it easy for moles to move backwards underground, as their fur is not "brushed the wrong way".
At times, a number of animals are said to have been encased in the same place. Benjamin Franklin wrote an account of four live toads supposedly found enclosed in quarried limestone. [11] In a letter to Julian Huxley, one Eric G. Mackley claimed to have freed 23 frogs from a single piece of concrete while widening a road in Devonshire.
Some of the mounds are 3 m (10 ft) tall and 10 m (33 ft) wide, and they are spaced about 20 m (66 ft) apart. Underneath the mounds are networks of tunnels that required the excavation of 10 cubic kilometres (2.4 cu mi) of dirt. Scientists performed radioactive dating on 11 mounds. The youngest mound was 690 years old.
The presence of burrowing animals also has a direct impact on the soil's composition, structure, and growing vegetation. The impact these animals have can range from feeding, harvesting, caching and soil disturbances, but can differ considering the large diversity of fossorial species – especially herbivorous species.
A dugout or dug-out, also known as a pit-house or earth lodge, is a shelter for humans or domesticated animals and livestock based on a hole or depression dug into the ground. Dugouts can be fully recessed into the earth, with a flat roof covered by ground, or dug into a hillside.