Kudum cave

Chittagong

The location of the Kudum Cave in Bangladesh

The Kudum Cave (English: Kudum Cave ), occasionally also Kudung Cave (English: Kudung Cave ), is a cave in Upazila Teknaf, Cox's Bazar District of the Chittagong Division in Bangladesh . It is the only known bat cave and the only known clay cave in the country.

Geography and geology

The cave is located about three kilometers west of the Whykong forest station in the Teknaf Game Reserve at an altitude of about 22 meters above sea level, amid dense shrub vegetation with only a few tall trees ( 21 ° 5 ′ 32 ″ N , 92 ° 10 ′ 10.1 ″ O ). The human use of the area includes the cultivation of betel and Schwendbau of rice and crops by indigenous inhabitants. The closest human settlement is Horikhola, inhabited by about 50 families of the Chakma . 21.092233333333 92.169466666667

The Kudum Cave is a naturally formed cavity about 38 meters long that runs in an east-west direction. The cave entrance is four to five meters high and between one and two and a half meters, at the bottom about two meters wide. Inside, the cave is between 10 and 14 meters high, divided into three chambers and with a vaulted ceiling that gradually descends to the floor. At the back, water seeps into the cave. The ground is always covered with 30 to 60 centimeters deep water, during the monsoons the water level can rise to about a meter. The climate is warm and humid and a narrow trickle flows outside. As the only known cave in Bangladesh, it is not embedded in rock, but in the clay soil typical of the hilly landscape of the Cox's Bazar district .

fauna

The Teknaf Game Reserve is characterized by a rich fauna with at least 55 species of mammals, including Indian elephants , Bengal loris , larvae roller , fish cats , muntjacs and squirrels . The 286 bird species recorded include bank vole woodpeckers , several species of kingfishers, and bobblers . There are also records of 56 species of reptiles , 19 amphibians and 290 species of plants .

The mammal loge and ornithologist Mohammad Ali Reza Khan , who came from Bangladesh , discovered the cave in 1985 as the first and so far only known bat cave in Bangladesh. At the time, Khan found 50 Leschenault flying foxes and 150 to 200 bats of two species in the cave. The Kudum Cave is mentioned in the Red List of Endangered Species of Bangladesh as the place of occurrence of the Leschenault flying fox ( Rousettus leschenaultii ) and, as the only place of occurrence in Bangladesh, the small long -tongue bat ( Eonycteris spelaea ). A second species found in the cave is Rhinolophus macrotis . The vocalizations of the fruit bats and the smell of the excretions of fruit bats and bats can be heard over several hundred meters depending on the wind direction.

A breeding pair of a subspecies of the purple whistling thrush ( Myophonus caeruleus temmincki ) has brooded in the cave wall. In the water of the cave some fish species were found: the wrestling halfbeak ( Dermogenys pusilla ), the carp fish mola amblypharyngodon , Devario anomalus , two-point bar ( pethia ticto ), gill spot Barbe ( Puntius chola ), gold spot Barbe ( Puntius terio ) and the Schlankbärbling ( Rasbora daniconius ), the wolffish Lepidocephalichthys thermalis and snakehead Ceylon snakehead ( Channa orientalis ) and Dotted snakehead ( Channa punctata ). Other elements of the cave fauna are four species of snails and three species of spiders .

Indigenous people in the area

The Kudum Cave has been known to the Chakma people living in the area for many generations, also as a habitat for bats. Kudum means long in the language Chakma . In a fairy tale of the Chakma, the cave plays an important role as the passage into a land with fields full of golden grain and grass and as the abode of a fairy who weaves clothes from gold thread . Due to the betrayal of a shepherd, the fairy was killed by an evil wizard and the wonderland was destroyed. Those who are alone in the area of the cave can sometimes see the fairy turned to stone.

Web links

Kudum Cave (Bat cave) , website of the environmental protection organization Poribesh Banchao Andolon (English, with pictures)
Andrew Eagle: Wading into Mysterious Kudum Cave , The Daily Star , July 17, 2015 (English, a variant of the Chakma fairy tale )

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Nishorgo Network (Ed.): Kudum Cave Trail. Annotated Trail Brochure . Nishorgo Network, Dhaka 2000, digitized .
^ ^A ^b Md. Golam Rabbi: Status and Prospects for the Future of Wildlife Tourism . In: Johra Kayeser Fatima (ed.): Wilderness of wildlife tourism . Apple Academic Press, Oakville, Ontario and Waretown, NJ 2017, ISBN 978-1-77188-481-5 , p. 198.
↑ Mohammad Ali Reza Khan: Status and distribution of bats in Bangladesh with notes on their ecology . In: Zoos Print Journal 2001, Volume 16, No. 5, pp. 479-483, digitized .
↑ Md. Kamrul Hasan: Rousettus leschenaultii . In: IUCN Bangladesh (ed.): Red List of Bangladesh. Volume 2. Mammals . International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Bangladesh Country Office, Dhaka 2015, p. 141, ISBN 978-984-34-0735-1 .
↑ Md. Kamrul Hasan: Eonycteris spelaea . In: IUCN Bangladesh (ed.): Red List of Bangladesh. Volume 2. Mammals , p. 181.
↑ C. Srinivasulu and Bhargavi Srinivasulu: A review of chiropteran diversity of Bangladesh . In: Bat Net Newsletter. Newsletter of the Chiroptera Conservation and Information Network of South AsiaCCINSA and the IUCN SSC Chiroptera Specialist Group of South Asia (CSGSA) 2005, Volume 6 No. 2, pp. 5-11, digitized .
↑ Israt Jahan: Myophonus caeruleus . In: IUCN Bangladesh (ed.): Red List of Bangladesh. Volume 3. Birds . International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Bangladesh Country Office, Dhaka 2015, p. 529, ISBN 978-984-34-0736-8 .
↑ Md. Rafiqun Nabi: Dermogenys pusillus . In: IUCN Bangladesh (ed.): Red List of Bangladesh. Volume 5. Freshwater Fishes . International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Bangladesh Country Office, Dhaka 2015, p. 155, ISBN 978-984-34-0738-2 .
↑ Abu Tweb Abu Ahmed, Md. Mizanur Rahman and Suman Mandal: Biodiversity of hillstream fishes in Bangladesh . In: Zootaxa 2013, Volume 3007, No. 2, pp. 282-293, doi: 10.11646 / zootaxa.3700.2.6 .

[Nishorgo-1] Nishorgo Network (Ed.): Kudum Cave Trail. Annotated Trail Brochure . Nishorgo Network, Dhaka 2000, digitized .

[Rabbi-2] A ^b Md. Golam Rabbi: Status and Prospects for the Future of Wildlife Tourism . In: Johra Kayeser Fatima (ed.): Wilderness of wildlife tourism . Apple Academic Press, Oakville, Ontario and Waretown, NJ 2017, ISBN 978-1-77188-481-5 , p. 198.

[3] Mohammad Ali Reza Khan: Status and distribution of bats in Bangladesh with notes on their ecology . In: Zoos Print Journal 2001, Volume 16, No. 5, pp. 479-483, digitized .

[4] Md. Kamrul Hasan: Rousettus leschenaultii . In: IUCN Bangladesh (ed.): Red List of Bangladesh. Volume 2. Mammals . International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Bangladesh Country Office, Dhaka 2015, p. 141, ISBN 978-984-34-0735-1 .

[5] Md. Kamrul Hasan: Eonycteris spelaea . In: IUCN Bangladesh (ed.): Red List of Bangladesh. Volume 2. Mammals , p. 181.

[6] C. Srinivasulu and Bhargavi Srinivasulu: A review of chiropteran diversity of Bangladesh . In: Bat Net Newsletter. Newsletter of the Chiroptera Conservation and Information Network of South AsiaCCINSA and the IUCN SSC Chiroptera Specialist Group of South Asia (CSGSA) 2005, Volume 6 No. 2, pp. 5-11, digitized .

[7] Israt Jahan: Myophonus caeruleus . In: IUCN Bangladesh (ed.): Red List of Bangladesh. Volume 3. Birds . International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Bangladesh Country Office, Dhaka 2015, p. 529, ISBN 978-984-34-0736-8 .

[8] Md. Rafiqun Nabi: Dermogenys pusillus . In: IUCN Bangladesh (ed.): Red List of Bangladesh. Volume 5. Freshwater Fishes . International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Bangladesh Country Office, Dhaka 2015, p. 155, ISBN 978-984-34-0738-2 .

[9] Abu Tweb Abu Ahmed, Md. Mizanur Rahman and Suman Mandal: Biodiversity of hillstream fishes in Bangladesh . In: Zootaxa 2013, Volume 3007, No. 2, pp. 282-293, doi: 10.11646 / zootaxa.3700.2.6 .