The hunt for a lost species

One of the world’s most biodiverse aquifers is full of strange, blind creatures that have evolved in isolation for millions of years. But one is missing. (Originally aired in 2022) Guests: ⁠Benji Jones⁠, Vox senior correspondent; ⁠Andy Gluesenkamp⁠, Conservation biologist and herpetologist (a reptiles and amphibians guy) For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And please email us! ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠ We read every email. Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Noam Hassenfeld?

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• 1:16Noam Hassenfeld?

  Right now, species are going extinct at the fastest rate since when the dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago. It's a crisis. But what about the species that slipped through the cracks? The ones where we aren't sure whether they're extinct? The ones that have gone missing? A few years ago, our reporter, Mandy Nguyen, flew down to Texas to look for one of these missing species. She ended up making one of our favorite episodes. So we wanted to share it again with you. Because Mandy actually went cave diving and she found this mysterious underwater world hiding beneath one of the biggest cities in the country. Here's Mandy.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Andy Gluesenkamp is kind of like a detective for animals.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  So basically, if it's creepy, crawly, slimy, or has scales, especially if it lives underground, yeah, I'm kind of interested.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Andy's a herpetologist, which means he studies reptiles and amphibians. He works at the San Antonio Zoo, and for the last 20 years, he's been working on a case: searching for a missing creature.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  It's my white whale.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  It's actually a white salamander, a blind one, called the blanco blind salamander.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  If you asked herpetologists, most of them have heard of it. It's one of the most famous amphibians that no one's ever seen.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Except for one time, 71 years ago, and then never again.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  During the early 1950s, Texas suffered the worst drought in Texas history. It was called the drought of record, and it's the drought that we compare all other droughts to. And a lot of major springs went dry.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  A gravel company was looking for water, and so they tore up some ground near a natural spring in San Marcos, a city between San Antonio and Austin.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  They basically dug a big trench along this water-filled crevice, hoping that they could get to some pocket of water.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  And at the bottom of the trench were some of the weirdest creatures these workers had ever seen: these four pale, white salamanders with no eyes. They looked like they were from another world.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  And so the foreman at the time had the foresight to gather up a few in a bucket.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  The crew went to lunch, but while they were gone...

• 3:39Speaker 03

  A heron, which are super common there, ate almost all the salamanders.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  So there were two left.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  One salamander went to Texas State University, and it was immediately lost.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  And then there was one.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  And the other specimen actually rolled around in my predecessor's trunk for a number of years before he was finally convinced to deposit it in the University of Texas at Austin's collections.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  No one has seen another live one since.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  The salamander that was sent to UT Austin is the only specimen on the planet. It's not alive, but it's preserved.

• 4:17Speaker 04

  And they have this warehouse that's just filled with all kinds of specimens, all kinds of reptiles and amphibians. And then there is this jar with the salamander in it.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Vox Science reporter Benji Jones.

• 4:29Speaker 04

  It was in a, it looked, I mean, it could have been a pickle jar. It was in just like a glass jar with a label on it. And the jar is 70% ethanol. You open the lid, it smells a little bit like vodka. And then it's just kind of floating on the bottom.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  A dead preserved salamander isn't exactly glamorous.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  It looks like about like a three inch long, pale, no color, no eyes, just like hunk of flesh. And it was like furrowed, like very wrinkly and hard as well. And that's just because it's literally so old. And so, yeah, it kind of looks like a seven year old salamander.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Benji wasn't impressed by what he saw in front of him. But the mystery of the blanco blind salamander captured his imagination.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  It's just a really intriguing idea because I love like murder mysteries. And then I think about animals that have gone missing as well. And I think there are just a lot of interesting questions you can answer in looking for them and understanding how they even went missing at all, given that the world is so explored.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  You may have heard of categories like endangered or threatened. These are animals that are at risk of extinction. But there's this whole other category, lost species, species that have gone missing.

• 5:47Speaker 04

  They could be extinct, they could be at risk of extinction. And we're just not sure because we haven't seen them for at least 10 years. And by some definitions, lost means no one has seen them for at least 50 years.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  But if something hasn't been seen in such a long time, how do we know it's not extinct?

• 6:05Speaker 04

  To prove an animal is extinct is actually really difficult. It requires that you do exhaustive searches across all the potential habitat that it could live in and prove that it does not exist there. So it's really, it's a really severe thing to say that something is extinct.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  A lost species is more like a big question mark. It's missing, but there's not enough information to say that it's gone for good. And scientists all around the world have been looking for these lost species.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  There is this broader need to understand and take stock of what lives on this planet, both because it's like really cool to know what we live with and like what we share our world with, but also, I would say, one thing I hear a lot from researchers is that you can't protect what you don't know exists.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  There is some hope, though. Hundreds of species have been found after disappearing for decades. The Jackson's climbing salamander was rediscovered in Guatemala in 2017, and in 2019, the chevartane, which is this animal the size of a big rabbit that somehow also looks like a deer, that was rediscovered in Vietnam. Finding these lost species might be the only way to help them avoid extinction, because when they're found, we can take action.

• 7:23Speaker 04

  There are also limited amounts of resources to protect species, and they'll often go towards the animals that are at risk of extinction. And so we need to know what those animals are.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  People like Andy have been searching for them. And so far, Andy's only lead is that sole preserved specimen of the blanco blind salamander, this dry, jerky-looking, vodka-drenched hunk in a jar. But even though no one has seen a live one for decades, Andy's convinced it's still out there.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  Rather than writing that species off and saying, "Well, it must be extinct because no one's seen it since 1951," I think we really need to focus on looking for it. No one's actually looked for it.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  I'm Manning Nguyen, and this is Unexplainable. On this week's show, Benji and I go to Texas to join the search for the missing salamander and to try and answer an even bigger question: How do species go missing? And if they do, how do we find them?

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Early hell, it's hot. So hot. Oh my god. Ninety, ninety-five degrees.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  As with any detective case, we start our investigation around where the salamander was last seen.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  This is the portal. One of these extremely rare portals. This one's, is it too hot to lift? It's heavy. Can I help you? Yeah. It's got something, let's slide it aside.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  The last time anyone saw a live blanco blind salamander, it was near a natural spring that connects to a huge underground world of watery caverns, lakes, and streams that can reach more than a thousand feet deep and that stretches for thousands of miles under south-central Texas. This is the world of the blanco blind salamander, the Edward's aquifer.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Oh wow.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  Oh, so there is water down there.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  Ninety feet down.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Echo.

• 9:25Speaker 04

  And this is how deep?

• 9:26Speaker 03

  Three hundred and sixty.

• 9:28Speaker 04

  Three hundred and sixty feet.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  All we can see is a smooth pool of water that dips into black.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  I'll walk up to one of these, be totally unimpressed till I look down it, and then I get, you know, dizzy. The mind starts to reel, just thinking about, what's going on down there?

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Staring into the well, I try to imagine what's going on deep beneath the surface.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  The Edward's aquifer is one of the most biodiverse aquifers in the world, right in the middle of Texas. The creatures that call this aquifer home have been evolving in isolation for tens of millions of years, and many of them aren't found anywhere else in the world. There are blind catfish, countless tiny invertebrates, a lot of creatures which never needed to evolve eyes in the perpetual darkness. But despite how huge this aquifer is, most of it is pretty hard to access.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  There's big water, but you know, a lot of the water that moves in the aquifer is moving through essentially swiss cheese.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Most of the aquifer is packed with layers of sediment, with openings just big enough for water and small creatures to slip through.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  It's more like a very large area of porous rock than a giant underground ocean.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  And hidden in this world somewhere, we think, is the blanco blind salamander.

• 10:54Speaker 04

  Imagine trying to like, search for a hair tie in a warehouse of Olympic-sized pools using a bucket in the dark. Like, it is very difficult to try to find this thing.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Andy has been looking for over 20 years, but hasn't found a single one. A big problem for him has been access.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  Well, in the area around the discovery site, there aren't

• 11:18Speaker 03

  accessible portals to the aquifer. There aren't many.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Most of Texas is private land, and Andy's found that landowners don't really like biologists coming onto their land and digging into their water sources, trying to catch salamanders. Thankfully, he doesn't need to catch the Blanca blind salamander itself to know it's out there. All he needs is a clue.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  Is this equipment made for sampling like this?

• 11:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Andy has this plastic container to sample water, and he throws it into the well.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  There we go, we hit water.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  So this is like the modern version of dropping a bucket in the well?

• 11:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, not that modern.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Andy pulls up some well water and then puts it in a little syringe.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  And then you're gonna shoot this through a filter that hopefully will capture the DNA?

• 12:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's, um, 0.8 nanometers.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  And then we push some preservative in, screw the caps on the filter.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  And what you're preserving is the DNA?

• 12:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  All living organisms are constantly shedding DNA, through our hair, our skin cells, our blood. Scientists can take these clues, compare them to a large database of animal DNA, and then hope for a match. It's a process called eDNA sampling.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  eDNA is free-floating DNA shed by living organisms.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  And it just stands for environmental DNA?

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Environmental DNA. And it could be airborne, soilborne, or waterborne.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Scientists have been using eDNA to find animals for about a decade now, and it's been a game changer for monitoring wildlife. EDNA sampling can't tell scientists an animal's age or the population size, but it's been used to detect invasive species and to rediscover lost ones. But there's one problem.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  There's no sequence data available for this species?

• 13:10Speaker 02

  The DNA of the original salamander was never preserved. So even if Andy finds the eDNA he's looking for, he might not know it. He has no original blanco blind salamander DNA to compare it to.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  So basically, there will never be a positive match with the DNA of the salamander because you don't have the DNA of the salamander. So you're looking for something close to that that is not

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Close to you, but not you, so maybe your third cousin.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Andy basically needs to take the eDNA he finds, compare it to the DNA of other living salamanders and other animals in the aquifer. And if it's different in just the right way, it might belong to the blanco blind salamander.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  It's like trying to figure out where a puzzle piece goes. You need to put the other pieces in place to see which one is missing and where it fits. So what else lives in this aquifer? What's their world like? And do we know enough of this puzzle to place this missing salamander?

• 14:07Speaker 03

  This amazing world full of undescribed vertebrates that are crazy looking things. Well, they don't look at all. They're blind, but they're really strange to look at is literally right below our feet.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  We had to get down there ourselves to find out.

• 14:22Speaker 05

  All right, you guys ready?

• 14:27Speaker 05

  Whoa.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  After the break, we go spelunking.

• 14:37Speaker 01

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• 18:03Noam Hassenfeld?

  No, sir.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  I ate a salamander and jumped out the window. My daughter just got accepted to Mutopia University. Unexplainable, I'm Mandy Nguyen. We've been following Andy's journey to find the missing Blanco blind salamander. Its last known location, the Edwards Aquifer. And the best clue to find it, its DNA. But finding the Blanco blind salamander would only be the starting point to unraveling its mysterious life.

• 18:30Speaker 03

  It would be wonderful to be able to have some sort of closure on this mystery. Not just what is it? What are its relationships? Where does it live? How is it doing? It's an extraordinary animal.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  If the Blanco blind salamander were a missing person, we'd be interviewing close friends, family, community members. Because to know a salamander, you need to know what it's connected to.

• 18:56Speaker 04

  And so how long of a drive to the cave from here?

• 18:58Speaker 03

  10 minutes.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Sweet. Benji and I wanted to see the world of the salamanders for ourselves, to know the other pieces that make up the whole. So Andy took us on a field trip.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  We're driving across a private ranch on our way to the entrance of Honey Creek Cave.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  The Edwards Aquifer is through this cave.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Are we here?

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  Here's a northern cricket frog, whole bunch of them.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Wait, where?

• 19:25Speaker 03

  Oh!

• 19:27Speaker 03

  That's where. So, we are standing in Honey Creek. And we're looking at the upstream end of the pool that is formed by water spilling out of the cave and down the spring run into Honey Creek.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Looking downstream at the creek, it's green and pristine blue as far as I can see.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  There's like beautiful fish swimming under a blanket of lily pads. The waterfall literally looks like it was sculpted by like Home Depot's garden center.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  This is literally the cleanest creek for 75 miles in any direction. It's an absolute jewel.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Standing at the edge of this creek, listening to the birds and the water flowing, it's hard to imagine that the source of all this is beyond that cave and deep underground.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  That crevice that you see right there is the dry entrance?

• 20:27Speaker 04

  Oh, it's so nondescript. Like, it's almost hidden.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, we try and make them that way.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Is that, is that where we're going to be heading in?

• 20:35Speaker 03

  We're going to go in then.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  Oh, so cool. Immediately cool there. Oh, wow. Hitch black already. We slip into the cave entrance and the temperature drops dramatically. There's cool air from deep within the cave system, which always remains at 68 degrees Fahrenheit, no matter what temperature it is outside.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  Just sit down and cool down with your lights off. Let your eyes adjust a little.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  Are we going in that hole or thing?

• 21:10Speaker 04

  This hole is big.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  All we can see ahead of us is a ledge that leads into still water. And past that, complete darkness.

• 21:19Speaker 04

  Lights on?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  I don't want to trip on these rocks.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  We zip up our wet suits, and put on our helmets and snorkels, and turn on our flashlights.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  By this point, I've left my audio equipment on dry land, and Benji starts recording with his phone in a waterproof case.

• 21:38Speaker 04

  Okay. Oh, wow, there are spiders everywhere.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Shining our lights on the cave walls, we see a giant mass of spider-like arachnids. They're stretched across the ceiling of the cave, and they almost look like they're dancing.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  Some caves, you look down into the cave, and it looks like just a pulsing beard. Uh, because virtually the whole entrance is a solid, all the walls are a solid mat of those.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Benji and I are trying not to freak out at the carpet of spider-like creatures on the ceiling, but Andy's cheery.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  It's really fun when you're cave with buddies and scoop up a handful of those and shove them down the back of someone's shirt. And they smell like marks-a-lot pens, you know.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  As we walk deeper into the cave, there are fish, frogs, and insects that greet us along the way.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Alright.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  You guys ready?

• 22:32Speaker 04

  Oh, this is for my mask. Keep ready.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  The ledge drops out beneath us, and we're swimming.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  So it's clear water.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you turn right, you come out the spring. If you turn left, you got a lot of cave.

• 22:52Speaker 04

  Right, spring, left, deep into the cave.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Andy leads the way. We can't see anything except what's illuminated by the narrow rays of our flashlights. We swim, and we duck under stalactites that jut out from the ceiling, their points hovering barely a foot above the water.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  Everyone good?

• 23:11Speaker 02

  It's okay to hold on to things?

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Uh, be very gentle.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  Maybe not then.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Andy scans his flashlight across the bottom of the cave, about fifteen feet down, looking for something.

• 23:25Speaker 04

  Can you see it? Yeah, you can see all the way to the bottom. That's incredible.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  He shines his light on a little white blob, sitting still on the cave floor.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  There's a shot meter.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  It's hard to hear him because his phone is literally underwater. But Benji's yelling, "I saw it."

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Andy dives down to catch the blob and brings it back up in a little net. We're bobbing in the cold water, trying to see this little creature.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  It's not the Blanco-blind salamander, it's a different one, the Kamal-blind salamander. It's tiny, barely two inches long, and it doesn't have eyes. It doesn't need them, here in the perpetual darkness.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  The Kamal-blind salamander, like many other creatures in the Edwards Aquifer, is only found here. Thirteen other species here have been categorized as threatened or endangered. And a lost mosquito fish that was last seen in 1983 in the Aquifer was recently listed as extinct. Finding our missing salamander, the Blanco-blind salamander, is about a lot more than just saving one species. Andy says it could teach us a lot about this underground world. These salamanders probably have very sensitive skin, which makes them susceptible to pollution. So if Andy can find one alive, it's a good sign for the health of the Aquifer.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  But if he can't, it could be a sign of bigger problems, both for the creatures here and the humans who live above it.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  The Edwards Aquifer provides drinking water for 2 million people in the region. And urban development above the Aquifer is threatening its delicate ecosystem. So the Blanco-blind salamander could be like a canary in the coal mine, if we can find it.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Swimming back to the entrance, I can feel the cold deep in my bones, and I can't catch my breath. So we stop to sit on a rock ledge on the way out.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Then, someone suggests that we turn off our lights.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Pure darkness. All I can hear is our breath and the light splashing of water. I stop feeling cold. I don't notice my own short breath. I can't register anything. For a moment, I feel myself disappear, dissolving into the dark world of water and salamanders.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Turns out, there's maybe another explanation for what I was feeling. When we get back to the entrance, Andy says that the cave has bad air. Limestone releases carbon dioxide, and the cave restricts airflow, so there's literally too much CO2 in there. I may just have been experiencing low-grade hypoxia. But still, I can see why Andy keeps coming back to this world and to the salamander again and again.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  To be honest, why am I working on the Blanco-blind salamander? Because it captured my imagination.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  How often do you get the chance to chase a decades-old mystery in an eerie underground world that just happens to be in your backyard?

• 26:51Speaker 03

  And this one is a great challenge. It's been over 70 years since this species has been seen. There are species and ecosystems disappearing all the time. It seems like an accelerating rate. We need to focus on the things that we can make a positive difference. We've got the resources, the technology. We can keep this around.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  So even though it's missing, there's no reason to write it off?

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Writing off a species is tantamount to burning all the books in the library that you haven't read yet. My goal is to fill in all those blanks that we need to make sound decisions.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  The Blanco-blind salamander's ecosystem is our ecosystem, an entire world right under our feet, spilling out and sustaining the world above. Before Benji and I leave Texas, Andy tells us that we have to go visit the San Marcos River, which is fed by the Edwards Aquifer.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  It is just like a perfect summer day. Oh, everyone's out.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  The water looks so lovely.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  It is so enticing. It literally comes out of the aquifer here, which means that the water is pretty clean. And you can see, it looks like...

• 28:08Speaker 02

  It looks clear.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  Like crystal, crystal clear, make a little bit of a greenish-blue hue.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  We stand at the river's edge, and for a moment, we just take in the bright sun, the blue sky, the sparkling water, and all the people enjoying it. This is really beautiful.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  There's literally nothing you can do but get in the water when it's this hot, and that is what everyone here is doing.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  You think they're gonna find salamanders?

• 28:31Speaker 04

  No.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  All right, shall we? We're gonna get in the water.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  All right, let's see how this feels.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  How's this feel?

• 28:38Speaker 04

  Oh, it is chilly. Oh my god, it's, I mean, it's incredible. It is so chilly, but it's exactly what I want to feel right now. Yay!

• 28:58Noam Hassenfeld?

  This episode was reported by me, Benji Jones, and Mandy Nguyen, who produced this episode. There was editing from Meredith Hoddinott, Catherine Wells, Brian Resnick, and Noam Hassenfeld, who also scored the episode. Christian Ayala did the mixing and sound design. Richard Seema did the fact checking. And Byrd Pinkerton is off hiking into the woods in search of buried treasure. If you want to read more about lost species and the missing salamander, check out the story I wrote for vox.com titled, "Why Scientists Are Desperate to Find a Salamander That's Been Missing for 71 Years." Additional thanks to Barney Long, Devin Murphy, and Lena Valencia at Rewild, Travis Leduke and Adam Cohen at UT Austin,

• 29:40Noam Hassenfeld?

  as well as Ben Hutchins, Ben Schwartz, and Scott Nicholson. If you have thoughts about this episode or ideas for the show, please email us, or [email protected]. We'd also love it if you left us a review or a rating. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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