Kitum Cave is located in

Mount Elgon National Park Mount Elgon National Park is a national park in Kenya and Uganda that lies northeast of Lake Victoria. The park covers an area of . The Ugandan part of the park covers while the Kenyan part covers . The Kenyan part of the park was gazetted in ...

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

. It is one of five named "elephant caves" of Mount Elgon where animals, including elephants, "mine" the rock for its sodium-rich salts. In the 1980s, two European visitors contracted

Marburg virus disease Marburg (; ) is a university town in the German federal state () of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approximately 76,000. Having been ...

there.

Description

Kitum Cave is a non-solutional

cave Caves or caverns are natural voids under the Earth's Planetary surface, surface. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. Exogene caves are smaller openings that extend a relatively short distance undergrou ...

developed in

pyroclastic Pyroclast, Pyroclastic or Pyroclastics may refer to: Geology * Pyroclast, or airborne volcanic tephra fragments * Pyroclastic rock, rock fragments produced and ejected by explosive volcanic eruptions * Pyroclastic cone, landform of ejecta fro ...

(volcanic) rocks (not, as some have presumed, a

lava tube A lava tube, more rarely called a pyroduct, is a 'roofed conduit through which molten lava travels away from its vent'. If lava in the tube drains out, it will leave an empty cave. Lava tubes are common in low-viscosity volcanic systems. La ...

). It extends about into the side of Mount Elgon near the Kenyan border with

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

. The walls are rich in

salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

, and animals such as

elephant Elephants are the largest living land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant ('' Loxodonta africana''), the African forest elephant (''L. cyclotis''), and the Asian elephant ('' Elephas maximus ...

s have gone deep into the cave for centuries in search of salt. The elephants use their tusks to break off pieces of the cave wall that they then chew and swallow, leaving the walls scratched and furrowed; their actions have likely enlarged the cave over time. Other animals including

bushbuck Bushbuck is a common name that may refer to one of the following African antelopes: *Cape bushbuck The Cape bushbuck (''Tragelaphus sylvaticus''), also known as imbabala is a common, medium-sized bushland-dwelling, and a widespread species of ant ...

buffalo Buffalo most commonly refers to: * True buffalo or Bubalina, a subtribe of wild cattle, including most "Old World" buffalo, such as water buffalo * Bison, a genus of wild cattle, including the American buffalo * Buffalo, New York, a city in the n ...

and

hyena Hyenas or hyaenas ( ; from Ancient Greek , ) are feliform carnivoran mammals belonging to the family Hyaenidae (). With just four extant species (each in its own genus), it is the fifth-smallest family in the order Carnivora and one of the sma ...

s come to Kitum Cave to consume salt left by the elephants. There is a lot of

bat guano Guano (Spanish from ) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. Guano is a highly effective fertiliser due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key nutrients essential for plant growth. Guano was also, to a l ...

deeper in the cave from fruit-eating and

insectivorous bat A robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant which eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate insectivores wer ...

s. There is also a deep crevasse into which young elephants have fallen and died.

Marburg virus

In the 1980s, two visitors to the cave contracted

. In 1980, a French man died from the disease after visiting the cave, and in 1987 a Danish boy who lived in Kenya also fell ill and died after visiting the cave. Two different but very similar viruses have been catalogued from these infections: the 1980 virus is named after a doctor, Shem Musoke, who survived being infected by the French patient, while the 1987 virus is named Ravn, after the last name of the Danish patient. Based on these cases, an expedition was staged by the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) in an attempt to identify the

vector Vector most often refers to: * Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction * Disease vector, an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism Vector may also refer to: Mathematics a ...

species presumably residing in the cave. Despite sampling a wide variety of species (including fruit bats), no Marburg disease-causing viruses were found and the animal vector remained a mystery. These events were dramatized by

Richard Preston Richard Preston (born August 5, 1954) is a writer for ''The New Yorker'' and bestselling author who has written books about infectious disease, bioterrorism, redwoods and other subjects, as well as fiction. Biography Preston was born in Cambr ...

in the best-selling book ''

The Hot Zone ''The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story'' is a best-selling 1994 nonfiction thriller by Richard Preston about the origins and incidents involving viral hemorrhagic fevers, particularly ebolaviruses and marburgviruses. The basis of the book ...

'' (1994). Kitum Cave Falls 2

In September 2007, similar expeditions to active mines in

Gabon Gabon ( ; ), officially the Gabonese Republic (), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and ...

and

found solid evidence of reservoirs of Marburg disease-causing virus in cave-dwelling

Egyptian fruit bat The Egyptian fruit bat or Egyptian rousette (''Rousettus aegyptiacus'') is a species of megabat that occurs in Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Indian subcontinent. It is one of three ''Rousettus'' species with an African-Malag ...

s. The Ugandan mines both had colonies of the same species of African fruit bats that colonize Kitum Cave, suggesting that the long-sought vector at Kitum was indeed the bats and their

guano Guano (Spanish from ) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. Guano is a highly effective fertiliser due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key nutrients essential for plant growth. Guano was also, to a le ...

. The study was conducted after two mine workers contracted Marburg virus disease in August 2007, both without being bitten by any bats, suggesting that the virus may be propagated through inhalation of powdered guano.

References

External links

Kenya Wildlife Service – Mount Elgon National Park
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{{EngvarB, date=November 2020 Mount Elgon Caves of Kenya