Two baby olms were seen in a live camera being hatched, keeping close tabs on the eggs throughout their incubation.

Olms are rare salamanders which are completely blind, and their distinctive features also include a ghostly pallor, a peculiar reproductive cycle, and an extraordinarily long lifespan allowing them to outlive most humans. They are also known as “baby dragons” because of their unique appearance.

Like Us on Facebook

The eggs were found at popular tourist destination that has its own aquarium Postojna Cave in Slovenia, where the salamanders have lived for thousands of years, and on the last week of May, the first of the 23 eggs in the clutch had hatched. A second olm had hatched from its egg earlier this month.

For the past four months, biologists have been closely watching a clutch of “dragon” eggs. It is a rare opportunity for scientists to observe such an event because “baby dragons” only reproduce once every five to ten years. Incredibly, these endangered amphibians can go over a decade without food.

“We took care of the eggs non-stop, observing them, connecting scientific findings with our own experience.... We had to take decisions nobody had taken before. Everything was new,” Postojna Cave Park said in the announcement.

The Postojna staff are working with amphibian experts from France, who have studied the olms in an underground mountain lab since the 1950s. The French lab is the only other place where olms have been observed emerging from their eggs. In nature, no one has ever witnessed an olm younger than two years.

A total of 64 eggs were found in the cave in January, but only 23 of them have been considered viable, or capable of hatching. This may sound like a low percentage, but olms in the wild are known to have only one or two viable eggs out of a clutch of 250, or easily less than one percent. While a mere two baby olms have hatched so far, the researchers are optimistic that more healthy larvae may appear in the days to come.

Tagsbaby dragons, olms, dragons, slovenia, Ancient Slovenian cave, salamander, Postojna Cave