Topics: Animals, World News, Travel, Environment, Nature
A cave in Kenya has been dubbed the 'most dangerous place on Earth' due to the virus believed to hide in its dark passages.
Located in Mount Elgon National Park in Kenya, Kitum Cave has a history that's both heartwarming and chilling all at the same time.
The walls of the cave are covered in marks and scratches - but while they might look like the work of miners looking for gold or diamonds, they actually have a much sweeter - or should I say saltier - past.
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Due to the salt found in the walls of the cave, Kitum is believed to have attracted a range of animals, including antelope and elephants keen to use the cave as a giant salt lick.
It was the elephants making their way through the caves that left the marks on the walls and helped carve out the passages - but in doing so, they also further exposed the darker side of the cave.
In the 1980s, Kitum Cave became famous after two visitors died due to contracting a deadly virus called Marburg.
According to the World Health Organization, the virus is a 'highly virulent disease that causes haemorrhagic fever' - a condition which damages the cardiovascular system and reduces the body's ability to function.
It has a fatality ratio of up to 88 percent, according to the WHO, and is part of the same family as the virus that causes Ebola.
Once an individual is infected with the virus, it can spread through humans through direct contact with blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids, as well as through contaminated surfaces and materials.
Humans can catch the disease from prolonged exposure to mines or caves inhabited by Rousettus bat colonies - which is what is thought to have happened in the cases of one man from France, who died after visiting Kitum in 1980, and the death of a 15-year-old boy in 1987.
Following the deaths, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) launched a mission in the cave to try and find the species responsible for the virus.
They sampled a wide variety of species, but strangely found no Marburg disease-causing viruses.
In spite of the lack of evidence of the virus, the cave continues to be described as 'one of the most dangerous places on Earth', in reports and posts online.
In the years after the two deaths, expeditions to mines in different countries found evidence of the Marburg virus in cave-dwelling Egyptian fruit bats.
The mines had colonies of the same species of African fruit bats that live in Kitum Cave, suggesting they were the cause of the disease after all.
