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“Ecophysiologist Yann Voituron has estimated the olms’ maximum lifespan at 102 years, which is almost double the maximum lifespan of other long-lived amphibians,” the record book said.

These are scientific hypotheses, as the olms remain a largely unexplored phenomenon due to the inaccessibility of their habitat. It is known that they can survive for years without food, that they have a remarkable ability to regenerate and a mere two heartbeats per minute, and that it will be possible to keep track of their exact live expectancy with the help of the olms from Postojna Cave. In fact, it will be our descendants who will be able to record it accurately, because of the olms’ longevity.  

In 2016, all of us were able to witness for the first time ever the olms’ hatching in front of the world’s eyes. Since the first egg was laid, Postojna Cave’s biologists and the head of the largest cave laboratory, Katja Dolenc Batagelj, have been taking round-the-clock care of the baby dragons and keeping track of their development. The baby olms from the 2016 olm brood are filmed by cameras 24/7. Over the past eight years, we have thus gained a wealth of information, interesting facts and new findings, which are regularly shared with the Biotechnical Faculty in Ljubljana and the scientists studying the olms’ genome.

How did the Guinness World Records book authors come up with the idea for the new record?

As olm guardians, we are the biggest fans and promoters of this mysterious animal. We translate scientific language into popular science, spread the news about the olms and educate. The 2016 hatching has undoubtedly helped to make the olms popular all over the world. The news about the hatching has been covered by the world’s biggest media outlets, such as the New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, CNN and many others. A number of fairy tales, picture books, textbooks and documentaries have been based on the events that took place in Postojna Cave. The arguably best-known documentary is Sir David Attenborough’s Seven Worlds, One Planet series, featuring Will Smith as the main narrator and starring the olm as a representative of the European fauna. This part of the series was filmed in Postojna Cave thanks to the successful olm hatching story that caught the makers’ attention.

Will the olms as a protected species survive?

The olms are a symbol of Slovenia and of the clean drinking water that is fortunately still available here. But people tend to forget that the drinking water resources are limited. Only 3% of the world’s water is freshwater. Of this, only 0.5% is freely available, and the rest is hidden in the natural glacier reservoirs and in the subterranean waters of the karst world, which are the olms’ habitat. The soil in the Karst is fragile, permeable and anything that gets polluted on the surface through runoff ends up underground sooner or later, destroying the olms’ habitat and our drinking water.

With this in mind, we hope that the inclusion of olms in the Guinness World Records is not only a record, but also a kind reminder to all of us.