Kitum Cave
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kitum Cave is a non-solutional cave developed in pyroclastic (volcanic) rocks (not, as some have presumed, a lava tube in Mount Elgon National Park in Kenya. The cave extends about 200 m into the side of the mountain. The walls contain a large amount of salt, and animals such as elephants have gone deep into the cave for centuries in search of salt. The walls are scratched and furrowed from the removal of salt. There is a theory that this cave was created by elephants digging for salt.
In the 1980s two different visitors to the cave contracted Marburg virus. In 1980, a French man died from the virus, and in 1987 a Danish teenager got sick and died after visiting the cave.
Several fictional and non-fictional literary works, including Richard Preston's The Hot Zone, hypothesize that the natural carrier of the Marburg and Ebola viruses is found in this cave.
