Scientist finds 'demon cavefish' in pool beneath US military base

A clumsy fall into an underground pool beneath an active US military base has led to the discovery of a strange, eyeless fish named after a TV series monster.Matthew Niemiller, an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was carrying out routine environmental monitoring in February 2025 when he slipped. The accident happened inside Bobcat Cave, a restricted cave system located on the western side of the Redstone Arsenal military base in northern Alabama."I slipped and fell into a pool," Niemiller says. "And in my clumsiness, I spooked a cavefish from under a shelf."The startled creature turned out to be a completely unknown genus and species of cavefish. Because it spent millions of years evolving in complete darkness beneath a busy military installation, scientists named it Demogorgonichthys arcanus.