Carved by the tusks of elephants, who visit its caverns to scrape the walls for salt, Kitum cave in Kenya hosts some of the deadliest pathogens known to man.
He died quickly at a Nairobi hospital. 'Connective tissue in his face is dissolving, and his face appears to hang from the underlying bone,' a book on the case described the man's rapid decay from the viral hemorrhagic or blood-letting fever.
Scientists now realize that the cave's valued salty minerals have turned Kitum into an incubator for zoonotic diseases, affecting not only elephants but also other wildlife in western Kenya.
The realization that the 600-foot deep cave had been continually deepened and widened by elephants, only to become a haven for disease-carrying bats, came later.
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