What are caves?

Caves are big spaces inside mountains, like rooms under the ground that people or animals can live in.

Imagine you have a big block of cheese, and you take out a piece, what's left is like a cave. The mountain is like the cheese, and when parts of it get removed, either by water, wind, or even rocks moving around, caves are formed inside.

1. Water can make a cave: Imagine you leave your juice box in the sun for too long, it starts to melt and drip down. Over many years, water doing this same thing inside a mountain can create a hole or tunnel, that's how some caves are born.

1. Sometimes rocks fall out of the mountain: Like when you drop a rock into a pile of sand, it makes a space around it. If that happens many times over thousands of years, those spaces can become big caves.

So next time you're in a dark room with your flashlight, imagine you're exploring a cave, deep inside a mountain!