Villa Luz Cave, Spanish name Cueva de Villa Luz (lit. Cave of the Lighted House), also known as Cueva del Azufre and Cueva de las Sardinas, is a cave near Tapijulapa in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco. The springs within the cave are rich in hydrogen sulfide, a gas that is a potent respiratory toxicant and smells like rotten eggs. Within the water sulfide is oxidized to colloidal sulfur which gives the water a milky appearance, and creates sulfuric acid. The cave is essentially a maze about two kilometers in length and primarily etched out of limestone by the sulfuric acid in the water. Hydrogen sulfide is also used by chemoautotrophic bacteria, which form the base of the food web.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (March 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 9,119 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Cueva de Villa Luz]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Cueva de Villa Luz}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

The cave is a popular tourist destination and visited by many, partly because it is easily accessible. It has been featured on the BBC's series Planet Earth, and Wonders of the Solar System.

• Ophel biome [de], proposed worldwide biome supporting similar ecosystems
  • Similar caves where life partly or fully depends on chemosynthesis: Movile Cave in Romania, the first one identified, Ein-Nur Cave and Ayalon Cave (Israel), Frasassi Caves (Italy), Melissotrypa Cave (Elassona municipality, Greece), Tashan Cave (Iran), caves in the Sharo-Argun Valley in the Caucasus Mountains, Lower Kane Cave, Cesspool Cave (Wyoming and Alleghany County, VA, USA).^[1][2]