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The 13 June 1987 Wildlife postage stamp sheet of the USA failed to include any troglobitic animals, nor any of the animals commonly considered associated with caves of the USA, such as bats. But several of the stamps show animals which are just as much opportunistic fauna of caves as are bats.

The California sea lion is a regular inhabitant of many littoral caves of the Channel Islands and elsewhere, with colonies consistently found in total darkness, hundreds of meters from the entrance.

Although not often seen by visitors because of their shyness and nocturnal habits, ringtails live in inconspicuous sections of Carlsbad Cavern, New Mexico and many other caves in the south-western part of the USA. Racoons travel as far as Carlsbad's Lunch Room, more than 1 km from the natural entrance and 750 feet down. The nests of pikas are commonly seen in north-western caves, and I accidentally cornered one at a lava seal several dozen meters from the entrance of a little lava tube in a Washington state.

Visiting another Washington state lava tube cave, our party once stopped spellbound as a half-grown cougar strolled out of the entrance and looked curiously at us before walking away, into the forest. I recently rediscovered for the National Park Service a limestone cave within eyes hot of its Visitor Centre, which had been used as a den by a mother cougar and one cub.

Bobcats use caves, also. Several years ago in a lava tube cave in central Oregon, our party was greeted hopefully by a family of bobcat kittens that thought we were their mother coming to feed them, 1/2 km from the entrance. Extensive droppings indicated years of use of the cave.

In the Brooks Range of Alaska, members of the Glacier Grotto of the National Speleological Society have photographed from the air bighorn sheep sheltering in caves. The wool of mountain goats has been found in shelter caves in the Cascade Mountains of Washington. Both the brown bear and black bear hibernate opportunistically in caves. One of the earliest American cave heroes was Israel Putnam, who around 1970 crawled into Wolf's Den Cave, Connecticut to shoot a marauding wolf. And lots of species of American mice make their home in sheltered breakdown and elsewhere in caves.

The bamswallow occasionally makes its nests in the twilight zone. It is the only bird depicted in this sheet that I can recall offhand as using caves.