[1] It is distinct from an aquifer, which may flow like a river but is contained within a permeable layer of rock or other unconsolidated materials.
The longest subterranean river in the world is the Sistema Sac Actun cave system in Mexico.
[5][6] Some fish (colloquially known as cavefish) and other troglobite organisms are adapted to life in subterranean rivers and lakes.
The river Alph, running "Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea" is central to the poem Kubla Khan, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
The characters in Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth encounter a subterranean river: "Hans was not mistaken," he said.