The mud volcano rings lively in front of a Taiwanese temple, with a captivating video capturing the moment when mud is shot from the ground beneath the crown of fire.
Wang Dang Mud Volcano in Wang Dang Township, southern Taiwan, reached 6.6 feet (2 meters) high on Thursday (June 26) when material spitting foaming mud through four separate vents reached 6.6 feet (2 meters) high, Formosa Television (FTV).
Footage from the approximately 10-hour eruption shows a flame igniting on the burning mud. But while mud volcanoes can ignite naturally, Wandun’s flame was intentionally set up by locals to burn emitted methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change, according to a Reddit post by Mark Tingai, an auxiliary associate professor of geology and geological physics at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
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“Local people throw burning rags at them to light these vents,” Tingai wrote in response to one Reddit user asking about the flames. “They do it mostly to remove the gas, because it looks great!”
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Mud volcanoes have no relation to molten rocks or regular volcanoes that emit hot gases. Some mud volcanoes are associated with hot geothermal activity, such as Yellowstone National Park. However, the mud volcanoes in Wandang are the more common type of this geological feature.
“These mud volcanoes in Taiwan are driven by high fluid pressures that can form deep underground, not by magma-related effects,” Tingay wrote in another Reddit comment.
Wandang Mud Volcano in southern Taiwan erupted again today. The eruption continued from 5am to 3:40pm. This is the 10th eruption in the last three years, most recently on July 6, 2024. Career of a Mud Volcanic Temple, courtesy of a friend of mine. pic.twitter.com/kbb1i206xdjune 26, 2025
Tingay studies mud volcanoes and regularly shares information about eruptions on social media. In his latest post, he described the Wang Dang event along with a video filmed by Zhang Baohui, the caretaker of the Mud Volcanic Temple. He also shares the video on Facebook, showing that the mud volcano is erupting violently from different angles.
According to a Tingay post, the latest eruption began around 5am to 5am local time and continued until around 3:40pm, marking the 10th Wandunmad volcano erupted within the past three years.
The mud volcano in Wandang is not in a single fixed location, but according to Tingai, it can erupt in an area that is 0.6 miles (1 kilometre) wide. For the past few years, the volcano erupted under the temple, with mud shooting at the outside walls, covering the floor and flowing inside.
Mud volcanoes vary in size and shape, and in some cases form large cone-shaped structures that look very similar to normal volcanoes. They can naturally create flames when the rocks attack each other, creating sparks that light up the flammable gases that have been discharged. Researchers believe this was what created hell towering over a mud volcano in the Caspian Sea in 2021, LiveScience previously reported.
