Axolotl

Overview

The axolotl is a neotenic salamander: it keeps its larval features, gills and a fully aquatic life, throughout adulthood and never undergoes metamorphosis. Its last wild home is the canal system of Xochimilco in Mexico City, where it rests in aquatic plant cover by day and hunts from evening into the night. It is Critically Endangered in the wild, with an estimated 50 to 1,000 left, and widely kept in captivity for biomedical research (its regenerative abilities are extraordinary) and as a pet.

Quick Facts

History

The name comes from Nahuatl, joining atl for water with the name of Xolotl, the dog-headed Aztec god who, in Bernardino de Sahagun's account, took this form to escape sacrifice. The laboratory animal begins with a single shipment: in 1864, 34 live axolotls were sent from Mexico City to Paris and split between the Jardin d'Acclimatation and the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, where six went to Auguste Dumeril. They bred so freely that Dumeril counted about 800 within a year, and their offspring went out to institutions across Europe, which is why most laboratory axolotls descend from those six. The albinism behind the pink-eyed white form came later, from a wild albino tiger salamander found in Minnesota and crossed in, work documented by Humphrey in 1967.

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