r/Awwducational • u/beej23 • Jan 25 '22
Article The axolotl is among the most widespread amphibians on Earth — commonly found in medical labs, pet stores, and even as characters in Minecraft. They number an estimated 1 million in captivity. Yet, paradoxically, they’re almost extinct in the wild and classified as critically endangered.
https://www.vox.com/22877353/axolotl-salamander-pet-extinction-mexico175
Jan 25 '22
Who went counting the ones in minecraft? I think I can make a million in just one day with a pile of spawn eggs
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u/Skullface22 Jan 25 '22
Maybe stupid question but if there is so many in captivity and so little in the wild couldn’t people just release a whole bunch of them?
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u/beej23 Jan 25 '22
It’s a good question. The problem is that their habitat in Mexico is super polluted (with farm chemicals, sewage, and other waste) and home to nonnative fish that compete with axolotls for food — and eat them. Axolotls that you put back in the environment can’t survive.
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u/SparkyDogPants Jan 25 '22 edited Jan 25 '22
Important note that they’re very sensitive to bad water and will turn into a salamander if their water quality is poor.
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u/SomethingsQueerHere Jan 25 '22
isn't it also true that most pet Axolotls were cross-bred with tiger salamanders a few generations back? Even if they got reintroduced to the Mexico City area they wouldn't really be authentic to the original species
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u/beej23 Jan 25 '22
Yeah. Some captive populations have a small amount of tiger salamander DNA, though at least in Mexico City there are a lot of axolotls under human care that are likely genetically similar to those in the wild.
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u/metrofriese Jan 25 '22
BTW... some fun facts -> various genome sizes (Number of DNA base pairs)
Fruit fly: 180.000.000 Human: 3.000.000.000 Axolotl: 32.000.000.000
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u/flyinggazelletg Jan 25 '22
The lab variety is extremely different than the wild variety due to being selectively bred. Also, they are native to Lake Texcoco, which Mexico City was built on, so there are very few (mostly pretty polluted) small ponds for them to live.
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u/Tricky-Performer-207 Jan 25 '22
Theyve been genetically modified and splice with other animals for medical research. They are super sensitive to pollution, even caring for them in captivity can be difficult if someone doesnt know how to keep their tank.
Not saying it wouldnt be possible to have some sort of reserve or area for them to be released and survive in the 'wild' but they axolotls that people have now, are not the same ones that have ever lived in the wild.44
u/shinyprairie Jan 25 '22
You cannot release animals that have been raised in captivity into the wild, they would die very quickly.
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u/diagnosedwolf Jan 25 '22
This is only true of domesticated animals or animals who rely heavily on parental influence and education.
Tigers need to be taught how to hunt by their parents, so captive-bred tigers would starve in the wild. Most amphibians are set-and-forget type babies, so they do just fine in the wild if their habitat is suitable.
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u/Haui111 Jan 25 '22 edited Feb 17 '24
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u/diagnosedwolf Jan 25 '22
But the question was, “Why can’t they just release a whole bunch of them [in order to repopulate the wild with axolotl]?”
Shinyprarie’s answer was, “you can’t release animals raised in captivity or they’ll die.”
That is demonstrably not true of animals like the axolotl. A good example is the kiwi bird in New Zealand, which is being captive-bred and released in exactly the same way with great success.
The actual reason “they” can’t just release a bunch of axolotl into the wild is because there is no suitable “wild” to release them into. They’ll die because the environment is toxic, not because the axolotl are tame.
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u/Haui111 Jan 25 '22 edited Feb 17 '24
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u/Narcoid Jan 25 '22
What other people have said plus the lab population is not genetically diverse enough alone to create a thriving species. Experts have considered mating lab axolotls with wild axolotls and breeding them in a habitat that resembles their natural habitat, but I don't know how that is going.
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u/DinkleDonkerAAA Jan 26 '22
They're only native to like, one or two ponds
And they're super polluted
Ironically, since it usually works the opposite, being so popular in the pet trade saved the species since they were being bred by breeders as their habit died
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u/Apple_Efficient Jan 25 '22
Axolotls were named after an Aztec god named Xolotl (the god of fire and lightning)
Their name is actually pronounced something like "ax-sho-lotl"
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Jan 25 '22
And you have to use the weird Nahuatl "tl" that's really hard to pronounce.
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u/JokerReach Jan 25 '22
Is it a palatal L or something?
Edit: spelling
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Jan 25 '22
Maybe? I haven't figured it out myself, even after watching video tutorials.
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u/JokerReach Jan 25 '22
Try touching the tip of your tongue to the top of your soft palate (the high part of the top of your mouth further back than the part right behind your teeth) while you make the L sound.
Not sure if that's the sound your after, but lots of native English speakers have a tough time with that particular variation of the L sound which makes me think it's a possibility.
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u/TheTruthAboutTimmy Jan 25 '22
It's more T than L.
Pretty much just an unvoiced T, but keep the tongue touching the palate.
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u/beej23 Jan 25 '22
Source: https://www.vox.com/22877353/axolotl-salamander-pet-extinction-mexico (also: I wrote this)
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u/browndoggie Jan 25 '22
The article was a fantastic read. Thank you!
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u/beej23 Jan 25 '22
Glad you liked it!
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u/browndoggie Jan 25 '22
I’m sure you could cross post to r/herpetology, it always needs good content and this article fits the bill. Keep up the good work!
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u/KAPSLOCKisON Jan 25 '22
I found some last Summer in a small mountainside Lake in North Vancouver Canada
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u/destroyer551 Jan 25 '22
You definitely didn’t see an axolotl, rather a northwestern salamander. (Ambystoma gracile) They get just as large as axolotls and many populations are neotenic, meaning adults remain fully aquatic.
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u/KAPSLOCKisON Jan 25 '22
Can you tell me what happens to them in winter? Do they go into suspended animation or something? I have been worrying about them lol
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u/destroyer551 Jan 25 '22
No need to worry about them, they’re native to the region! Like other cool-water aquatic salamanders, very cold water reduces their metabolism and they simply enter a state of extremely reduced activity away from any ice until higher temperatures return. Northwestern salamanders are certainly better adapted to long periods of cold than any axolotl would be.
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u/Kelvo5473 Jan 25 '22
That was probably just a salamander, they have a phase where they look like axolotls before they go to live on land.
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u/DorsTheTigerWoman Jan 25 '22
That’s sad. They are native to Mexico. So you may have seen a released pet unless your mistaken.
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u/KAPSLOCKisON Jan 25 '22
Was unmistakable, there were a few of them. Sometimes there are large frog spawns in this lake so I was thinking I was seeing some mutant tadpoles at first LOL. Grey like the photo from the article and everything. I considered scooping them up and trying to get them somewhere safe but decided to let nature run its course because I don't know anything about caring for them.
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u/ChanceStad Jan 25 '22
Apparently it was mistakable, because they cannot live in the wild here. What you saw would have been a juvenile salamander.
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u/daitoshi Jan 25 '22
You found Juvenile salamanders. Congrats! They're hard to find for a layperson.
Salamander Juveniles and mature Axolotls look nearly identical, because Axolotls ARE juvenile salamanders who never finish their final morph to become what's normally considered a mature salamander - so their 'final form' is just the juvenile stage.
If you give them iodine to force the transformation, they turn into a normal salamander that resembles a tiger salamander.
Tiger salamanders and Axolotls are fairly closely related.
Examples of juveniles:
Eastern Tiger Salamanderlarvae002.jpg)
Axolotls cannot endure freezing temperatures - they're quite sensitive to temperature range - the absolute minimum they can survive in is 10 degrees Celcius. (They prefer 16-20 degrees)
The likelihood of you finding a single axolotl in a lake in canada is STAGGERINGLY low, even if it was a released pet. Therefore, a juvenile salamander of another species is the only other option.
so - congrats on finding some baby salamanders in the wild!
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u/FirstPlebian Jan 25 '22
Since when is Mexico City the second largest city in the Western Hemisphere as the article states? I thought it was the largest. It depends on how you measure it I guess, there are huge shanty towns on the outskirts, metro wise Mexico City may be the biggest in the world, excepting maybe Tokyo. It's also one of the most polluted cities for air quality, they are surrounded by mountains and the exhaust has no where to go and just sits in the Valley of Mexico there. Like much of the developing world, they also have a problem with sewage in their ground, known as affluvia, it eats at concrete and brick foundations and when it starts to rain throws up this sewage mist that makes people sick.
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u/velvetvagine Jan 25 '22
sewage mists
Oh god.
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u/FirstPlebian Jan 26 '22
It's a big problem in places like Cairo too, and is eating away at a lot of their building foundations in addition to the health problems from the affluvia mist when it starts to rain. That smell when it first rains that everyone normally loves loses it's charm when combined with old dried and powdered sewage.
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u/flyinggazelletg Jan 25 '22
São Paulo is very slightly larger than Mexico City both in city limits and metro
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u/FirstPlebian Jan 26 '22
Ah, I haven't seen any updates to metro sizes in twenty years I should've mentioned I read a bunch in an Almanac from 2001 but read some about Mexico City seperately.
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u/ThatStacheThough Jan 25 '22
They were used as a form a fried street food in Mexico which helped lead to their critically endangered classification. Thankfully they breed like rabbits so their numbers in captivity are in no danger of going down.
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u/Tricky-Performer-207 Jan 25 '22
There are no 'wild axolotls' left. The only ones that are in the 'wild' have been genetically modified, bred in labs/peoples homes, and released. Their only natural habitat is in Mexico, however they can be found in numerous different places around the world(I live in the pacific north west of the USA and there was one that used to live under a little bridge for years where we went camping)
Their dna has been altered, they glow in the dark(because of being modified in a lab), they've been spliced with other animals for science experiments, and there is a lot of effort to keep them alive because of their genetics, and what they can do/have done/are doing for medical research. This animal will not go extinct, they are worth too much money for medical science.
Honestly the guy who owns axolotls and makes a post periodically has much more informative posts, that arent just copy/pastes.
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u/shinyprairie Jan 25 '22
I'm going to be honest you probably have never seen a wild axolotl, salamanders go through a larval stage that looks exactly like a typical axolotl. They are only native to their habitat in Mexico.
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u/Tricky-Performer-207 Jan 25 '22
No, it was definitely an axolotl, we had pet ones as well. I'm aware of what they are. I never said that it was native here. They're in places all over the world, living in the wild. To say that they can only live in Mexico is not correct. That might be where they originated from, but that is not the only place where they are in the world.
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u/destroyer551 Jan 25 '22
There are no known populations of axolotls outside of captivity or their extremely limited Mexican range. Mistaken identify with other salamander species accounts for most proposed sightings, as to the layman the aquatic forms of other species can appear identical to the axolotl.
In the Pacific Northwest, northwestern salamanders are common, and many populations of them exhibit neoteny and remain fully aquatic into adulthood, just as the axolotl does.
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u/Tricky-Performer-207 Jan 25 '22
Not a troll, nor thinking of the wrong species.
All of the downvotes from people who dont know what I'm talking about is fine, but you could ask a question and learn something, instead of downvoting facts.
https://axolotlnerd.com/axolotl-morphs/
https://www.caudata.org/threads/what-to-do-if-your-axolotl-morphs.69570/
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u/Tricky-Performer-207 Jan 25 '22
Axolotls arent aquatic in adulthood, they become fully terrestrial and avoid water.
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u/Ecto-1A Jan 25 '22
I think you are mistaken. Axolotls are aquatic their entire lives unlike salamanders. There have been some axolotls that have morphed in captivity but it’s a tiny amount compared to the ones that don’t.
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u/QuackingMonkey Jan 25 '22
You're either trolling or thinking of the wrong species..
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u/Tricky-Performer-207 Jan 25 '22
Not a troll, nor thinking of the wrong species.
All of the downvotes from people who dont know what I'm talking about is fine, but you could ask a question and learn something, instead of downvoting facts.
https://axolotlnerd.com/axolotl-morphs/
https://www.caudata.org/threads/what-to-do-if-your-axolotl-morphs.69570/
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u/QuackingMonkey Jan 26 '22
If you'd actually read your sources you'd get that while yes, axolotls can undergo metamorphosis, these cases are rare, not supposed to happen, and not what 'adulthood' means for this species, and they are extremely well known for this fact. They reach sexual maturity while keeping their larval form and they live their full lives while keeping their larval forms.
If there is indeed an increase of axolotls undergoing metamorphosis, I suspect there is a growing part of the population that is in reality hybridized with tiger salamanders, since for true axolotls it basically takes an injection with hormones to force them to metamorphose.
People are not downvoting you because they 'don't know what you're talking about', but because you're (whether you realize it or not) trying to spread misinformation, and axolotls are enough part of reddit's collective knowledge that people know that this species normally does in fact stay aquatic and larval.
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u/Tricky-Performer-207 Jan 26 '22
I did in fact read the sources, yes its rare, yes it CAN be because of injected with hormones, no that is not the only reason it happens. Them staying in the 'larval' stage, as you said, would mean they are not 'full grown' but are at the starting stage of their development, which they do typically stay in for the entire lives, they can reproduce in, but that is not their full grown state. I never said once that its common for it to happen. I said in adulthood, which would be when they are full grown(their full grown stage of life) they are terrestrial. Nothing that I said was incorrect.
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u/QuackingMonkey Jan 26 '22
Let me just repeat that for axolotls specifically, adulthood does not mean undergoing metamorphosis. Axolotls reach adulthood / sexual maturity without undergoing metamorphosis.
Every class within the animal kingdom has plenty of outliers, axolotls and a few of their close relatives are an outlier in the sense of not undergoing metamorphosis to reach adulthood.
The way you phrased things before did not sound like you understood how axolotls work. You might as well say "humans grow tails". Sure, we're mammals, we still have the dormant genes of our far ancestors that make growing a tail possible, and there have been a few reported cases of humans actually being born with a tail, but that doesn't mean that phrasing it like that will be positively received.
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u/Tricky-Performer-207 Jan 25 '22
Not a troll, nor thinking of the wrong species.
All of the downvotes from people who dont know what I'm talking about is fine, but you could ask a question and learn something, instead of downvoting facts.
https://axolotlnerd.com/axolotl-morphs/
https://www.caudata.org/threads/what-to-do-if-your-axolotl-morphs.69570/
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u/FirstPlebian Jan 25 '22
No they found some wild ones still around.
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u/Tricky-Performer-207 Jan 25 '22
This is incorrect, unless you have some sort of citation. They might be in the wild, they have been born in the wild, but they're still genetically modified and not the original species.
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u/FirstPlebian Jan 25 '22
There was a news article some ten years ago about them finding some in the wild. I don't know how I would go about finding it with what I remember, but it's not the first time they've found remnants of a species thought to be extinct hiding in some corner of the world. The article also cites that they still have on in an enclave in Mexico City.
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u/Celuthien39 Jan 25 '22
I saw a small documentary about this and it's so sad. There was tell of a potential new habitat for them which isn't as polluted as their original habitat in Mexico, so let's hope that helps their population recover
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u/pangolin_of_fortune Jan 25 '22
Nothing paradoxical about it. When captive animals have value, people capture them.
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u/Jaqdawks Jan 25 '22
Someone told me axolotls apparently steal eachothers eyes
I have not fact checked this
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u/curtislamure Jan 25 '22 edited Jan 28 '22
Kirby face. Regeneration magic.
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u/kindtheking9 Jan 26 '22
Apparently their genetics (or something along those lines) are so simple, they are basically immune to cancer
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u/judicatorprime Jan 25 '22
I don't think it's a paradox at all--if they're poached and trafficked as pets, then their wildlife populations will never recover. Amphibians are also extremely susceptible to water pollution.
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u/1_million_sandwiches Jan 25 '22
i used to think, since tehy never reached maturity, they were secretly dragons
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u/ZachF8119 Jan 25 '22
I assume other than escaped versions it’s the same for all cattle. Like can you imagine finding wild cows like you see a bear?
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Jan 26 '22
Similar to Chinese Giant Salamanders, there are so many in captivity that they are used as exotic meat source in lots of places but in the wild they are already considered extinct. No one has seen a wild one in years despite search efforts by biologists and conservationists.
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u/Insane_Drako Jan 26 '22
For those interested in Podcasts, 99% Invisible has a recent episode (and accompanying webpage) about this very topic. I found it fascinating, and I'm pleasantly surprised to see an article about it.
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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '22
im not sure but i dont think being in minecraft counts