I hope you are excited to read about this, because
I know I’m excited to write about it! Axolotls are sadly endangered, CRITICALLY ENDANGERED.
The axolotl
is also known as the Mexican walking fish, it’s a neotenic salamander, related
to the tiger salamander. What does it look like? Lets have a look.....
source
I can hear you go "Aaaaaaah, so cute".
The Axolotl isn’t a fish, but an amphibian, when they reach adult hood, undergoing metamorphosis, instead of going to land the adults stay aquatic and gilled, their heads are wide and adorable and they don’t have eyelids. Axolotls have barely visible vestigial teeth, which develop during metamorphosis, when mutated they create different colour variants.
The normal wild type animal is brown/tan with gold speckles and an olive undertone. The four mutant colours are:
Pale pink with black eyes
Albino (golden with golden eyes)
Grey with black eyes
All black
See if you can find pictures of each of these colours.
They are a popular exotic pet, like its relative, the
tiger salamander. Axolotls also develop lungs, although their main method of
breathing is through their gills, the occasionally use their lungs to breathe
in air from the water’s surface. Because they live in water their whole lives,
they always have a tail and webbed feet for swimming, Axolotls average is 23 cm
in length.
They normally appear to be smiling because of the shape of their
mouth, in the wild they are only found in one lake outside Mexico City, called
Lake Xochimilco.
They will eat just about anything they catch, including fish, worms, molluscs, and even insects from the surface.
In captivity axolotls are very popular, they can be found in homes and aquariums all over the world, this is because they are hardy, easy to breed.
They can also be found in research laboratories. They are studied because like other salamanders, the Axolotl has the ability to regrow missing body parts, that means that if an axolotl loses a leg or tail, it will regrow, including the bones, muscle, and skin. They can also regrow organs, something scientists hopes they can apply to humans one day.
