How Do Axolotls Work?

pet trade. One reason they're cute is because they display niatny, which means they retain a lot of their juvenile features throughout their adult life, beyond their faces. Although adult axe lottles also have functional lungs like other salamander species and can breathe through their skin, they also have big, fluffy, feathery external gills, something most amphibians don't keep after babyhood. They have small, delicate, webbed feet and a long tadpole

like tail crusted with a translucent fin. Because they don't have to rely on their webbed feet and legs for land travel, but they do have to be able to

move through water like a big tadpole. In the wild, they're most often dark brown, gray or black, with lighter speckles, but deepigmented variants with gold skin and eyes or pink skin and red gills are common, and you often see them as pets as scientists think that they stay baby like throughout their lifespans because, unlike other salamondar species, the

wild ax lottl population evolved in very stable habitats. In most other salamonder species, such as the tiger salamander, live in wetlands that dry up during certain parts of the year, so they have to get rid of their feathery gills and breathe through functional lungs and through their skin. A wild ax lottles evolved in a habitat with year round water and with very few aquatic predators, so they don't need to spend energy changing their bodies to suit their

changing circumstances. An x lottle's life span is about fifteen years in captivity, but a wild x lottle probably lives only five or six years. They reach sexual maturity at one year, and though they are solitary creatures for the most part, in February, breeding season begins and wild ax lottle males begin finding females using pheromones. When they get together, he does a courtship dance in which he shakes his

tail in her direction. After the female acquiesces to his attentions, she pokes him with her nose and he deposits a sperm packet on the lake floor, which he picks up and uses to fertilize her eggs. The wild, female ex lottle will lay hundreds of eggs in the weeds or around some rocks, and then leave them to fen for themselves.

Baby x lottles receive zero parental care. In fact, young axe lottels, hungry after hatching from their eggs, have been observed gnawing on their siblings legs and pails for sustenance, though as you'll see, this is totally fine because the legs will just grow back in their home ecosystem. Axe lottles are or at least used to be top predators around the lakes, wetlands, and canals of Central Mexico, where

they originated and once thrived. Although they appear unassuming, they're actually ruthless carnivores, feasting on worms, mollusks, insects and insect larvae, and even small fish. In the wild, they'll also eat pretty much any animal that you put in a tank with them. Post ancient Mesoamerican cultures used the axe lottle as a source of food and medicine, Some said a

gift from the gods. A Myths from that area associate the animal with an underworld god, Sholat, who in some legends escapes capture by turning himself into a small, feathery amphibian. His name comes from the Nawat language and is spelled the same as axe lottle without the letter A at the front, but European language speakers didn't pick up the pronunciation when they picked up the animal. A part of the mythology of the axe lottl centers around the fact that,

alike a powerful god, they are difficult to kill. If an ox lottl loses virtually any part of its body, it can regenerate it no problem a. While sub lizards can grow back a tail bisected, flatworms can grow back the other half, and starfish can regrow a limb, an ax lottle can regrow practically any part of its body in a few weeks. For the article this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with David Gardner, a professor in the school of Biological Sciences at the University

of California, Irvine. Back in twenty nineteen, he said, of the animals that are closest to us the vertebrates, salamanders are the only ones that can regenerate in this way and can heal without scars. Other salamanders can regenerate, but axe lottls do it best. When the Europeans got wind of axe lottal regeneration, ax lottls went from being a sort of boring exhibit in a zoo to one of the most important and longest self sustaining lab animals in history.

Among the first modern zoo animals, thirty four ax lottls are brought from Mexico, along with three deer and three wild dogs, to Paris in eighteen sixty four, and although they weren't as interesting to nineteenth century zoogoers as the larger, more charismatic animals, scientists quickly realized that these unassuming little guys were strange, almost mythological in fact, and they were studied at the time for their unusual adult form and

their regenerative abilities. A Gardner said, these days, ax lottls are hugely important model systems for our studies about regeneration. We've known for decades, centuries even that we can remove parts of a developing embryonic structure and the cells that are left behind will fill in, repair and regenerate that structure. But in most animals mammals, for instance, the system sort

of shuts down at the end of embryonic development. Axe Lottels and other salamanders seem to be able to revert back to that embryonic like state, reaccessing the developmental program that's already there. Humans have the program, we just stop being able to access it when we're no longer an embryo. You could say, we, like axe lottels, have evolved the ability to regenerate just fine, but we've also evolved a

mechanism that inhibits that. Scientists hope to figure out how to one day apply the axe lottl's regeneration abilities to the human body. They can regenerate new limbs, heart tissue, eyes, and even its spinal cord in parts of their brain, and make new neurons throughout their lives, which human brains do too, though not as readily. It is possible to force anax lottel to metamorphin into an adult salamander without gills by injecting it with iodine or thyroxine, or by

feeding it foods that are rich in iodine. However, scientists have found that afterward they don't easily regenerate cells, and for all their seeming magic, wild ax lottls are critically endangered today. The waterways in their home around Mexico City have become not only polluted by aging wastewater systems, but overrun by introduced telapia and perch, both of which view ax lottles as a delicious snack. In twenty nineteen, a population assessment concluded that there are probably fewer than one

thousand individuals left in the wild. The Mexican government and many conservation groups are doing their best to save the species by restoring the lakes and natural habitats they live in. One strategy is to make stationary floating island habitats for them, called danumpas a Spanish word for rafts made of aquatic vegetation, mud, and wood that were used hundreds of years ago as

floating gardens before Spanish colonizers arrived. When what's now part of Mexico City was the Triple Alliance City, state of tinoche Titlan. The Empire built and farmed on a vast network of chanampas for miles around the city. This system of agriculture created canals that were shallow and sheltered, and where the ox lottl popular thrived. When the Spanish conquered the city, they remove the chumpus and drained the canals

and lakes. Today, the natural habitat of the wild oxilotl population is limited to the southern part of Mexico City. People are working to remove the invasive fishes that eat the axe lottls and begin using jenumpus again, which not only provides habitat for the axe lottles, it also filters toxins out of the lake water. Ecotourism of these danumpus has assisted in funding axe loottal conservation efforts. Meanwhile, captive

populations axe lottls are doing great. They're the most widely distributed amphibian in the world, and because scientists desperately want to figure out how to help you regenerate a new set of toes, millions of them live in labs around the globe. And while axe lottle research is important in science and captive populations of pet axe lottls are also popular.

It's not legal everywhere for pet owners to keep ax lottles, so it's important to check your local exotic pet laws before you go looking for one and mess with any living creature. Be sure to read up on how to care for one before you take the dive. No pun intended. They're not difficult to keep per se, but speaking as a home aquarium enthusiast myself, I can tell you that keeping any aquatic life form comfortable in your non aquatic

home can take a lot of work. Today's episode is based on the article the super cute axe Lottle is also a ruthless carnivore on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Jesslinshields. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Perform more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.