Axolotls are fascinating!

I've always loved weird, fascinating and cute animals, and that's why today I will write about one of my favorite animals in the world: the axolotl.

Axolotls, also known as "Mexican salamanders," are amphibians whose natural habitat are the murky canals of Mexico City and nearby lakes, like Lake Xochimilco. They live most of their life’s underwater even when they're adults and don't go through a metamorphosis, which makes them different from other amphibians. Their diet consists in mostly small insects, worms and fish.

They can regenerate the entirety of lost appendages and sometimes more vital structures like vital organs. For this reason, they've been used as testing animals in laboratories all over the world to study the development of cancer and organ regeneration.

In the last decade they've also became a popular exotic pet. I would love to have one but the amount of care they need is insane. Because of their anatomy and the fact that they don't have eyelids they always need to be kept in a dark room, in a fish tank that can hold a minimum of 38 liters of water for one axolotl. It's often recommended a fish tank of 75 liters because of the amount of waste they produce. This waste makes the levels of ammonia in the water very high, which can be very poisonous for these animals. A bigger tank, regular water changes and regular siphoning up of detritus and uneaten food decreases the levels of ammonia, and it's what the caretaker needs to do to keep them alive. As you can see, the amount of constant work it's quite a lot, especially for a college student like me. Plus, you often must acquire axolotls from breeders, which I'm not too fond of.

Since 2010 they've been considered an endangered species due to the pollution of the waters they live in, the continued urbanization of Mexico City and the introduction of non-native and intrusive predators to their habitat, like Carp and Tilapia. The population density of this animals has decreased immensely, from 6000 axolotls per square kilometer in 1998 to 100 per square kilometer in 2014. 

Lastly, and as a cool fact, Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar became inspired by this creature, writing a story called "Axolotl" which tells a tale about a man who becomes obsessed with this amphibian after visiting an aquarium in Paris. It's part of the book "Final del Juego" but if you want you can read it in this link.