What is scientific about this pronunciation? Axolotl is not the scientfic name (its Ambystoma mexicanum), and usually the goal with pronouncing scientific names is for the listener to be able to spell the name after hearing it (at least for botany, which is what I am familiar with).
That’s like telling the Japanese that “cutlet” is not pronounced “katsu.” It ain’t gonna change. Or even having southerners pronounce squirrel with two sellable [autocorrect : syllables] Good luck with that!
We're speaking English, so why even entertain the idea of pronouncing "axolotl" differently, in that case? The Japanese say "en", but that doesn't seem to inspire anyone else not to say "yen".
From the article it doesn't appear they've ever been found alive in the wild anywhere but their natural habitat. This was likely a remarkable chance happening where an owner released one and she found it within close succession or else it likely would have died very quickly.
If there is a wild population, that would be an even more amazing story.
I did think it was strange they didn't spell that out though. Maybe they thought 'Mexican' makes it clear, but it reads too easily like a species name.
It is absolutely an abandoned pet. They cannot survive outside the tropics. Hell, they can't even survive outside the 2 lakes in Mexico City that they're hyperadapted to
There are less than 1,000 of them in the wild. Trust me if it was possible to establish a population somewhere else outside of captivity, scientists and conservationists would already be on it
1000 wild ones. There's much more in captivity than in the wild.
They evolved to be quite dependent on the unique agricultural islands in the Valley of Mexico called Chinampas. These were drained by the colonizers. Which is why Mexico City is now facing a severe water crisis and also why these creatures are endangered
Yup. A lake that used to fuel the single most productive agricultural system humans have ever practiced. It's sad but there is a strong indigenous movement to bring them back. The axolotl actually became a major symbol of indigenous resistance because of this movement
I have three axolotl's in the next room, there are no subspecies to my knowledge, except maybe for some cross breeding with Salamanders in the US.
They are common in scientific research as they have amazing regenerative abilities; they will often mistakenly bite each other's legs off as juveniles (they are not the smartest creatures) and then grow them back in a few weeks, good as new. They made it into the exotic pet trade and now they are quite common in captivity, but now critically endangered in the wild. There are attempts to breed and repopulate them, with some limited success.
Another interesting thing, in many countries and states it is legal to keep an axolotl and illegal to keep a Salamander.
They are actually fairly easy to keep in my experience, with two caveats. 1) you need to be able to keep the water below 24 Deg C, this means spending some money on chillers even in sub-tropical countries. 2) If you have a pair in the same tank (regardless of sexing) you need to be prepared to cull the eggs! (freeze them) Prices here went from ~$50NZ each down to around $10-15 each due to the Minecraft craze.
my understanding is that thr light skinned / pink variants are the results of mutation and selective breeding - and obviously racism, light skinned being considered more cute - in the pet population and almost all examples in the wild are dark skinned.
They're either an invasive species, and therefore should not be introduced to the area (and you know that many pets will be introduced once the novelty wears off). Or they're native to the area, and should be left alone because they're endangered or otherwise threatened.
Those are just two reasons, but I'd bet they cover a lot of cases.
Often Axolotls have been "grandfathered" into the legal exotic pet trade, and salamanders have not and they tend to be considered separate species, even though biologically it's a very blurry line. Also, it often happens in areas where there is a local wild salamander population that is being protected from poaching.
You likely don't have wild axolotls nearby so if a pet escapes it'll just die and not affect the ecosystem. OTOH, an escaped salamander might thrive and displace wild salamanders and disrupt the ecosystem. Or carry a disease, or ...
most places ban exotic pets that are able to survive in the local climate to prevent invasive species from outcompeting the local feral cat population.
It's a similar story for Venus fly trap plants. It has a tiny habitat so it's exotic. They're easy to breed so it's cheap to start selling them. But their limited habitat is being destroyed, so they are endangered and also on the clearance rack at the garden store.
Why not. We found plenty of endagered species at zoos. They are endangered not only as a function of the number of species, but due to their vanishing environments.
Yeah, I didn't want to spoil the article with my comment, it was a good read, but it did immediately make sense why they were so popular now. I've met multiple people in passing who own Axolotl. I used to think I was super special that I met a guy who owned one, and I assumed it was because he was a famous neuroscientist, and had some special permission, but now they're relatively common as pets (to a degree).
Unfortunately, the whole Minecraft thing caused a lot of people to buy them with little understanding of proper care, so I suspect there's some "that's cool but please don't rush in unprepared" in the hard to keep message. There are also some misconceptions around water quality requirements, they really don't like chemical pollutants, but I have no issues with local municipal water, other areas could have issues and require RO water, etc. but there are plenty of tropical fish keepers in this same situation.
And then there's the water temp thing, that caught me off-guard and I was using frozen water bottles for a few weeks until my chiller arrived, if the tank had been located in a different part of the house it might have been required.
From another comment here: "you need to be able to keep the water below 24 Deg C, this means spending some money on chillers even in sub-tropical countries"
I think people anticipate needing heaters for certain types of fish, but I'd never have expected to buy a cooling unit for aquatic life.
Yeah, adding in a chiller makes things way more complicated than just adding a resistive heater. A decent looking chiller for an aquarium is ~$1,000, plus you need temp sensors and control wiring to maintain the setpoint properly, and then you need to pray the electricity doesn’t go out. A 1/3rd HP chiller draws around 1kW including the circ pump
An aquarium backup battery for a simple pump is like $50 for something that'll last a few hours of outage, but for a chiller with that kind of draw, it's a bit more expensive.
People are telling you it would die in the winter but the truth is it would die in a week. This pet was surely abandoned in the past 48 hours and that's why this is so rare.
They are hyper adapted to the water cycles, nutrient profile, and pH levels of the Xochimilco lake system in Mexico city and were taken care of by indigenous people for thousands of years. They have never survived anywhere outside of these lakes
Not its natural habitat - it would probably die in winter
Axolotls are somewhat popular as pets so I’m thinking someone got rid of theirs by tossing it in the river and the girl just happened to find it afterwards.
Far more plausible explanation than “found in the wild 9000km and an ocean away from its place of origin”
1. The article already mentions the parents of the girl who caught it are looking into how to best keep an axolotl and a bigger tank has already arrived.
2. Axolotls can't survive in a Welsh climate. This creature will live much longer as a pet than it would in the wild.
It's against the law for it to be in the wild. And the temperature range in which it can survive is quite narrow, it would probably die sometime this year if left alone.
As mentioned in the article, this was almost certainly someone's pet and dumped in the river when they couldn't take care of it anymore. Axolotls are endemic to Mexico.
The English have colonized Wales for a long time. They don't even do land acknowledgements. Racism and imperialism is rampant in the old world unlike in the US.
Wales is a lot smaller than the continental United States. What do you expect them to say? "Cardiff is part of Wales, unceded territory of the Welsh"? That would be entirely performative. If you feel strongly about this topic, you ought to demand more meaningful steps, such as the use of Welsh language place names.
They are unique to like 2 lakes in Mexico. This is someone's pet that they dumped there. It would not have survived more than a week in Wales had it not been found.
I think it likely speaks to how much more common they are as exotic pets than they have been in the past. That she found it before it died is surprising, and the longer I think about this story the longer I wonder if they just bought it as a pet and the river discovery was a gag for online clout.
And dont you pronounce that 'x' as 'ks'! It's pronounced as 'sh'! Just like in 'xocolatl'.
I have a feeling you're fighting a losing battle here
Prenounciation and correcting other's spelling is always a losing battle, probably for everyone involved.
Every scientific battle is worth fighting for!
Scientific study of languages generally admits that language drift eventually.
What is scientific about this pronunciation? Axolotl is not the scientfic name (its Ambystoma mexicanum), and usually the goal with pronouncing scientific names is for the listener to be able to spell the name after hearing it (at least for botany, which is what I am familiar with).
And "valet" is supposed to rhyme with "ballot" not "ballet" but you'll still sound like an idiot if you say "take your car to the val-it"
Or like Meshico
That’s like telling the Japanese that “cutlet” is not pronounced “katsu.” It ain’t gonna change. Or even having southerners pronounce squirrel with two sellable [autocorrect : syllables] Good luck with that!
> two sellable
I'm a southerner and we generally have squirrels in plentiful quantities, so it's never occurred to me to sell them. /s
"Shocolate"? Who says it like that?
People speaking languages other than English.
We're speaking English, so why even entertain the idea of pronouncing "axolotl" differently, in that case? The Japanese say "en", but that doesn't seem to inspire anyone else not to say "yen".
Not really - it is [t͡ʃ] (“ch”) not [ʃ] (“sh”).
Auf Deutsch, Schokolade. /ʃoko/, per https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Schokolade.
Any self-respecting Aztecophile. They're also the cause of startup names dropping a vowl. Insufferable.
Indeed, most axolotls in Wales are Welsh axolotls.
But I do wonder how many do live in Wales. If it’s not just an abandoned pet that would be really interesting.
From the article it doesn't appear they've ever been found alive in the wild anywhere but their natural habitat. This was likely a remarkable chance happening where an owner released one and she found it within close succession or else it likely would have died very quickly.
If there is a wild population, that would be an even more amazing story.
I did think it was strange they didn't spell that out though. Maybe they thought 'Mexican' makes it clear, but it reads too easily like a species name.
It is absolutely an abandoned pet. They cannot survive outside the tropics. Hell, they can't even survive outside the 2 lakes in Mexico City that they're hyperadapted to
There are less than 1,000 of them in the wild. Trust me if it was possible to establish a population somewhere else outside of captivity, scientists and conservationists would already be on it
Sooo, if they are/were popular as pets, how come there's less than 1000 left worldwide? Those two facts don't reconcile for me.
1000 wild ones. There's much more in captivity than in the wild.
They evolved to be quite dependent on the unique agricultural islands in the Valley of Mexico called Chinampas. These were drained by the colonizers. Which is why Mexico City is now facing a severe water crisis and also why these creatures are endangered
Thanks, that's the clarification I was not getting from TFA.
Also why the whole region has so many sinkhole and similar drainage problems - it's literally built on a lake.
Yup. A lake that used to fuel the single most productive agricultural system humans have ever practiced. It's sad but there is a strong indigenous movement to bring them back. The axolotl actually became a major symbol of indigenous resistance because of this movement
How it was (a great interactive 3d reconstruction)
https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/
This is awesome, thanks for sharing.
Andrew Wilson, who works with the United Nations World Food Program, also made an in-depth minidoc on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86gyW0vUmVs
"in the wild" might be doing a lot of heavy lifting, or it may be based on subspecies or similar.
I don't really expect to find endangered species at the local pet store.
I have three axolotl's in the next room, there are no subspecies to my knowledge, except maybe for some cross breeding with Salamanders in the US.
They are common in scientific research as they have amazing regenerative abilities; they will often mistakenly bite each other's legs off as juveniles (they are not the smartest creatures) and then grow them back in a few weeks, good as new. They made it into the exotic pet trade and now they are quite common in captivity, but now critically endangered in the wild. There are attempts to breed and repopulate them, with some limited success.
Another interesting thing, in many countries and states it is legal to keep an axolotl and illegal to keep a Salamander.
They are actually fairly easy to keep in my experience, with two caveats. 1) you need to be able to keep the water below 24 Deg C, this means spending some money on chillers even in sub-tropical countries. 2) If you have a pair in the same tank (regardless of sexing) you need to be prepared to cull the eggs! (freeze them) Prices here went from ~$50NZ each down to around $10-15 each due to the Minecraft craze.
my understanding is that thr light skinned / pink variants are the results of mutation and selective breeding - and obviously racism, light skinned being considered more cute - in the pet population and almost all examples in the wild are dark skinned.
Why are salamanders illegal?
They're either an invasive species, and therefore should not be introduced to the area (and you know that many pets will be introduced once the novelty wears off). Or they're native to the area, and should be left alone because they're endangered or otherwise threatened.
Those are just two reasons, but I'd bet they cover a lot of cases.
Because they burst into flame! 90% of wizard dwelling fires are caused by salamanders!
(in reality probably the law banning them as pets to protect them didn't include axolotls because the legislature didn't know they existed)
Often Axolotls have been "grandfathered" into the legal exotic pet trade, and salamanders have not and they tend to be considered separate species, even though biologically it's a very blurry line. Also, it often happens in areas where there is a local wild salamander population that is being protected from poaching.
You likely don't have wild axolotls nearby so if a pet escapes it'll just die and not affect the ecosystem. OTOH, an escaped salamander might thrive and displace wild salamanders and disrupt the ecosystem. Or carry a disease, or ...
most places ban exotic pets that are able to survive in the local climate to prevent invasive species from outcompeting the local feral cat population.
It's a similar story for Venus fly trap plants. It has a tiny habitat so it's exotic. They're easy to breed so it's cheap to start selling them. But their limited habitat is being destroyed, so they are endangered and also on the clearance rack at the garden store.
Why not. We found plenty of endagered species at zoos. They are endangered not only as a function of the number of species, but due to their vanishing environments.
the pet ones are almostly entirely captive bred so they are pretty distinct by now
It amazes me she chanced upon it at the right time and even knew exactly what it was.
Axolotl's have become a global icon. First as an anti-colonial protest symbol for indigenous peoples. But now it's even a creature in Minecraft
Edit: oh the article says as much
> Axolotls as pets have seen a surge in popularity in recent years after they were introduced to video games such as Minecraft and Roblox.
Also, the child seems quite familiar with the wildlife
> She said Evie was "always finding things" like newts and bugs, but said the axolotl discovery was a surprise.
What's even funnier is the mother's reaction who apparently didn't believe axolotl's were real
> "I've been telling Evie all this time that those creatures she watches on YouTube, they're not real.
Yeah, I didn't want to spoil the article with my comment, it was a good read, but it did immediately make sense why they were so popular now. I've met multiple people in passing who own Axolotl. I used to think I was super special that I met a guy who owned one, and I assumed it was because he was a famous neuroscientist, and had some special permission, but now they're relatively common as pets (to a degree).
I stopped trying to correct my kid about wildlife facts when he turned 5…
> Experts have warned axolotls should never be bought on impulse as they can "very challenging" to look after.
> This is because they have the same environmental, dietary and behavioural needs in captivity as they do in the wild.
I thought this was just odd. Don’t most animals that aren’t heavily domesticated like that? I mean that’s true of most all pet fish, for example.
Unfortunately, the whole Minecraft thing caused a lot of people to buy them with little understanding of proper care, so I suspect there's some "that's cool but please don't rush in unprepared" in the hard to keep message. There are also some misconceptions around water quality requirements, they really don't like chemical pollutants, but I have no issues with local municipal water, other areas could have issues and require RO water, etc. but there are plenty of tropical fish keepers in this same situation.
And then there's the water temp thing, that caught me off-guard and I was using frozen water bottles for a few weeks until my chiller arrived, if the tank had been located in a different part of the house it might have been required.
From another comment here: "you need to be able to keep the water below 24 Deg C, this means spending some money on chillers even in sub-tropical countries"
I think people anticipate needing heaters for certain types of fish, but I'd never have expected to buy a cooling unit for aquatic life.
Yeah, adding in a chiller makes things way more complicated than just adding a resistive heater. A decent looking chiller for an aquarium is ~$1,000, plus you need temp sensors and control wiring to maintain the setpoint properly, and then you need to pray the electricity doesn’t go out. A 1/3rd HP chiller draws around 1kW including the circ pump
An aquarium backup battery for a simple pump is like $50 for something that'll last a few hours of outage, but for a chiller with that kind of draw, it's a bit more expensive.
First time I learnt about it was while reading The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. Fantastic book.
Why not leave it in the wild? Now the poor thing has to stare at the inside of a bucket for the rest of its life.
People are telling you it would die in the winter but the truth is it would die in a week. This pet was surely abandoned in the past 48 hours and that's why this is so rare.
They are hyper adapted to the water cycles, nutrient profile, and pH levels of the Xochimilco lake system in Mexico city and were taken care of by indigenous people for thousands of years. They have never survived anywhere outside of these lakes
Not its natural habitat - it would probably die in winter
Axolotls are somewhat popular as pets so I’m thinking someone got rid of theirs by tossing it in the river and the girl just happened to find it afterwards.
Far more plausible explanation than “found in the wild 9000km and an ocean away from its place of origin”
They freeze and thaw like Iguanas do in Florida. They can’t survive prolonged cold temperatures but when it does get to 15c they stop moving.
I wonder if that's why she had caught it so easily, not many people are visiting the UK for it's sunny climate.
The UK is sometimes warmer in winter than other european countries further south because of the gulf stream.
Yeah, but the water temperature at this time of year is still pretty cold.
I hope this assertion ages well.
It might not. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47877088
1. The article already mentions the parents of the girl who caught it are looking into how to best keep an axolotl and a bigger tank has already arrived.
2. Axolotls can't survive in a Welsh climate. This creature will live much longer as a pet than it would in the wild.
It's against the law for it to be in the wild. And the temperature range in which it can survive is quite narrow, it would probably die sometime this year if left alone.
As mentioned in the article, this was almost certainly someone's pet and dumped in the river when they couldn't take care of it anymore. Axolotls are endemic to Mexico.
I suspect someone dumped their pet. Considering its from Mexico I also suspect it prefers a warmer water/climate?
Because Wales is not its wild
Why did she name him Dippy and not a proper Welsh name like "Cadwaladr" or "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?"
I think her family was visiting Wales, rather than being natives :)
The English have colonized Wales for a long time. They don't even do land acknowledgements. Racism and imperialism is rampant in the old world unlike in the US.
Wales is a lot smaller than the continental United States. What do you expect them to say? "Cardiff is part of Wales, unceded territory of the Welsh"? That would be entirely performative. If you feel strongly about this topic, you ought to demand more meaningful steps, such as the use of Welsh language place names.
I just think they should acknowledge the native people whose land it is. It’s not performative unless you’re a MAGA fascist. It’s just considerate.
What form would such an acknowledgement take?
"siliogogogoch" for short :)
Imagine if it were the other way around:
Mexican axolotl, 10, finds rare Girl under Welsh bridge.
The BBC paywall for US users is really a bummer
This is so unlikely to happen. There is a good chance that they are not as rare as we currently think, at least in that particular area.
They are unique to like 2 lakes in Mexico. This is someone's pet that they dumped there. It would not have survived more than a week in Wales had it not been found.
There were more than 2 lakes but the specy is almost extinct so these areas are where you can still find some.
I think it likely speaks to how much more common they are as exotic pets than they have been in the past. That she found it before it died is surprising, and the longer I think about this story the longer I wonder if they just bought it as a pet and the river discovery was a gag for online clout.
One in a million chances happen nine times out of ten.
Especially with 8 billion humans wandering around.