The axolotl is a salamander that refused to grow up, and made a life of it.Source 1
Unlike other salamanders, it is neotenic: it keeps its larval body—feathery external gills, a swimming tail, a fin along the body—for its entire life, and never leaves the water.Source 1
It descends from tiger salamanders and has lived in central Mexico for perhaps ten thousand years.Source 1
Its world was once a great basin of lakes and wetlands—Xochimilco and Chalco—along the southern edge of the Valley of Mexico.Source 1
Most of that water was drained as Mexico City grew, and wild axolotls now survive in a few isolated sites in the city’s south.Source 1
The axolotl is woven deep into Mexican history, culture, and identity, and it is famous in science for regrowing what it loses.Source 1
Yet fame has not protected the water it needs. Its remaining habitat is small, isolated, and hemmed in by one of the world’s largest cities.Source 1
To witness the axolotl is to see that a species can be everywhere in culture and almost nowhere in the wild.Source 1
