| ▲ | mikestew 6 hours ago |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | culi 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| 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 |
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| ▲ | mikestew 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Thanks, that's the clarification I was not getting from TFA. | |
| ▲ | ZeWaka 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Also why the whole region has so many sinkhole and similar drainage problems - it's literally built on a lake. | | |
| ▲ | culi 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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 | | |
| ▲ | ch4s3 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > the single most productive agricultural system humans have ever practiced This is simply not true. The highiest maize yield per hectare I can find anywhere online for chinampas is less than half the 13.5 metric tons per hectare that farmers get in Iowa. The more reputable numbers are less than 1/4 of that. It's probably true that they were among the most productive pre-modern agricultural plots which is a great achievement, but there's no need to make things up. | |
| ▲ | trhway 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How it was (a great interactive 3d reconstruction) https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/ | | |
| ▲ | culi 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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 | |
| ▲ | palata 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wow this is amazing. Thank you! | | |
| ▲ | trhway 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thanks to the author and HN - it was posted here sometime ago, and being that impressive it naturally stuck in my memory like i'm sure now it will in yours :) | | |
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| ▲ | kitsune1 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | hunglee2 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Contrary to the report, they are actually not difficult to keep as pets - they are just highly sensitive to pollutants in the water. The unfortunate case for the wild population, is that they naturally inhabit a location which today has one of the highest human population densities in the world, and hence massive pressure on water resources. We could probably quite easily re-establish a breeding population in remote areas in Europe but would constitute an invasive species and hence wouldn't happen. As a species, they are not endangered due to their very large populations now in the pet trade (though these then get inbred, become domesticated etc). |
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| ▲ | anitil an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I believe all captive ones are cross-bred, so are distinct from the native species |
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| ▲ | bombcar 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "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. |
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| ▲ | JaggedNZ 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | prmoustache 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | anon84873628 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Racism? Come on. A camouflaged pet you can't see in the tank isn't as fun as one where you can see all the crazy physical structures. |
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| ▲ | Ifkaluva 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why are salamanders illegal? | | |
| ▲ | bombcar 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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) | |
| ▲ | mikestew 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | JaggedNZ 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | bryanlarsen 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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 ... | |
| ▲ | dmonitor 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | fineIllregister 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | userbinator an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's a very strange definition. Would you consider domestic chickens "endangered"? Clearly if there are many kept in captivity and bred, there's little chance of them becoming extinct even if there are nearly none in the wild. | |
| ▲ | elzbardico 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | liveoneggs 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| the pet ones are almostly entirely captive bred so they are pretty distinct by now |
