It is feared that Mexico’s Walking Fish may be on death row, if the species axolotl hasn’t already been killed off by pollution and disappeared.
Millions once lived in the giant lakes of Mexico City, but their only remaining habitat in the wild is (or was) Lake Xochimilco. Biologists recently spent three months looking there and didn’t find one.
The axolotl has four stubby legs, a salamander creature. Aztec legend says the god of death and lightning, Xolotl, to escape death at the hands of the other gods turned himself into an axolotl and found a safe lake.
This February, researchers will go looking again for three months, hoping they will find breeding going on in cooler water.
Why should we care?
Well science considers the axolotl a model for regeneration, as it can regrow lost appendages, even restore parts of their brains, and accept and function with transplants.
That could be useful.