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The Race to Save the Axolotl
- madengr 9y agoNow I know where the Axolotl tanks in a Dune got their name. The Thelieux grow ghoulas in Axolotl tanks.
- Maultasche 9y agoThat was my first thought when I saw the headline. I thought it was a reference to Dune, and not to an animal species.
- Semirhage 9y agoAmphibian species are thought to be the proverbial canaries in the coal mine of extinction. Frog species have been crashing, salamander species are crashing, insect numbers have been crashing, reef systems are dying. When it all falls down on our heads, we won’t be able to say we didn’t have massive flashing warning signs.
- edflsafoiewq 9y agoWhat can we do?
- pjc50 9y agoThey live quite well in captivity, so are unlikely to go fully extinct. But the real requirement would be to preserve the habitats, which depends on the politics and economy of Mexico.
- GuiA 9y agoPigovian taxes on a massive scale.
- ars 9y agoWho would you tax for pollution caused by sewage leaking after a flood? You need your population to have more money, not less, so that they can afford to pay for improvements in their living environment. It's not an accident that the higher the standard of living, the lower pollution is.
- flukus 9y ago> It's not an accident that the higher the standard of living, the lower pollution is. Citation? The richest countries in the world pollute (CO2e) far more per-capita than than anyone else. Even that's with much of their pollution outsourced to developing nations.
- ars 9y agoCo2 is not pollution. It has issues obviously, but it's not pollution. People are so focused on Co2 these days, they've completely forgotten about actual pollution. Forgetting is understandable in developed countries because we've all but eliminated it, so what's there to think about? But go visit some non-developed countries, or maybe read the news, and you'll suddenly realize what a huge problem actual pollution is.
- flukus 9y ago> the introduction of harmful substances or products into the environment - http://www.dictionary.com/browse/pollution http://www.dictionary.com/browse/pollution So Co2e is pollution, it's a harmful substance in currently produced quantities.
- Baeocystin 9y agoIt's not all bad news, at least. Some species are recovering. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180411114118.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180411114118.h...
- musage 9y agoAre we beginning to show signs of seriously considering actually turning "the ship" around? I would say no. So yeah, it's not all bad news.. but to me, as in"our legs are broken in this mineshaft that's quickly filling with acid and we've been crawling in circles for what seems like 3 days -- but in the last 4 hours there were two 5 minute periods where Frank stopped screaming and crying". Good news isn't good enough news.
- ian0 9y agoFor those interested, Julio Cortazar gave an "in depth" account of Axolotl in a short story: http://southerncrossreview.org/73/axolotl.html http://southerncrossreview.org/73/axolotl.html Set in an aquarium :(
- glup 9y agoI always think of this story when I see axolotls.
- userbinator 9y agoThe iconic creature is Mexico’s national symbol, and, because it breeds easily in an aquarium, a beloved pet around the globe. So many axolotls live in captivity that certain restaurants in Japan serve up the axolotl as a fried snack. Many thousands of axolotls a year are also used in scientific research: Because of their miraculous regeneration abilities, axolotls are studied in labs the world over. But in the Xochimilco canals around Mexico City, the axolotl’s only remaining natural habitat, pollution and the loss of water habitat mean that the axolotl has become a rare sight. Wouldn't that mean it's the wild axolotl which is threatened, but otherwise it has been essentially domesticated? Of course the body of the article explains more, but the headline is quite sensational, implying that all axolotls are disappearing.
- wanderr 9y agoThe article mentions that captive axolotls are in bad shape due to severe inbreeding.
- userbinator 9y agoIt mentions an inbreeding coefficient of 35 (or 0.35 in the fractional scale), which although high, is not unusual; a quick search reveals https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21076095 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21076095 where some lines of domesticated chickens go as high as 61.
- vanderZwan 9y agoI don't think that taking the most used and cheapest of our three main food-producing domesticated animals is a good data point to decide what is and isn't "unusual" in this context. Given that it is an animal whose relationship to humans includes the most extreme of exploitations, meaning trade-off to push this to extremes to get a specific benefit is more extreme than anywhere else[0], it likely represents the most extreme outlier. This is a very different context than the health of wild/pet axolotls. [0] Well, short of lab animals who have been deliberately inbred to effectively be clones. But that kind of breaks the purpose of this coefficient by definition.
- jpetso 9y agoI read the title and was thinking someone want the original crypto ratchet back, before it got rebranded by Signal/Moxie and kept from mass adoption by means of a GPL lawsuit threat.