5 ms·
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.
by mikestew 6mo 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.
- bombcar 6mo ago"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.
- elzbardico 6mo agoWhy 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.
- JaggedNZ 6mo agoI 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.
- Ifkaluva 6mo agoWhy are salamanders illegal?
- bombcar 6mo agoBecause 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)
- JaggedNZ 6mo agoOften 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.
- mikestew 6mo agoThey'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.
- dmonitor 6mo agomost places ban exotic pets that are able to survive in the local climate to prevent invasive species from outcompeting the local feral cat population.
- IAmBroom 6mo agoWell played, sir or madam.
- bryanlarsen 6mo agoYou 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 ...
- prmoustache 6mo agomy 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 6mo agoRacism? 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.
- fineIllregister 6mo agoIt'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 6mo agoIt'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.
- filleduchaos 6mo agoThere is in fact a difference between domesticated animals and wild animals that are kept as pets. Do you also find it strange that e.g. various wolves are/have been considered endangered even though dogs exist?
- bombcar 6mo agoIt's arguably different if it's the same species (wolves and dogs are considered separate even if cross-breedable) - and very few of the chicken breeds are found in the wild. I suppose it's because we assume "endangered in the wild" means something that doesn't breed well in captivity and so is hard to reintroduce.
- culi 6mo ago1000 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
- mikestew 6mo agoThanks, that's the clarification I was not getting from TFA.
- ZeWaka 6mo agoAlso why the whole region has so many sinkhole and similar drainage problems - it's literally built on a lake.
- culi 6mo agoYup. 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
- trhway 6mo agoHow it was (a great interactive 3d reconstruction) https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/ https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/
- liveoneggs 6mo agothe pet ones are almostly entirely captive bred so they are pretty distinct by now
- hunglee2 6mo agoContrary 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).
- anitil 6mo agoI believe all captive ones are cross-bred, so are distinct from the native species
- beeandapenguin 6mo agoAxolotls have also been used for over 200 years for medical research related to regenerative biology. They’re unique among vertebrates in that they can regenerate nearly every part of their body, even parts of their brain. https://orip.nih.gov/about-orip/research-highlights/amazing-axolotl-valuable-model-regenerative-medicine https://orip.nih.gov/about-orip/research-highlights/amazing-...