How the axolotl rose from obscurity to global stardom

The smog and noise of Mexico City feel a world away as flotillas of trajineras, brightly decorated wooden gondolas, glide up and down the cool canals of Xochimilco. The quiet network of waterways, on the southern edge of Mexico’s hectic capital, was built by the Aztecs long before the Spanish conquest. Farmers still grow kale, tomatoes and chillies on Xochimilco’s islands, though these days most Mexicans know the area as a weekend party spot to escape the heat of the city. Some boats carry troupes of mariachi with trumpets and guitars; others serve as floating cafés.

The peaceful neighbourhood is home to Mexico’s perhaps most famous, and most reclusive, celebrity. The Ambystoma mexicanum, or axolotl, has lived a quiet life in the dark waters of Xochimilco since before the Aztecs established their empire in the Valley of Mexico. With its sludgy-brown, gelatinous little body and dislike of noise, the species of salamander seemed destined for a life of watery obscurity.

Yet the axolotl has become an improbable global megastar. Shops are crowded with cuddly axolotls. Toy axolotls fall out of McDonald’s Happy Meals. Axolotl-themed clothes, jewellery and Christmas decorations flood the pages of craft sites such as Etsy. Real and cartoon versions of the creatures rack up tens of millions of views on YouTube and TikTok and star in video games. How did the axolotl emerge from Mexico’s canals to become a worldwide celebrity?

Axolotls lived happily for a long time in Lake Texcoco, overlooked by the smouldering volcano, Popocatépetl. In around 1300 the Aztecs showed up, looking for a new home. According to myth, a prophecy had told them to set up camp at the place where they saw an eagle perched on a cactus with a snake in its beak. Inconveniently, they eventually sighted such a scene on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. Undaunted, the Aztecs built a series of causeways and established the seat of their empire there.

Aztecs got on swimmingly with axolotls, which they named after Xolotl, their god of fire and lightning. True, axolotls sometimes made their way into Aztec meals (they are fatty and rich in protein) and medicine (they are said to make a good cough syrup), but broadly they thrived. This changed with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, in the 16th century, who considered the strange-looking axolotl—four fingers, five toes, funny gills—to be a creature that God created on an off day. Worse, the Spanish colonists considered Lake Texcoco dirty and flood-prone and drained most of it, consigning the axolotls to Xochimilco, the one neighbourhood where the old waterways survived.

The comeback of the axolotl has been 200 years in the making. They stealthily began to work their way back into the popular imagination in the 19th century, when they charmed explorers such as Alexander von Humboldt, a German geographer who stopped off in Mexico City and sent axolotl specimens back to Europe. Scientists marvelled at their weird and wonderful attributes. Although the axolotl is a species of salamander, it remains in a state of perpetual tadpolehood, never losing its gills to become a full-time land-dweller. Most prized is its ability to regenerate. If an axolotl loses a limb, it grows the whole thing back; it can even rebuild lost parts of brain tissue.

Having won over natural scientists, axolotls next inspired social ones. Roger Bartra, a Mexican sociologist, used the forever-young creature as a metaphor for Mexican national identity: trapped in a “violated limbo” between a lost past and unfulfilled future. Octavio Paz, another public intellectual, featured them in his poetry. Diego Rivera worked them into a mural. Yet the creature was still not famous outside Mexico. Disney invented a cartoon character in the 1990s called Dr Axolotl—but he was a villain and, in fact, a lizard.

The Japanese, connoisseurs of kawaii, or cuteness, seem to have first spotted the axolotl’s potential as an a-list celebrity. In 1999 Pokémon, a video-game and card-collecting franchise part-owned by Nintendo, introduced an axolotl-based character called Wooper. (In Japan axolotls are known as “wooper loopers”, after an axolotl character in a 1985 tv ad for instant noodles. The name caught on partly because “axolotl” sounds similar to the Japanese for “stupid old person”.) Slowly, the axolotl seeped into Western popular culture. Wildlife documentaries came first. Then the main character of “How to Train Your Dragon”, one of the highest-grossing films of 2010, was modelled on one. “Fortnite”, a video game, added “Axo”, an axolotl, in 2020.

The event that turned the animal into a household name—or at least a school-playground one—came in 2021, when “Minecraft”, another video game, added the axolotl to the ranks of its digital characters. “Minecraft” holds the Guinness world record for the greatest number of copies sold by a video game; today more than 100m people play it every month. In 2021 it was about to launch a new “cliffs and caves” environment and needed an amphibious animal. The axolotl, which gives players regenerative powers if they capture it, embodies the “Minecraft-cute aesthetic”, says Ingela Garneij of Mojang Studios, the game’s publisher.

The “Minecraft” effect was instant: searches for “axolotl” on Google trebled, making the animal almost as searched for as “unicorn”. Today searches for axolotls are four times more frequent than a decade ago, making it probably the most sought-after Mexican.

The creature’s new fame has been noted at home. In Mexico City, the national zoo in Chapultepec park has promoted its axolotls to live in three storeys of splendour in what used to be the elephant house. Their new home, which opened last year, receives 30,000 visitors a month. At the nearby “zoovenir” shop, axolotls are the star product: customers can buy axolotl cuddly toys, key rings and tequila-shot glasses. Mexico has even put the axolotl on its 50 peso note, which was recently recognised as “bank note of the year” by the International Bank Note Society.

Why, of all Earth’s species, has the axolotl taken off thus? “You have to dissect it,” says Gerhard Runken, head of brand development at Jazwares, a toymaker (speaking strictly metaphorically). Jazwares launched an axolotl variety of Squishmallow, a series of soft toys, in 2019, and had an instant hit. First, explains Mr Runken, an animal needs a unique, recognisable look: “You don’t want people to do a second take in the aisle.” Second, it needs appropriate physiognomy for a toy: rounded heads with no pointed beaks or snouts are best. Last, it needs a good back story, a box the axolotl ticks with its single habitat and weird powers. Jazwares now makes 30 kinds of axolotl Squishmallow and puts them on t-shirts, bags and bedding.

Will any of this help save the axolotl? Despite its international fame, its status in the wild is worse than ever. Although plenty of axolotls are bred in captivity for scientific research and, in some places, food, they are on the brink of extinction in Xochimilco, their only natural habitat. Their population there has diminished from an estimated 6,000 per km² in 1998 to just 36 per km² in 2014. Luis Zambrano of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (unam), who is carrying out a new census at the moment, believes there may no longer be any axolotls left in Xochimilco’s large canals, and that the few remaining have retreated to smaller waterways too small for boats.

Some have been scared off by the noisy trajinera party gondolas. Others are eaten by carp and tilapia, introduced to the canals in the 1970s by the government to provide sustenance to locals, with the unintended consequence that axolotl eggs and babies became fish food. The latest threat is football. Farmers have discovered that they can make more money by renting out their flat, grassy land to amateur football players than they can by growing vegetables on it. To make a field large enough for a game often means filling in the narrow waterways that separate Xochimilco’s islands, meaning still less space for axolotls.

But the axolotl’s fame may rescue it from oblivion. Mr Zambrano was once pessimistic for the creature’s future. “But then, about ten years ago, everybody started to think about axolotls,” he says. Conservationists have latched onto this new popularity, with some success. Two years ago the unam launched an adopt-an-axolotl programme, where people can donate between $10 (to “buy dinner” for an axolotl) and $5,000 (to adopt a whole island refuge). In its most recent year the scheme generated $200,000, mostly from America; one girl sent all her birthday money and then visited with her family. The unam is nudging farmers away from football and back to vegetables, and installing filters on canals to block pollution and predator fish. At a conservation centre in Xochimilco run by the uam, another university, axolotls are bred for release into the wild. It includes a miniature axolotl hospital, where several patients lie zonked out under anaesthetic.

Fame has pitfalls. Conservationists are wary of what they call the “Nemo effect”: Disney’s blockbuster, “Finding Nemo”, sparked a mania for pet clownfish in 2003, but did little to protect the animal’s habitat. tv and video games have stoked enthusiasm for the rare pink axolotl, a genetic mutation. Visiting children always prefer the pink ones, says José Antonio Ocampo Cervantes of the uam. But they are sitting ducks for birds and snakes. And when pink axolotl pets are abandoned in Xochimilco they upset the gene pool, he says. Politicians’ conservation efforts have also been mixed. In 2022 some Mexican mayors released 200 axolotls into the wild in Xochimilco. But in pursuit of a good photo, the creatures were left out for too long in the sun. Many are thought to have died not long after.

Protecting the axolotl will mean preserving its wider habitat. In that sense, there is more at stake than the creature itself. The canals where it lives protect Mexico’s capital from climate change, by buffering temperatures and conserving water. “If we lose the axolotl, we lose Xochimilco. And if we lose Xochimilco, Mexico City will be vulnerable,” says Mr Zambrano. The race is on to save the creature in its natural habitat. The axolotl is already as popular as the mythical unicorn. The next few years will determine whether it becomes as rare in the wild. ■