The Axolotl: Once A God, Now In Distress

In the canals of Xochimilco, a Mexico City neighbourhood built on a number of small islands, hides a strange salamander species. While most salamanders are aquatic only in their growing stages, scrambling out of the water when they reach adulthood, the axolotls of Mexico are different. They remain in the canals, in a juvenile and neotenous state, all their lives, and they are incredibly important to new areas of science like regenerative medicine.

As a result of their neoteny, the amphibians have shown a remarkable capacity not only to regrow lost limbs, but to adapt to transplanted organs; one axolotl even had another individual’s head transplanted onto its neck. In this manner, the axolotl in laboratories has proven to be an endlessly plastic and malleable animal, responding to humans’ attempts to control their lives and bodies. According to Dr. Randal Voss of the University of Kentucky, who led the first team to sequence the axolotl genome, these abilities will hopefully, in the future, be genetically transplanted into humans as well. 

However, apart from the overt violence of having limbs removed and transplanted, axolotls in labs are also subject to human intervention that has altered their species to a great extent. For example, white axolotls, a recessive strain in the wild, have become the dominant varieties in laboratories merely because of inbreeding. The anthropologist Emily Wanderer writes that this is an attempt to achieve predictability and uniformity in the species, and research by the neuroscientist María Torres-Sánchez indicates that this genetic standardisation has reached a point where these experimental axolotls show significant genetic variance from the wild ones in the canals of Xochimilco. 

These wild axolotls are an important part of Mexico's history, myths and identity, dating back to the Aztec era. In the Aztec religious system, the god of the fire and sun was Xolotl, a dog-headed man who represented mystery and heavenly fire, and was a guide for spirits on their journey to the netherworld. According to Aztec mythology, at one point the various gods were each compelled to make some sacrifice to help the newly created sun move around the world. However, Xolotl refused, and instead turned himself into three creatures, of which one was the axolotl. Another story suggests that the word axolotl, in Nahuatl, means water-dog, and the ‘dog’ part is derived from Xolotl’s dog-like head. 

In the artist Diego Rivera’s mural Water, The Origin of Life, the axolotl is represented as a symbol of creation. It has also been made into an emoji to represent Mexico City. Amusingly, Wanderer also cites an American advertisement which used it as an example of how humans should adapt to the vagaries of capitalism, though their advertisement itself showed a complete misunderstanding of axolotl biology.

However, there is an essential dichotomy between the axolotl of these myths and symbols, and that of science, which has increasingly become the object of human attempts to regulate the natural world. Essentially, Voss has written elsewhere that any attempt to write about these creatures must necessarily become a tale of two axolotls, the object of scientific experimentation and the symbol of Mexican identity, as the axolotl is simultaneously "an icon of Mesoamerican culture, a darling of aquarists, and a model organism to scientists around the world"

However, this dual identity has not been beneficial for the wild axolotls of Xochimilco. They are becoming significantly more scarce as a result of eutrophication and invasive species of fish like tilapia and perch, which were introduced by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation in bulk to provide a source of protein for the people of Xochimilco.

Thus these tiny salamanders are perhaps the greatest examples of what happens when humans attempt to intervene in nature and cause more damage than the ecosystem is prepared to handle. Axolotls are already the result of their ancestors’ attempts to adapt to the changes wrought in the landscape by the Aztecs’ first forays into agriculture. Evidence suggests that when Lake Xochimilco was turned into a system of canals and islands to support the raising of crops, they adapted to remain in the water of the canals rather than potentially being killed as pests on the land.

However, as more and more axolotls are poached from the canals of Xochimilco, or modified in laboratories, the question is what happens to this species, and how human engagement with them can, going forward, determine the fate of the axolotl. The axolotl of the laboratories is well cared for and protected, but this care is closely linked to its potentiality for human medical research, and comes at the expense of the species’ genetic diversity. It is thus an instrumentalised form of care, one which is not extended to the wild axolotls.

The axolotl of Xochimilco is a sentinel species, one which responds to the earliest signs of pollution and has seen its numbers dramatically dwindle as a result; it could be perhaps the most powerful signal of changing conditions in the area. However, a BBC article on the wild axolotl indicates that its plight is closely intertwined with that of the marginalised people of the neighbourhood, many of whom cannot afford to access the city’s sewage systems and instead dump their garbage into the canals, contributing to the eutrophication, pollution and breeding of invasive fish.

Thus, the fate of both these axolotl variants is closely linked with humans, and cannot be considered in isolation. The axolotl is simultaneously a symbol of Mexican identity, a victim of pollution and the source of hope and potentiality in regenerative medicine. Past attempts at conservation of species have involved removing all threats or activities associated with their destruction, but to protect the axolotls at the expense of other human activity associated with them could be potentially destructive. 

Instead, Wanderer writes that conservationists and anthropologists in Mexico, such as Luis Zambrano, have advocated an approach of creating protected ponds that fulfill the triple purpose of saving the wild axolotl, allowing human activities in the canals to continue, and eventually replenishing the gene pool of laboratory axolotls. This approach of taking into account all organisms in the ecosystem could be adapted to many environments around the world - that of buen vivir, or ensuring that all organisms in an ecosystem, whether human or animal, have the right to live well. 

Image credits: By th1098 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30918973