Place of Origin

You would have to cross the Big Pool, to see Axolotls in the wild. The ancestor of your pet comes originally from one of the two sweet water lakes in the state of Mexico. Lago de Chalco and Lago de Xochomilco, the names of these lakes originate also in the language of the Aztecs. Nowadays canals interconnect the two lakes, which had completely drained the Chalco lake, that became a mere depression and vanished in time. The other lake, Lago de Xochomilco, is surrounded by several big cities, including Mexico City, that severely pollute its water. Therefore, for quite some time now, wild axolotl has become a critically endangered species in its original homeland. Once in a while, projects are presented to reproduce axolotls in captivity and then return them to the wild to increase the number of their specimens in the nature. Perhaps the most popular is the “Aztecs and Axolotls“ international project. The goal of this initiative is to set up a breeding operation and an education centre. Under the "Forever young" motto, visitors will learn about the life of axolotls and receive information about the latest research results of this salamander. One of the most common problem of these perpetuation projects can be the degeneration of the lab-crossbred species due to the mutual relation of the parents. The offspring often includes white axolotls, which is not their natural form. The white individuals may not be let out into the wild as their staring colour would thwart their hunting ability, make them an easy target for predators, and again their offspring would be white. Despite of the fact axolotls are endangered species in natural environment, they can be easily bred in labs raising voices to remove axolotl from the list of the endangered species, as in the world there are great numbers of them kept in artificial environment. I dare say that there are more individuals kept in captivity than live in the wild.