Why Aztecs Revered the Axolotl

With wide-set beady eyes, a soft pink body and feather-like gills protruding from their heads, axolotls are undeniably cute. Their Pokémon-esque appearances have made them especially popular animals as plush toys for children.

But the creatures don’t just look peculiar—they are peculiar. Scientifically speaking, the salamanders are neotenic, or stuck as teenagers. They also have the uncanny ability to regrow lost body parts and their genome is 10 times longer than a human’s. They proliferate like rabbits in the lab and are a model organism for scientists studying tissue regeneration.

“I find it quite fascinating that this pink axolotl is globally circulating—it’s incredibly popular in a way that is so disconnected from its origins,” says Emily Wanderer, an anthropologist at the University of Pittsburgh.

In the wild, axolotls are blackish-gray and can only be found in the waterways surrounding Mexico City. To the Aztecs that coexisted with them for hundreds of years, they represented duality and transformation, which is perhaps prophetic: While one population of axolotls thrives as pets and lab animals, the wild ones face extinction in their native Mexico.

According to the Aztec legend "The Raising of the Fifth Sun," the gods held a meeting to create the universe. The deities Nanahuatzin and Teccizetecatl had already been sacrificed to create the moon and the sun but another sacrifice was necessary to set the world in motion. Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god, offered his shape-shifting twin brother Xolotl as tribute.

Fleeing his fate, Xolotl transformed himself into corn and then an agave plant. Lastly, he transformed himself into an axolotl—a water monster. But Ehecatl, the god of wind, discovered him and carried out the sacrifice, setting the universe into motion. As punishment for his cowardice, Xolotl would be represented as an axolotl for eternity. In Aztec culture, the axolotl became a symbol of transformation.

Beyond myth, the axolotl was part of life in the Aztec Empire. Between the 14th and 16th centuries, axolotls thrived in the five lakes surrounding Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital that would later become Mexico City. The Aztecs ate axolotls and used them for medicine due to their association with regenerative powers.

Within their waterways, the Aztecs created chinampas, floating agricultural gardens that sustained urban populations. “Chinampas are like lasagna, made up of many layers of organic matter that absorb all the pollutants in the water,” says Vania Mendoza, a biologist at National Autonomous University of Mexico working on axolotl conservation. “By having healthy soil, we have healthy water and, consequently, a healthy axolotl population.”

“Axolotls are very important in our culture,” says Mendoza. The creature has become a recurring symbol in Mexican art and literature. Painter Diego Rivera included an axolotl in his underwater mural "Water, Origin of Life." And Octavio Paz, a Nobel laureate, featured axolotls in his poetry. Roger Bartra, a sociologist, used axolotls as a metaphor for Mexico itself, writing that like the neonate salamander, Mexico was trapped in limbo between a stolen past and an unfulfilled future. In 2021, axolotls were printed on the 50-peso bill.

European scientists were likewise captivated by axolotls. In 1803, acclaimed naturalist Alexander von Humboldt visited Mexico City and sent some of the curious creatures to Europe. There, scientists marveled at their odd appearance and regenerative abilities. In 1863, a shipment of 34 axolotls was sent to Paris, which became the progenitors of nearly all lab axolotls today.

After their introduction to Europe, an albino tiger salamander was bred with axolotls, creating the popular pink varieties, and in the 1950s, a stock breeding facility was created in the United States. There, the axolotls underwent a standardization process so that the organisms would be consistently similar to each other.

“You want to have genetic consistency in order to effectively use them as an experimental system,” says Wanderer. In terms of their recent rise in pop culture, she points to the popular video game Minecraft, that introduced axolotls as characters in 2021. Google searches for the strange creatures spiked.

Meanwhile in Mexico, wild axolotls are in trouble. Over the 20th century, Mexico City grew enormously while the lakes surrounding the megalopolis were drained. A few remaining canals exist only in Xochimilco, a vibrant neighborhood in the south of the city. Carp and tilapia—voracious predators of young axolotls—were introduced to the ecosystem in the 1970s.

Axolotls are also very sensitive to water quality. With urban sprawl expanding across Mexico City, water quality in Xochimilco deteriorated. In 1998, the estimated density of axolotls was 6000 per square kilometer. By 2008, that plummeted to 100.

“It’s interesting to see how in the hands of regenerative biologists, the axolotl is this model of growth and resilience,” says Wanderer. “Whereas for restoration ecologists in the wild, it’s an incredibly fragile creature that is really vulnerable.”

It may be paradoxical that an animal that breeds so easily in the lab could be going extinct in the wild, but Wanderer and Mendoza say that recovery is much more complicated than a matter of breeding. The key is habitat restoration.

Mendoza and her colleagues are focused on restoring the sustainable chinampas systems that once sustained both the Aztecs and axolotls. They are working with local farmers to grow organic produce and set up filters that clear pollution and prevent fish from entering the refuge. Mendoza hopes the project will grow to include more chinampas and give wild axolotls a chance at population recovery.

Only time will tell if the water monsters of Aztec mythology can regenerate.