Apparently there are breeders making Axolotls and they only go for a few hundred bucks at most. How is this possible? And how are so many people able to own them as pets if they are very close to extinction?
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There are many aquarium fish that no longer exist in their native waters in the world and are only still alive due to hobbyists.
Couple of hundred bucks? They are £10 over here.
The axolotls we breed as pets are not the ones going extinct; They aren’t captured wild like Ball Pythons.
Imagine if a certain type of wolf were going extinct. Domestic corgi counts wouldn’t effect those numbers at all.
The reason wild axolotl are going extinct is because they live specificaly, only in 1 lake, found in Mexico City; Lake Xochimilco.
Pair this with habitat loss, and they’re very much in a bad situation.
Anything happens to that lake, and axolotls go bye bye
I’m pretty sure they’re almost always exclusively referring to the wild population when they say that. Why did I answer a question that I only have a good guess for the answer
They are endangered due to only being able to live in certain conditions and are dying as a result of habitat loss.
The ones in captivity are slowly being inbred due to a lack of genetic diversity as well.
This (https://youtu.be/bFkIG9S2Mmg) does a great job of explaining it.
Many species of of fish today exist only in the collections of private breeders, if it weren’t for hobbyists and organizations like CARES they would be completely extinct.
The same idea applies to axolotls, keeping them alive in the pet hobby is a good way of ensuring their survival. The reason they are relatively cheap is that they are rather easy to breed in captivity, therefore the few remaining wild populations are not affected by the trade.
Fun fact axolotls are essentially tiger salamanders stuck in a juvenile state. As the area around their native lakes were very arid and predator filled they stayed in the lakes which lacked big predators before now. There are two know ways to force them to finish their evolution to their adult phase which is a tiger salamander looking form. One you can force them to breath air little bits at a time but this stresses the animal a lot. The other is you can feed them thyroid meats (unsure of the animal thyroids used for this) and they will mature to their adult forms. https://youtu.be/bFkIG9S2Mmg
The same way snow leopards in the wild are exceedingly rare and hard to spot but you can see about a million of them when you visit Joe Exotic and his shit.
Actually, the domestication of animals helps preserve the species… Look at how many cows and pigs we have… The problem is, domesticating only keeps the species existing, not necessarily keeps a healthy population in the wild. Axolotl in particular are very sensitive to environmental changes, so they feel the destruction of their habitat quicker. They will probably never go fully extinct (because they are pets) but they might go extinct in the wild
They do really well in controlled environments like pet breeding or scientific breeding.
They are absolutely struggling to live in the wild. One of the two/three lakes where they are found is gone, dried up for irrigation. The other is rapidly shrinking. Ontop of those invasive fish started to eat axolot Young. Normal wouldn’t be an issue if you had a super large lake to hide in. Now the lake is like half to a quarter of it’s size.
Basically they are endangered because their wild status is endangered. We could most likely keep axolotls as a species a live for a long time with how well they do in the lab even if they become extinct in the wild.
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