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| Axolotl, An animal that can regenerate endlessly |
Axolotl, An animal that can regenerate endlessly. If you like reading comics or watching superhero genre movies, then you must have heard of a character named Deadpool.
Yes, it is a character from the X-Men comic series who is described as having a ninja-like appearance. In the story, Deadpool is shown to have extraordinary self-healing abilities so that he cannot die even though he is exposed to malignant cancer or is hit by a bullet.
But did you know that in the real world, there are animals with similar abilities? The animal with this great ability is the axolotl, a type of amphibian native to Mexico.
Axolotl, An animal that can regenerate endlessly
In Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs), the name "axolotl" means "water creature". The name "axolotl" was also used because it was inspired by the name Xolotl, the dog-headed god in Aztec mythology who was told to change his form to become an axolotl so that he would not be sacrificed to the sun and moon gods.
However, in the end Xolotl was captured and killed so that since then he has become the god of the realm of the dead.
Back to the animal problem. The axolotl in or scientific language Ambystoma mexicanum is also known as "Mexican walking fish" because this animal has four legs and spends its entire life underwater.
However, this name is actually wrong because axolotl is not a fish, but a salamander. What distinguishes axolotls from salamanders in general is that axolotls can still have gill organs even though they are many years old. The gill organs of the axolotl look like strands of hair on the neck.
The original habitat of the axolotl was in lakes in the Valley of Mexico, an area that is now also home to Mexico City. In the past, this area was also the location of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire.
Initially, axolotls could be found in lakes located in the Valley of Mexico such as Lake Texcoco, Chalco, and Xochimilco. However, due to the drying activities of the lake by humans, the lake has decreased drastically so that currently axolotls can only be found in Lake Xochimilco.
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| Axolotl, An animal that can regenerate endlessly |
Because the axolotl is basically a type of salamander, the axolotl also has an appearance that is not much different from most salamanders. Its body is elongated with a vertical flattened tail and four short legs on either side of its body.
The axolotl has a variety of colors, with black and white being the most common. The adult axolotl also has lungs, but he never uses them because he still has gill organs and prefers to spend his life underwater.
Beast Lord of the Lake
Axolotl can grow up to 30 centimeters. Thanks to their size and pattern of life as carnivores, axolotls also act as top predators in the food chain cycle in small lakes that are their wild habitats.
They basically want to eat any animal as long as it is smaller than itself. Whether it's snails, fish, worms, to aquatic insects. It is not uncommon for the larger axolotl to eat other, smaller axolotls.
Axolotls can basically marry at any time, but their mating season tends to last from March to June. When about to mate, each axolotl will touch each other's cloaca and then walk in a circle.
After that, the male will go the other way while wagging his tail followed by the female. The male will then release the clumps of the white sheath containing his sperm. When the female walks across the arm, the female Axolotl will suck the sperm in the arm through the opening in her cloaca.
After fertilizing the egg itself, the female axolotl will then leave to release the egg. After laying eggs, the number of eggs released by the female axolotl ranges from 100 to 300.
The female axolotl alone is known to lay more than 1,500 eggs during the breeding season. The eggs are attached by the female axolotl to aquatic plants or rocks. After two weeks or less, the eggs will hatch into axolotl babies that must forage on their own.
Since the axolotl is essentially a frog-like amphibian, it also undergoes metamorphosis during its lifetime. The axolotl hatched like a tadpole with its gill organs sticking out from the back of its head.
After about two weeks, the axolotl's forelegs will start showing. After that, its hind legs appeared. Axolotl reaches sexual maturity at the age of one year and can live to be 20 years old.
An animal that can regenerate endlessly
Now let's talk about the greatness of the axolotl that has always attracted the admiration of scientists, namely the regeneration ability of the Axolotl.
Axolotl is known as a very tough animal because this animal can regrow any lost body parts. Be it legs, tail, eyes, bones, or even pieces of the brain and heart.
Then based on experiments conducted in 1968, axolotls that lost their heads can survive if they are fitted with a new head taken from another axolotl. Scientists speculate that the axolotl's regeneration ability may have something to do with the axolotl's own life cycle.
Scientist Stephen Jay Gould described the axolotl as a "sexually mature tadpole" because it can enter adulthood while retaining its tadpole characteristics: it lives completely underwater, breathes with gills, and has a finned tail. Unlike most amphibians, which lose their gills and live using their lungs as adults.
Because adult axolotls are biologically young and mature at the same time, adult axolotls have the ability to continuously rejuvenate themselves and restore lost or damaged cells.
Axolotl videos
The phenomenon in which adult axolotls retain their larval characteristics is known as "neotenic" or "paedomorphic". Scientists hope that by understanding how axolotl cell regeneration works, they can also apply it to humans.
Apart from being the favorite animal of scientists in the laboratory, axolotl is also kept by many exotic animal lovers because of its cute appearance, tame behavior, and easy care.
Axolotl can basically live as long as the tank is large enough and the water temperature is always kept at no more than 24 degrees Celsius. As for food, axolotls can be given foods that contain meat such as frozen worms, earthworms, or carnivorous fish food.
The axolotl's prowess is unfortunately inversely proportional to its fate in the wild. As a result of shrinking lakes in the Valley of Mexico, as well as other disturbances, the axolotl population in the wild is now on the brink of extinction. This is because although adult axolotls have no natural enemies, small axolotls are easy for fish to eat. By: Ochie
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