Stuff You Should Know - Axolotls: The Smiling Salamander from Mexico

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

It’s a listener request! Axolotls are one of the more amazing animals roaming the planet right now – they can regenerate parts of their brains, can fight off tumors, are found in the wild only in one single lake? And did we mention they smile all the time?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sometimes the pop culture we love just teens hits differently in retrospect. Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student teacher relationship on our favorite show. We're Suzy Bannock-A-Rum and Jessica Bennett, posts of the new podcast in retrospect, where each week we'll revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us and probably you to try to understand what it taught us about the world and our place in it. You're the first person that I've talked to about this for years and years. Listen to InRetrospect on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows. Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from,

but who you are. Welcome to MPR's Black Stories Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the host and journalism who've always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories Black Truths on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh and there's Shocking Jerry's here too and this is Stuff You Should Know. Part of the ongoing, never-ending, stupendously outstanding animal additions.

That's right. And for us, Friday morning addition, which never happens, we had a little family issue yesterday, and you guys were very sweet and kind and agreed to punt to the recording a day. And so now we are in our morning show routine. That's right. I can't even begin to do a morning show host impression. I'd like to, but I can't bring myself to you. Who likes lizards? That was a pretty good chuck.

Yeah, and that's probably a morning show person who'd probably call this a lizard. Yeah, yeah, good point, because they're not lizards. They're amphibians. And what we're talking about are called axolotls. And before we get into it, I think we should give a hat tip to guest researcher who helped us with the very initial research on axolotls.

Uh huh. A listener named Charlie's Flores, who by the way, her grandma calls her Chuck, she mentioned. Oh, that's Flores. Who by the way, her grandma calls her Chuck, she mentioned. Oh, that's very sweet. She sent us a sweet letter and a picture that she drew. Yes, a picture of her axolotl boba, and she told us some pretty amazing initial things about axolotls. And she and her mom, Gabrielle, listened out in Omaha.

So thank you very much to Charlie's for helping us out with this one. I guess we should also think Dave Rooz too. Yeah, of course, but Dave's not what like six years old, how old was Chuck? She's 10 going into she just started the fifth grade. Oh, well, I feel like a dummy too. And I'm a dad of an eight year old and I guess too young. You never know. You never know. You just can't tell at that age. Are you three? Are you 15? I can't tell. So should we talk pronunciation real quick? Because of my scruity day yesterday, I meant a thousand times to go look up sort of the indigenous pronunciation of what we call axolotl. And I failed to, but you were schooling me before we started recording, schooling in a good way.

I got you covered. Yeah. So that very strange looking word is actually taken directly from the Nawa language, which is the language of the Aztec people. And they came up with this, we'll talk, do you wanna just go ahead and talk about that part now? Yeah, sure.

Okay, good. So the word axolato, what we call axolato is actually us show look, even though it's spelled the exact same way. In the Nawa language, ATL is pronounced lookUT and X is very often pronounced show. It can also be pronounced WAH. It's kind of all over the places. It's like a utility baseball player. It can do whatever. Wow, look at you. And by the way, also the Aztecs were called the Meshika and that X is a SHE in that case. So the Axelodil or a Sholut is named

after the Aztec God Sholut, X-O-L-O-T-L. That's right. The God of Fire and Lightning, correct? Also, what else? Also, the God of Physical Deformities and and dogs and death and i'm glad we're starting here because this sort of reinforces why the axolotl by the way which is a very very cute little salamander amphibian i think you did say amphibian but if you think you haven't seen one you probably have because they've kind of blown up the internet uh semi-recently, with their cute smiles. But they're very important to the lore and the culture of Mexico because of the Aztec origins. And specifically, this god, Sholat, who like we said, physical deformities, fire, lightning, death, and dogs. Right. And so according to lore, Sholat was escaping Ketsukodal, which is Sholat's twin God sibling. And to escape, he transformed into three things, Maze Plant, which is Sholat in

know what language, agave, which is Mesho, Mesho Lut, and then a salamander, Asho Lut. And he still was caught and killed, but I believe by transforming into those things, he made them exist per chance. So, the reason that the Ashola is kind of like a big deal in Aztec culture is that they were very hyper local to the Aztec people. They were where the Aztec were and they were a huge food source, a source of medicine and also I guarantee a source of amusement and delight because I don't care what era or age or epoch you're living in. Axelotls are one of the cutest animals on the planet. They really are. I mean, there's something about that perma smile that is undeniably cute and affectionate

looking and I know this is humans putting their stuff on animals, but, you know, the thing smiles. What else can you say? You can't. There's nothing else you need to say. But that's the thing about axolotls, Chuck, is, yes, if they were just that cute and it stopped there, they'd still be worth talking about. But they're really, really worth talking about. And this is what Charlie Flores was trying to to explain to us is that there's so many other amazing astounding things about axolotl. So this is just one of the most interesting animals on the planet. It turns

out. Here's your Disney movie. It's centered around, I'm surprised you haven't done this quite frankly. It's centered around and axolotl. Okay, yeah, we name that axle. But sure, yeah, exactly perfect. And it is, but it is, and Disney movies always sort of, and you know, picks our all that stuff. They always sort of have their larger point to make about emotions or this or that. Maybe this one deals with mental illness and you have an ax, ax a lot that is actually depressed, but smiles all the time anyway.

And his little buddies have to help him out and see him through this. Yeah. And like the climax of the film is where you've managed to frown. Right. Maybe so. That's a pretty great chuck. Yeah. Just to put a sort of cherry on top of the original cultural story though.

When the Spanish came around as Conchers they were like oh man this stuff is delicious It was they they tried to They tried to keep a lot of records at least of what was going on with the Aztec and like what was important to them culturally I'm not gonna say like so they could respect them or anything like that But they did keep records and they did learn about the axolotl and learn that it was a source of medicine and they called it the food of the lords. And there were festivals. I mean, I don't want to eat one of these things,

but they had tamale, axolotl tamales, and I like it tamale. So that's the only time I was like, Axelotl tamales. I know like a tamale so that's the only time I was like, hmm. I could eat one of those if you wrapped it up in a tamale. Yeah, but I really couldn't because all I could see is that smile in my brain. So axelotls are, it would be tough to do, especially if the head's poking out the end of the tamale, just looking at it. Oh man, no, you can't do that. So I said axelotls were hyper local to where the, Meshika, the Aztec lived.

And they lived in like basically on a lake, like Mexico City used to be an Aztec capital, called Tenak Teelon. And Tenak Teelon was built basically on top of Lake, what is it, Teshoko? I think probably Toshoko. Toshoko, thank you. So Lake Toshoko is where the exolodal hails from.

And it's, again, it's a salamander, and there are other salamanders that live in that area, but the exolodal only lived in the Lake Teshkocho area. And as the Spanish came along and said, you can't build a city on a lake. What are you crazy? We're going to go ahead and drain this lake. One of the remnants of that lake was an even smaller body of water.

And it's not only a smaller body of water, it's even harder to pronounce than Lake Teshiko. It really is. It's Lake Sochi Mielko. And friends, look up Sochi Mielko. It is not in any way, shape or form as far as an English speaker is concerned, spelled like it's pronounced. Yeah.

It's XO, CHI, M-I-L-C-O, but Lake Sochi Mielko is a very small body of water. It's basically a small system of freshwater canals that are the remnants of Lake Toshikoko and That is where exolotals live now in the entire world. There's nowhere else even in Mexico There's nowhere else you will find an exolotl in the wild except for in Lake Sochi Milko Yeah, and I'm actually going to Mexico City for the first time in November. It's a very cool town. I can't wait, man, and I'm not gonna go on an axolotl tour. I don't know if they have those, I bet they do.

They do. But they're generally not out during the day, but we'll get to all this stuff as we go, right? Should we start at the beginning? Yeah, I thought we had started. Well, historically the beginning, I just mean the beginning of axolotls as species because they are amphibians, like you said,

of the order Urodella. And that is all salamanders. The scientific name is ambistoma mexicanum, which is very appropriate. I even know what that means. Ambistoma means blunt mouth. And when you see the axolotl, it kind of has a blunt looking mouth, so it all makes sense. And in Latin amphibia, for amphibia means double life,

and it's called the double life in amphibia, because as we all know, amphibians start out in water when they're hatched as little eggs, and they spend some time there as young and swimming around and using their gills. And then eventually they metamorphosize and transform into a land creature, which means they grow legs, their little tail shrink,

and they learn to use their lungs and those gills aren't useful anymore and sometimes they even go way all together, right? Yes, that's a typical amphibian. That's just what they do. Yeah, the guilds go away, they start breathing with their lungs and they live on land. They go from living in the water, living in the land.

It's what makes an amphibian an amphibian. Except with axolotls. And a couple other species of amphibians, mud puppies, I think is one, that they never leave the water. They're amphibians, but they don't amphibiate essentially. And it's something called neotany, which is they stay forever young, just like that Rod Stewart song. And another word for it is pedomorphic.

And like Rod Stewart? Yeah, exactly. Although, that's not true at all. But that means that they, even in their adult form, even in like they're fully grown up, they can reproduce, they're drawing social security, they still are not only look like their childhood form. For all intents and purposes, their body inside and out

is still in the childhood form. Yeah, they don't drop that tail, like other Sally's do. They keep that tail, let's call the body fin, because once you see it, it kind of looks like it runs up their body. They keep those legs, their legs wouldn't go anyway, but they have those stubby little legs. They do have lungs, and they also still have those gills, which we'll talk about a little more in a

second, but they basically breathe almost exclusively through their gills, and they also never use their legs to walk on dry land. So, you know, there's a term in Mexico, Mexican walking fish, is what they can be called which day very funnily points out like they are mexican but they're not fish and they don't walk so it's a bit of a misnomer uh... yeah just a touch uh...

there's a there's a theory is to why this is going on like why would this happen this doesn't really make any sense like why would they have legs yeah exactly that's a great question and some one of the theories is that there was a point in time where they did emphibiate fully and make it out of the water. So they needed their legs. They needed their lungs. They do have little tiny lungs, but they're very undeveloped. So they can't, they can survive out of water for a very short time with those little tiny lungs, but not for very long. They're clearly not designed to stay out of water for a very short time with this little tiny lungs but not for very long.

They're clearly not designed to stay out of water. So the idea is that somewhere in their evolutionary history, they spent some time on land, but the place where they lived, either like Toshikoko or like Suchi Mio Kō, was such a great environment for them. So ripe with food, so abundant. No, what's the opposite of abundant? Oh, scarce. So there was such scarce predators. It was just a perfect place to live. Man, a golden age to be an axolotl, I would say.

And so they stayed in the water, and at some point in time, those genes got frozen in some individual organisms, and those got passed along, and those gave us axolotls. And Chuck, also, may I return it to myself? Sure. So that is one theory, my theory, which I would like to share. Oh, wow. Axolotls are only about 10,000 years old as a species. They basically evolved from other salamanders

that they live among, and they haven't fully, I believe, evolved into an entirely separate species. They can still procreate with other salamanders. And so I think what it is, it's a remnant of the salamanders that they evolved from, that they haven't fully evolved out of that. And that if you looked at axolotls,

you know, 100,000 years from now, they won't have any legs anymore. And this is, does anyone, is this out there at all? Is this all you? I'm putting it out there, baby. Okay. So they used to mate with their other salamander friends. And they still can. Like Rod Stewart.

That's right. That's right. He's had one of two salamanders in this time. All right. I like it. That makes sense to me. Thank you. In 100,000 years, we'll know, for sure. Right.

Right? Yeah. Once a year, there's a big flaming ball of hot gas. Oh, yeah. It'll have come and gone by then. All right, so maybe we should take a break. I think that's a good setup. And we talk about how remarkable this thing is.

Just hold on to your hats, everybody, because this sort of blew my mind. And it will blow yours as well right after this. This is In Retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us. I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and bestselling author. I'm Susie Bette-Kerrem, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker. Every week, we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about. From tabloid headlines to illicit student-te and one very memorable red swimsuits. I found myself in Pamela

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Word up, Jerry. All right, so if you haven't looked up a picture of an axolotl by now, pull your car off or take a break from jogging or cleaning your house or whatever you do when you listen to us wake up, maybe. If you're sleeping. Look up a picture of that cute little thing. You probably seen them on TikTok or YouTube. You probably seen a bunch of very colorful axolotls.

And those are bred specifically to sell as pets in those amazing colors. That is not what color they are in the wild. They are dark brownish, sort of greenish or really, really black. And kids don't want that. Kids want a hot pink one. and so humans have made that possible. Right. They want the Barbie version of X-Lautils, the Barbie edition. But we all do. We want what Barbie versions of everything don't we? Yeah, for sure. So there's pink, and the pink, it's usually pretty pale,

but I would say their faces can be kind of hot pink. White ones, pale yellow, lavender, that's my favorite. Model green, gray, and they also have glow in the dark ones, which are a little bit misnamed because it's not glow in the dark. They glow under UV lights because they have the same genes that jellyfish, some jellyfish do. And they were bred into them. This is not a natural thing, although apparently

they can spontaneously generate that gene in the wild, weirdly enough. But the upshot of it is if you have a glow in the dark exolato and you're showing it off with the black light, how it glows, you actually don't wanna do that very much because you're blasting them with UV radiation and their skin is so delicate,

it's actually really bad for them. Yeah, and if you're a teenage boy and your mom is in the room, you don't want to do that anyway, right? What do you mean? I'm not catching that one. That's right, adults will understand. Bob!

Or most adults? I'm an adult. Moving on, they are about a 10 inches long, or they can grow up to 10 inches long. They have those big wide mouths that look sort of unusually large for their size and for their head. And they do have little teeth, top and bottom teeth, and their stubby little legs have four webtoes on the front and five on the rear. And we got to talk about those gills

because the first thing you might notice aside from that winning smile, when you look at an axolotl, are those amazing feathery gills sticking out from the head. They don't look like fish's gills that you would see just sort of, just like dumb old gills on the side of a fish head Just opening back and forth like like an air vent

These things are as Dave says magnificent. There's no other way to describe these wispy feathery branched feathers It almost looks like little pieces of coral Coming off of it. There's three three pair on each side of its. Now, there's a pair on each side of its head times three Yeah, okay Chuck no more Friday morning recording sessions for me. Okay. That was some tough match and they they look like a flowy and branched in filigree because they're essentially like our lungs and filigree because they're essentially like our lungs. Our lungs have avioli, these air sacs, and if you really look at a detail of our lungs, they're branched in feathery and filigree because that expands the surface area for gas exchange.

Same thing with the axolotl, except those are gills to them because they do the oxygen exchange of the gas exchange during the water, and they're on their head. Yeah. And it's, it looks like an adornment almost, you know, or a hairdo, like a Larry fine hairdo from the three suges. Right. Oh, it's cuter than that. I think Larry's hair was super cute. Okay. As I mentioned earlier, I kind of teased about an exolotl tour in Mexico City. I'm not sure how they do those, but they are generally not around during the day. They're pretty sedentary. Yeah. And they hide in the mud.

A nighttime is the right time for the axolotl. They come out and eat basically anything that they can eat. They're carnivores, anything with a beating heart, whether it's a worm or a mullisk or even a crustacean or a tiny fish, an axolata will chow down on them. And you mentioned earlier that they can, even though they never go through that metamorphosis that other amphibians do in order to live a life on land and do things like reproduce, they can reproduce. They are sexually mature at six months old, and it's called the Peter Pan state.

They're sort of stuck in this eternal childhood, but those children still wanna have babies and do that thing, you know? Yeah, so how do they do it? Well, like many animals, there's a little dancing ritual. It's called the mating waltz, where the male and the female kind of swim very tightly together, They get their cloacas and rub them against each other. Things are getting a little steamy down there in the lake. And then the male says, here you go.

Here's a big cone full of sperm. And the female says, well, thank you very much. I will use my cloaca to accept that, and fertilize my eggs. And those eggs are a lot. There are about 300 to 1000 fertilized eggs. What I wondered is how, I mean, I know we'll talk about why they're so endangered, but if they're laying that many eggs, how many come to fruition? Cause that's a lot of eggs.

I got to, I found on some message boards. I don't even know if they call them any longer, but on the internet, some people who raise axolotls that they're actually, they, a lot of them do. Like more than half. Is it a chair? It was a news serve. Oh, wow. They, they, I saw somebody predict about 80% will hatch, which is a big deal if you have a female and a male axolotl in your tank,

you really have to keep an eye out for egg sacks floating around because you'll have a lot of axolotl on your hands. Yeah, and they, if you get one as a pet and we'll talk about care a little bit at the end, but be prepared to have that thing for a while because in captivity, they can live up to 25 years in the wild about 10 to 15.

And if you remember, we talked about the proteasalamander a long time ago. In our biospeology episode. That's right, that was a good, creepy episode. Those things can live to be 100, so it's not unusual for a Sally to have a long life. Yeah, and like you said, in captivity up to 25 years, and I just want to make sure that everybody who's buying axolotels as pets these days knows that like you're 25 years old.

You're going to have graduated college and had your first job and maybe even have a kid while your axolotels still around. So keep that in mind. Well, in the Disney movie, maybe that's why the axol is suppressed. That might be a little too toy story that the kid sort of doesn't care anymore. But hey, you never know. Yeah, and we couldn't do that they flushed them down the toilet because that's like finding Nemo, right? Hmm.

Is that how Nemo got back into the wild? I feel like that happened at some point. I could be making that up, though. It is. Kind of drifted in and out of some of those, you know. You just sowned out. Well, I mean, a lot of those I really like, but then, you know, when you have a kid

you're watching so many, sometimes you're working and, you know, you know Nemo's down there, but you don't remember how we got there. You know, I liked finding Nemo overall, but- Okay. Okay. Moment to moment, I didn't like that movie very much. But the whole is greater than the sum of its tissue parts.

Yes, well put, more put. All right. All right, so we haven't blown your mind yet. Everyone's like, all right, they don't mind a more size, not the biggest deal in the world, guys. Here's where the mind blowing stuff comes in. Overall, salamanders and nuts can regrow stuff. They can regenerate tissue, they can regrow a tail. We all know that. They can regrow a limb. That's fine. And they

come out usually okay. It's no big what. But the axolotl can, you know what, I should read actually what Stephanie Roy says. This is a researcher from the University of Montreal. Can you do your Stephanie Roy impression while you read it? Sure, here we go. You can cut the spinal cord. She sounds a lot like me. You can cut the spinal cord, crush it, remove a segment, and it will regenerate. You can cut the limbs at any level, the wrist, the elbow, the upper arm.

This all sounds very sadistic by the way. And it will regenerate and it's perfect. There is nothing missing. There's no scarring on the skin at the side of amputation. Every tissue is replaced. They can regenerate the same limb, 50, 60, a hundred times. Parentheses, trust me, I've cut off a lot of legs of axolotus in parentheses. And every time perfect. Yeah, and what's crazy is, like, this continues throughout their life. Like, they can do this when they're very young, they can do it when they're very old. Apparently, the only change is that it just takes longer the older they are, but that new leg, that new tail, it's as good as new every time, no matter how old they are. And that's

pretty mind blowing in and of itself. It gets even crazier than that, Chuck. That's here. In addition to like extremities and limbs and tails and stuff, they can do the same thing with organs. Yeah. And like important organs too, like the heart and the brain and their spinal cord, they can regrow it good as new every time. Yeah, it's really amazing. And if you think they should study this stuff to see if humans could potentially do something

like this with a little help from axolotl stuff. They are studying this stuff because, and they've already found some pretty good breakthroughs, but axolotls are very, very valuable to study. And what they've learned so far as far as these limbs go and other things is you get that little limb cut off or something. And the cells nearest to that limb wound differentiate immediately. So that means it's sort of like a stem cell. That means they can become any type of cell kind of instantaneously. And they form a little pile around these undifferentiated cells.

And that's called a blastema, or then this helps you to visualize it more. It's also called a regeneration bud. So it's like a little plant bud or something basically. We scar up like dummies. We form scar, like I cut off your arm and you're going to start forming scar tissue. Axelot will say no, no, no, we're going to grow that thing back with this blastema. And they do that. They generate stem cells, bone cells, muscle nerves, whatever you need to replicate perfectly, whatever is now missing. Yeah, which is pretty amazing considering we have pretty much the same genes we figured out.

The axolotl, so they sequenced an axolotl genome in 2018. I believe it's the largest genome ever sequenced because the axolotl genome is second only to the Australian longfish in size and number of base pairs. Humids have 3 billion base pairs. We're doing pretty good with 3 billion base pairs. It's kind of to be expected. That's a lot. Axolotls have 10, almost 11 times the number of base pairs that humans do 32 billion base pairs in their genome. And so after examining all this, scientists said like, hey, we've got some of these genes. What's different, they think, is that with axolotls, those genes are stuck in the

on position. Either they never make the hormone that would turn those genes off or they continue to produce the hormone that keeps those genes on. Regardless, the fact that those genes are turned on and then makes them able to just regrow like brand new every time throughout their life. Yeah, it's really something else. There's another cool theory about why this might be true evolutionarily speaking. And there are scientists that think that maybe at one point in their history when they

were in that lake and they were landlocked and food may have been abundant at one time, but maybe at one point there were too many axolotls and food wasn't as abundant. And so they may have turned cannibalistic and said, hey, friend, no, we've been hanging out a lot lately, but I would, your, your, your, your leg is looking pretty tasty to me. And so I'm just going to bite that off and eat it if you don't mind. And that happened so much that the axolotls who thrived were the ones who could grow those limbs back quicker and survive. Yeah, which makes sense.

Not bad. I don't have a rival theory for that one. Ah, shoot. I could make one up real quick. Let's hear it. No, I can't. It's Friday, maybe a few more Thursday afternoon, but yeah. I know.

You're right. So, you might say like, oh, that's cool. I want to try this at home with my axolot. I'm going to cut off its right front leg and half of its brain and see what happens. Please don't. Don't because they do have pain receptors, so they can feel pain.

Apparently they have a high threshold pain, but they will still feel pain if you essentially torture them for your own amusement. So don't do that to your ex a lot of at home. And by the way, these aren't messages to Charlie's flores because based on her preliminary research, she knows what she's doing. She's taking good care of Boba. Totally. Another amazing superpower that these little guys have is the, you know, not only

can they grow back things and grow back organs, but they can transplant organs perfectly, just like they can grow things back. They don't have a learned immune system like we do when you get, and we did an episode on organ transplant many years ago. And as we all know, a lot of times, in fact, about a third of the time, the human body will reject the organ because we have a learned immune system. And we'll just say, no, this isn't, this isn't on, shouldn't be on my body. It does crud out of here. Yeah, get this thing out of here. But axolotl don't have that.

So you can transplant, it's like 100% non-rejection rate for organ transplants. Yeah, but I mean, that's for axolotl, right? You couldn't put like a pig heart in it or anything. I don't think they've tried, but probably you're right, I would say. I don't think they've tried, but probably you're right. I don't know if we said it or not, but the different kinds of like lab-grown types

and varieties of axolotels are called morphs. Did you say that? No. So there's a type of morph called the firefly morph. And when it's in the embryonic stage, they'll take, if it's like a black or dark-modeled axolotel, they'll take a black or dark modeled axolotl, they'll take a tail from a white axolotl or pink one

and vice versa and they will transplant the tail in the embryonic stage and the thing grows up and it's like black with a white tail or white with a black tail. I don't think it's very cool looking, but I think some people do. Yeah. Another superpower is that they are 1,000 more times

resistant to cancer than other mammals. It's pretty amazing. And again, researchers are studying this because like could the cure for cancer potentially be in these cute little salleys? And you know, you never know. They have treated breast cancer patients with axolotl egg serum and it halted the growth of cancerous tumors so you never know.

Yeah they looked into it and they think what happened was that the axolotl juice reprogrammed the tumor suppressing genes that had been turned off epigenetically went in and turned it back on. And so the tumor fighting proteins and hormones were able to fight that tumor and stop it from growing. Wow. Yeah, wow is right. And I say that big wow calls for a message break.

What do you think? I agree. Any stuff we've just won, just stuff you should go. This is In Retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us. I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and bestselling author. I'm Susie Bette Karam, an award winning TV producer

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Listen to you and me both on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Linsy Borda murders and again I'm all wrong Don't explain everything to your brain Explosive shot And yeah, that's something you should know You should know Word up, Jerry So Chuck, there's a big irony with axolotels Aside from the irony that they can reproduce even though they're young in Yadayata

They are critically endangered in the wild Because again, there's one small tiny body of water in outside of Mexico City where they live and they live nowhere else in the wild. But there's countless axolotls thriving and living in captivity because it was very clear early on in the mid-nineteenth century to at least some French physicians that they would make great lab animals to experiment and test on. And so they took some sample axolotls to France, and from that point on, they just kept breeding them and breeding them and breeding them.

And now the world has tons of axolotls. They're just not around in the wild much. Yeah, big time. We talked about the habitat loss, there's also a pollution problem. Also the government introduced carp, I believe, in tilapia, into where the axolotl's were into that lake. For a food source, basically for fishermen, but they eat the plants where the axolotls lay eggs, so that was a problem. And here's some numbers for you. In 1998, there were about 6,000 axolotls per square kilometer.

And that is down to 35, 3.5 per square kilometer today, which is very sad. Yeah, and again, critically endangered. And one of the reasons why there's so many in captivity I was saying is that they do make a great lab animal. Apparently they're experimented on second or third only to rats and mice. Wow. Yeah, that's surprising.

I think that must be as far as vertebrates go. But that's where the pink axolotls come from. And all the other specimens, apparently there were what are called the leucistic axolotls. They're almost all by no not quite. But they were in that group of 34 axolotls that were first taken into Paris. And so every pink axolot is descended from those. I think there are like six original ones. But the reason that they work so well in labs is that they have some really interesting traits. Yeah, they are very easy to breed in captivity.

Check. They're easy to keep alive. If you know what you're doing, check. Sure, because we said, you know, they live a long time. Apparently they have very big cells and they're easy to keep alive if you know what you're doing check. Sure, because we said you know they live a long time. Apparently they have very big cells and they're easy to look at. An easy to examine and I think the X or 30 times larger than a human roughly the size of a beach ball. There in Rihanna neurons are 600 times larger. What's that? It's the size of the grand canyon.

Okay. In big max, sorry. Right. And you know, they're just ideal model organisms for the lab. And so that's why, and you know, because of their superpowers, that's why they are studied a lot. Yeah, so we found a few things from them already. We've figured out how organs develop in vertebrates, including us. Because like I said, we realize when we scan their genome that we have a lot of the same genes,

we use those genes to grow limbs ourselves and lose our tails ourselves while we're in utero. But after we're born, probably right before we're born, those genes get turned off. So we've figured out, thanks to the axolotl, how those genes work and which ones are important. We figured out how spina bifida works and where it comes from. And thyroid hormones.

You wanted those isolated axolotls got you covered. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. If you're, and did you already say that the fact that they're growing like tons and tons of these in a lab doesn't mean you can just throw them back in a lake because they have a shortage there, right? I did not say that. Well, I just said it because that's what I was thinking this whole time I was researching it was, well, why then since they are critically endangered can't you just release, you know, tens of thousands of these, but it just doesn't work that way.

These morphs are bred for the lab. They're not bred for that lake. And it apparently just doesn't work. It'd be like moving your city cousin in with your country cousin. Like you might have a decent sitcom on your hands, but it's only going to last a season or two. That's right. It all falls apart on super Tuesday. Exactly. So yeah, they can't do that. That's not to say that they won't find a place where they could introduce them to the wild. It's just apparently taking them back to where they're from or where they originated is not on the table. Yeah, and if you're wondering, well, what are they doing? They are trying because the exolato is such a

And if you're wondering, well, what are they doing? They are trying, because the exolotal is such a culturally important thing, scientifically important animal. It is a flagship species that they designated, I think, semi-recently, which helps obviously protect it. They are now building sheltered areas that don't have those grass eating tilapia. They're blocking them out so they can lay those eggs safely where they had for, you know, eons.

Actually, how long is an eon? I probably misuse that. I don't know. Let's say I'm sure I'll get an e-mail. Pretty long time. Okay, pretty long time. The tour guides and the locals have all been, you know, educated and trained on best practices for like fishing and doing those tours and, you know, hopefully all that stuff makes a difference and really sinks in because it is a

a beloved cultural creature. So beloved in fact, Chuck, that in 2020, Mexico said, hey everybody check out our new 50 peso bill and everybody's like, oh, it's pretty cool, all right. And then they said, no, no, turn't turn it over. And everybody turned it over. Like, there's an axolotl on the back of the 50 peso bill. Now, Mexico's government said, yep, pretty cool. Yeah. Every, every time they do that trick, they, they put it on the wrong side. Just say, watch this. Yeah, exactly. I tell them to turn it over. It kills. What's funny is the axolotl appears to be floating above the water weirdly.

Yeah. It's a strange jam, but it's cute as a button on the back of the 50 peso bill. Yeah, I agree. And also shout out to Minecraft. That's a game that my daughter is obsessed with now as many youngins are. And there is an axolotl in Minecraft. Okay. I couldn't figure this out. What's a mob in Minecraft?

It seems to be referred to like an individual thing. I don't know. Okay. Apparently, I don't play, so I don't know. Okay, fair enough. You're like, but do you talk to your daughter and make sure that she says? I'm curious though, ask her and let me know, will you?

Yeah, yeah, I'll just, she can text you now. Oh, yeah, tell her to text me what a mob is. All right. She doesn't have a phone, but she does have a little email address. So she can text her friends occasionally. She does have thumbs. And she does have thumbs, and they work pretty well. Get ready for lots of memes, by the way.

What do you mean? Oh, she's going to send me some. If I give, if I give Ruby your phone number. Okay. Does she have the good ones? I don't even know how to get a meme in a text. I have no idea. And the first thing she did was send me like 60 in a row.

Okay, it's copy and paste, buddy. I know, but I don't even know where to find them. Oh, what? That's a big first step. Yeah, I'm not gonna give her your fun and for you, your life will change and not in a great way. Okay, well then send me screenshots of her text to you. Okay. All right. Leave me out of it.

Sorry. So Mexico City in 2017 said, Hey, let's have an emoji contest. Because as, as is the case with cities these days, every city has to have its own official emoji. And guess what the emojis are based on in Mexico City. Tomales? Tomales with the Axolotl heads sticking out of them. Oh, no. No, just axolotl, doing stuff. That's great.

I love it. So before we finish up, you found some good stuff about axolotl care. We are not experts, but you did find some stuff. Where did you find this? I'll have to tell you in a moment, but you did find some stuff. Where did you find this? I'll have to tell you in a moment, but go ahead. Okay. And again, you should, if you're getting into the axolotel game pet wise, do all your

own research. Don't just listen to the next five minutes and think I got it covered. This is just sort of a broad overview, right? Right. Yeah, so there's a few things that you need to remember with axolotl. There, very sensitive to water temperature and water quality. Obviously, you want to start with fresh water, but you want to start with filtered fresh water to begin with. But you can't just put fresh water in there and say, hey, it's all good. Get in there,

axolotl. You want to tweak it enough so that the Axolotl can be happy and thrive in there. Yeah. You also want to get a fishnet. You don't want to handle as much as you might want to pet this thing. They have very sensitive skin. It's very easily damaged. So you don't want to pick the thing up or pet it or anything like that. So get out your little fishnet when you're changing water and stuff like that and feed them a lot, right? Yes, you want to feed them live stuff if possible, especially when they're young

because they actually have a predator response. So it's got to be moving for them to be like, oh, that's food. They can eat dead stuff later on as they get older, but you want to also be very selective. Don't go out and save some money and harvest your own bloodworms. If you even know how to do that, you want to buy them from a reputable bloodworm dealer, which you can find basically in any corner in any town in America.

Sure. Sure. But the reason why is because those things are typically like disease-free, parasite-free, and if they aren't, those can basically make your axolotl sick. That's right. You know what I want to do that. When tank shopping too, you also want to... This is true with any fish. And I think a common mistake is that you don't get the right size tank and habitat for whatever it is. They need a little bit of room. So a 20 gallon aquarium is what they recommend for like just one single axolotl. If you want more than one, they say you really shouldn't do that. You should just have one. You don't get five or six because you think

it's five or six times as cute. But if you are some sort of professional aquarium type and you do want to house more than one, then that tank has to grow proportionally. Yeah. The other thing I was saying about the water you need to tweak it, you want to keep your water temperature between 60 and 64 degrees Fahrenheit, go figure it out yourself for Celsius, and the pH you want somewhere between 6.5 and 8, but ideally about 7.4 to 7.6, which is basically right in there at neutral. They like neutral fresh water at 60 to 64 degrees Fahrenheit.

That's right. And they aren't like fish. You can't just throw like fish gravel in there. Oh, that's a big one. They need their own really specific habitat, the substrate. And little shards of gravel can really, really harm an axolotl. It can, they tend to just sort of gulp down water and in that water could be little tiny shards of gravel. So maybe loose sand could be a foundation. Definitely, you don't just think get a fish tank and fish tank stuff and it'll work for your

axelot. Yeah, and some people say, well, I'm just not going to put anything down. They can just, I'll leave the bottom of the tank bare, which your axelot won't cut their skin on anything, but they'll also be freaked out because everything's so slippery. So sand is a good thing and they also can burrow into sand if they're nervous or scared or want to sleep too. That's right. There's a lot more out there, by the way that was from the Atlantic City Aquarium. They know what they're talking about. You should probably do a lot more research before you actually get your axolotl and set its tank up.

That's right. Also, now since we are wrapping this up, this means that we can go listen to the 99% invisible episode model organism, which also covers the axolotl, but Dave, who helped us with this, was like, don't listen to that first because you're just gonna wanna steal it all, because Roman and the gang there does,

they do such a great job and they have forever and Roman is a friend of the show and I can't wait to go listen to it. I'm sure it's amazing. Same here. Well, thanks to Roman for making that amazing episode. Thanks to Charlie's Flores and her mom Gabrielle for sending in that preliminary research. Thanks to Dave for helping us out. And thanks to you for listening.

Since I thank you guys for listening, and Chuck just said, okay, tacitly, by a silence, that means it's time for listen or mail. That's right, and also thanks to Charlize, their own. Sure. And Rod Stewart, we got a shout out here. I mean, we've been picking on him. I was just watching videos of old Sir Rod, is he a Sir? I believe so, yeah. Sir Rod. Thanks for being such a great sport, Rod. All right, I'm gonna call this one.

Which one should I do? I'll do this one. I'll call this a bede, ee-dee. Oh, man. What's wrong? I wanted to go with the rest of my life without correcting that. Well, sorry. Oh man. What's wrong? I wanted to go the rest of my life without correcting that.

Well, sorry. Hey guys, long time listener of stuff you should know from Wauwangang, Australia. Okay. Wauwangang? I guarantee that's not how it's pronounced. Wauwangang. I'll all you have to do to be Australian to sound surprised at everyone.

Wauwangang. I think that was a New Zealand accent too, by the way. Probably. Hey guys, heard your podcast on how the English language developed and have to correct your pronunciation of B-E-D-E. Saint B-E-D-E is a famous Catholic saint who was a learned scholar from the Jero area of Northern England. He's famous for writing a history of the English-speaking people in English as opposed to Latin. I think he also had something to do with the change to the calendar and using BC and AD

and prefixes for dates before and after the birth of Jesus. Now, this is something deserving of a separate suffusion of its opic one day. Anyway, as I am named after him, I can assure you that the pronunciation of his name is the same as bead. Is that a disappointment? Yes, it's a disappointment, but I'm not even convinced. I mean, that's what bead says. Well, bead says I've long had to put up with people mispronouncing my name, Bedi, Bedi, and could not. Bedi. Well, that's what he said.

It could not help, but correct your attempts to get his name right, keep up the great work. Cheers, that is from Bedi Richie. Thanks a lot, Bedi, or Bede. I will call you Bede because you said that's how your name is pronounced. Of course.

That doesn't necessarily mean by extension, unless you have the time machine handy that I don't know about, that Beaty's name wasn't pronounced Beaty. That greedy. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Beat did, thanks a lot by the way, Beat. You can send us a email to stuffpodcast.ithardradio.com. MUSIC

Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Sometimes the pop culture we love just teens hits differently in retrospect. Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student-teacher relationship on our favorite show. We're Suzy Bannock-Harram and Jessica Bennett, posts of the new podcast in retrospect.

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