Water Gymnast. Axolotl, Ambystoma mexicanum, Amsterdam Zoo ARTIS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Yes, they're Fascinating Creatures, these Mexican neotenic salamanders! Not only their biology - never developing lungs like 'proper' salamanders but using those great frilly, red gills for oxygen - but also for that wonderful name Axolotl. It's a combination of two Nahuatl words: atl = water, and xolotl = servant, slave, or slippery one. Somehow a translation has become: water slave or water servant. I'd as soon opt for Water Slipper; once you've watched it you'll understand why.
Axolotl today is an endangered animal; it's endemic to only two lakes near Mexico City, and its environment is rapidly disappearing.
The history of Axolotl in the West generally goes back on life-sized (!) colored drawings made by Frederick Polydore Nodder (fl. 1790) and George Kearsley Shaw (1751-1813) in their marvellous The Naturalist Miscellany, vol. 9 (1798). They never visited Mexico and I have no idea where they found their specimen; they call it 'Mexican Tadpole'.
But before that Axolotls or Axolomeh were known in Europe - though with strange attrributes - through the works of Francisco Hernández de Toledo (1514-1587) and Francisco Javier Clavijero (1731-1787). The first, a naturalist connected to the Spanish Throne who visited Mexico; the second, a native Hispano-mexican who often follows Hernández. Their descriptions mix what can be visually verified with curious claims. These creatures, for example, writes Hernández, menstruate; Clavijero repeats that claim but is not entirely sure. It's said their flesh tastes like that of eels. And Clavijero sums up his aesthetics of Axolotl: 'Su figura es fea, y su aspecto ridiculo'. I'll leave you to be the judge of that! I think this one, for one, is rather adorable. And I do opt for the name given by our Hispanozoologist: juiguete de agua, acrobat of the waters! (and that's very close to 'Water Slipper'! O no!?).
Water Gymnast. Axolotl, Ambystoma mexicanum, Amsterdam Zoo ARTIS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Yes, they're Fascinating Creatures, these Mexican neotenic salamanders! Not only their biology - never developing lungs like 'proper' salamanders but using those great frilly, red gills for oxygen - but also for that wonderful name Axolotl. It's a combination of two Nahuatl words: atl = water, and xolotl = servant, slave, or slippery one. Somehow a translation has become: water slave or water servant. I'd as soon opt for Water Slipper; once you've watched it you'll understand why.
Axolotl today is an endangered animal; it's endemic to only two lakes near Mexico City, and its environment is rapidly disappearing.
The history of Axolotl in the West generally goes back on life-sized (!) colored drawings made by Frederick Polydore Nodder (fl. 1790) and George Kearsley Shaw (1751-1813) in their marvellous The Naturalist Miscellany, vol. 9 (1798). They never visited Mexico and I have no idea where they found their specimen; they call it 'Mexican Tadpole'.
But before that Axolotls or Axolomeh were known in Europe - though with strange attrributes - through the works of Francisco Hernández de Toledo (1514-1587) and Francisco Javier Clavijero (1731-1787). The first, a naturalist connected to the Spanish Throne who visited Mexico; the second, a native Hispano-mexican who often follows Hernández. Their descriptions mix what can be visually verified with curious claims. These creatures, for example, writes Hernández, menstruate; Clavijero repeats that claim but is not entirely sure. It's said their flesh tastes like that of eels. And Clavijero sums up his aesthetics of Axolotl: 'Su figura es fea, y su aspecto ridiculo'. I'll leave you to be the judge of that! I think this one, for one, is rather adorable. And I do opt for the name given by our Hispanozoologist: juiguete de agua, acrobat of the waters! (and that's very close to 'Water Slipper'! O no!?).