Also known as the Mexican Walking Fish, the axolotls is a salamander like creature whose origins date at least as far back to the Aztec Empire. Mexico city and its surrounding waterways has traditionally been its only natural habitat where once it thrived on structures (reed mats) covered with earth that once supported a flourishing Aztec crop culture. These "floating gardens of earth" have long since succumbed to the devastation of decay and greenhouse gasses.
Sightings of these creatures have diminished over the years and scientists are alarmed that they are in danger of becoming extinct. They are hard to miss and are rather unattractive critters with an oily tail, bizarre looking mouth and strange, feathery gills. Adults are about one foot long. They feed on insects, small fish and crustaceans by dragging themselves along the dark and gloomy bottom of the city's lakes and streams.
Biologist, Armando Tovar Garza of Mexico's National Autonomous University, and a group of researchers rode in skiffs along the muddy waters of Xochimilco, hoping to net some creatures. Not a single axolotls was discovered after four months of intensive searching.
"It's too early to declare the axolotls extinct in its natural habitat. In early February, researchers will begin a three-month search in hopes of finding what may be the world's last free roaming axolotls. The searches on almost all the canals have to be repeated, because now we are in the cold season with lower temperatures, and that is when...they breed." said Garza
Researchers have tried to replenish the creature's habitat mas much a spossible by constructing special shelters in Xochimilco that are filled with pumped in water, heaps of rocks and reedy foliage. These shelters also protect the axolotls from carp and tilapia, which are not indigenous to the Mexican waterways.
Time is slipping, but there are those who are not ready to give up this ancient marine creature.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
