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Comment by poolnoodle | Hacker News Reader

Why not leave it in the wild? Now the poor thing has to stare at the inside of a bucket for the rest of its life.

Not its natural habitat - it would probably die in winter

Axolotls are somewhat popular as pets so I’m thinking someone got rid of theirs by tossing it in the river and the girl just happened to find it afterwards.

Far more plausible explanation than “found in the wild 9000km and an ocean away from its place of origin”

They freeze and thaw like Iguanas do in Florida. They can’t survive prolonged cold temperatures but when it does get to 15c they stop moving.

I wonder if that's why she had caught it so easily, not many people are visiting the UK for it's sunny climate.

The UK is sometimes warmer in winter than other european countries further south because of the gulf stream.

I hope this assertion ages well.

It might not. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47877088

Yeah, but the water temperature at this time of year is still pretty cold.

People are telling you it would die in the winter but the truth is it would die in a week. This pet was surely abandoned in the past 48 hours and that's why this is so rare.

They are hyper adapted to the water cycles, nutrient profile, and pH levels of the Xochimilco lake system in Mexico city and were taken care of by indigenous people for thousands of years. They have never survived anywhere outside of these lakes

They used to live in some others areas too. I once visited some places in the sierras close to Queretaro and while we were walking along the river a local guide told me he hasn't seen one in a decade but he used to see them regularly when he was a teenager.

Having said that there are surely a lot of factors that would make its survival impossible in wales given how hard it is for them to survive in their original ecosystems.

He may have been referring to the very closely related Ambystoma velasci

The historic range of the axolotl was indeed a bit wider than the current lakes beneath Mexico City, but not that much wider

Yes there were more than one specy, somewhere between 15 and 20. I don't know tge names of them all and the one most emblematic of xochimilco may very well be limited to this area but that doesn't mean the other species do not count, especially if they were all called axolotl by the indigenous population.

I see. Yeah there are 32 species in the same family and they almost all look like an axolotl before they undergo metamorphosis. The unique thing about axolotls is they are the only salamander species in the world that doesn't undergo metamorphosis (this is called neoteny). It'd be like if a frog just stayed as a tadpole its whole life.

1. The article already mentions the parents of the girl who caught it are looking into how to best keep an axolotl and a bigger tank has already arrived.

2. Axolotls can't survive in a Welsh climate. This creature will live much longer as a pet than it would in the wild.

It's against the law for it to be in the wild. And the temperature range in which it can survive is quite narrow, it would probably die sometime this year if left alone.

As mentioned in the article, this was almost certainly someone's pet and dumped in the river when they couldn't take care of it anymore. Axolotls are endemic to Mexico.

I suspect someone dumped their pet. Considering its from Mexico I also suspect it prefers a warmer water/climate?

Because Wales is not its wild

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