alt.hn

4/23/2026 at 7:09:40 PM

Girl, 10, finds rare Mexican axolotl under Welsh bridge

 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d4zgnqpqeo

by codezero

4/23/2026 at 7:48:41 PM

Indeed, most axolotls in Wales are Welsh axolotls.

But I do wonder how many do live in Wales. If it’s not just an abandoned pet that would be really interesting.

by janalsncm

4/23/2026 at 8:10:52 PM

From the article it doesn't appear they've ever been found alive in the wild anywhere but their natural habitat. This was likely a remarkable chance happening where an owner released one and she found it within close succession or else it likely would have died very quickly.

If there is a wild population, that would be an even more amazing story.

by codezero

4/23/2026 at 9:19:48 PM

I did think it was strange they didn't spell that out though. Maybe they thought 'Mexican' makes it clear, but it reads too easily like a species name.

by OJFord

4/23/2026 at 9:32:41 PM

It is absolutely an abandoned pet. They cannot survive outside the tropics. Hell, they can't even survive outside the 2 lakes in Mexico City that they're hyperadapted to

There are less than 1,000 of them in the wild. Trust me if it was possible to establish a population somewhere else outside of captivity, scientists and conservationists would already be on it

by culi

4/23/2026 at 11:13:26 PM

> It is absolutely an abandoned pet.

That. Or the family fabricated the story for online fame.

Not saying that i have any evidence either way. Fundamentaly it is an unverifiable feel-good story with great online “viral” potential. It might be a very lucky axolotl who got abandoned, found and re-captured in the short window it could survive in the wild. It can also be a viral content strategy capturing eyeballs. In my, admitedly very jaded, guestimate I would give the two options about equal chances.

by krisoft

4/24/2026 at 6:45:30 AM

Yes I simply do not understand how these kind of stories pass the editors except that they are not important if wrong.

If this was some kind of crime they would have censored information for a long while if not clearly correct.

by nobodywillobsrv

4/23/2026 at 10:21:50 PM

Examples in the wild are - bar the possibility of an albino example - all dark skinned. The pink/light skinned ones are the results of mutations and ultimately selective breeding in the pet population.

by prmoustache

4/24/2026 at 2:49:07 AM

Not an axolotl, but mud puppies live as far north as Canada and have external gills: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_mudpuppy

Olm in the Balkans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olm picture: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P_anguinus-head1.jpg

by zeckalpha

4/24/2026 at 3:02:45 AM

Very cool but yes very much not an axolotl.

An axolotl is a salamander that has evolved neoteny (imagine a frog staying as a tadpole its whole life). It's also specifically adapted to a specific lake system in Mexico City. If it is kept in water under 57°F (14°C) it will die in a few days. They are also extremely sensitive to changes in the water quality or chemistry. It's not clear that this one will even survive after being rescued

by culi

4/24/2026 at 4:42:17 AM

I’m surprised no one is bringing up the possibility that this is just a salamander in its axolotl looking stage of life.

by awakeasleep

4/24/2026 at 6:02:50 AM

FTA: the nine-inch Mexican axolotl

There aren’t many baby salamanders that size, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_giant_salamander#Breed... says “external gills remain until a length of about 20 cm (8 in) at an age of 3 years”, so it could be. I wouldn’t know whether these look similar, though.

by Someone

4/23/2026 at 10:29:35 PM

So is it likely this one merely escaped? I find it hard to believe someone who would own one of these would not be an enthusiast, and that enthusiasts wouldn't find another owner for a critically endangered species rather than merely drop it under a local bridge.

by uoaei

4/23/2026 at 10:41:22 PM

No it is extremely unlikely this is an "escape". This would be lucky to survive for a week in Europe. Almost certainly what happened is someone bought one and then realized they are too complicated to take care of and decided to dump it in a spot they thought looked pretty

Also there are 1,000 of these in the wild but there are over a million of them in captivity. You can get a typical morph for about $50.

by culi

4/24/2026 at 1:13:06 AM

It's this, for sure. An axolotl is not going to live in the wild. I own a home near a public pond. There are pretty much always fancy goldfish swimming in it during the time of the year that everyone moves out. People just decide not to keep their fish.

by sidewndr46

4/24/2026 at 9:43:26 AM

> I find it hard to believe someone who would own one of these would not be an enthusiast

You underestimate how many people lack impulse control or consideration over their choices, and their lack of understanding of consequences when buying a living organism.

by freehorse

4/24/2026 at 6:27:46 AM

Amazing to see all of the things kids have been finding these days!

Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/75848

‘It Had Teeth’: A 3-Year-Old Discovers Ancient Treasure in Israel While on a hike with her family, a child stumbled across a 3,800-year-old Egyptian amulet. It will go on display in an upcoming exhibition. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/world/middleeast/child-an...

Sarah Huckabee Sanders' kids scream with excitement after finding 2,000-year-old coins in West Bank cave https://www.foxnews.com/travel/sarah-huckabee-sanders-kids-s...

by pkphilip

4/24/2026 at 8:10:28 AM

> "This is a quite a unique situation, and I think the young female has a keen eye to actually spot it," [Chris Newman, director of the National Centre for Reptile Welfare, said]

What an odd thing to say.

by pidgeon_lover

4/24/2026 at 10:28:46 AM

Why so? It seems both things are true.

by nsvd2

4/24/2026 at 10:32:15 AM

I believe the odd part is "young female" phrasing. And I agree, it is odd.

by paintbox

4/24/2026 at 12:39:20 PM

I agree that it is odd, but it is unfortunately a natural consequence of the dilution of the term woman to include people in their 50s that up until yesterday were men.

We need a new term, kind of like how Thailand is handling the situation for so long. It is clear that there cannot be just two genders.

by 4gotunameagain

4/24/2026 at 11:48:52 AM

I don’t know how they know it’s an axolotl and not a newt larva. If it’s the latter it’ll be very jarring when it changes forms later

by abejfehr

4/24/2026 at 1:00:55 PM

Have you looked at the article? The specimen would be quite huge for a newt larva, no?

by cl3misch

4/23/2026 at 7:32:30 PM

Sooo, if they are/were popular as pets, how come there's less than 1000 left worldwide? Those two facts don't reconcile for me.

by mikestew

4/23/2026 at 7:37:44 PM

1000 wild ones. There's much more in captivity than in the wild.

They evolved to be quite dependent on the unique agricultural islands in the Valley of Mexico called Chinampas. These were drained by the colonizers. Which is why Mexico City is now facing a severe water crisis and also why these creatures are endangered

by culi

4/23/2026 at 8:20:04 PM

Thanks, that's the clarification I was not getting from TFA.

by mikestew

4/23/2026 at 8:39:57 PM

Also why the whole region has so many sinkhole and similar drainage problems - it's literally built on a lake.

by ZeWaka

4/23/2026 at 9:25:51 PM

Yup. A lake that used to fuel the single most productive agricultural system humans have ever practiced. It's sad but there is a strong indigenous movement to bring them back. The axolotl actually became a major symbol of indigenous resistance because of this movement

by culi

4/24/2026 at 1:47:06 AM

> the single most productive agricultural system humans have ever practiced

This is simply not true. The highiest maize yield per hectare I can find anywhere online for chinampas is less than half the 13.5 metric tons per hectare that farmers get in Iowa. The more reputable numbers are less than 1/4 of that. It's probably true that they were among the most productive pre-modern agricultural plots which is a great achievement, but there's no need to make things up.

by ch4s3

4/24/2026 at 3:09:35 AM

I'm not being hyperbolic.

They produce a lot more than just corn. Not only can they be farmed for hundreds of years without break, but they can be harvested 4 to 7 times per year. They are 13 times as productive per unit of area as conventional dry-land farming.

> In Xochimilco, roughly 750 hectares of active chinampas produce around 80 tons of vegetables daily. This translates to a massive, continuous, year-round output of over 38,000 tons per year across the entire area

So that translates to 50.7 metric tons per hectre.

---

> the most productive pre-modern agricultural plots which is a great achievement, but there's no need to make things up

Post-industrial agriculture is not actually more productive per area. It's just more productive per input labor.

> Agricultural yields within the most densely populated and productive preindustrial land-use systems compared well with modern yields and were sustained in some regions for centuries to millennia, even though they also tended to require extreme inputs of labor and other socially unsustainable hardships

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1217241110

by culi

4/24/2026 at 2:51:28 AM

How much fertilizer does the Iowan farmer need to add to their field to achieve that? How many years can they maintain that yield without eroding the soil?

by zeckalpha

4/24/2026 at 3:01:31 AM

How many years can they maintain that without petroleum inputs?

by UncleOxidant

4/23/2026 at 9:42:03 PM

How it was (a great interactive 3d reconstruction)

https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/

by trhway

4/23/2026 at 10:02:31 PM

This is awesome, thanks for sharing.

Andrew Wilson, who works with the United Nations World Food Program, also made an in-depth minidoc on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86gyW0vUmVs

by culi

4/23/2026 at 10:18:09 PM

Wow this is amazing. Thank you!

by palata

4/23/2026 at 10:19:50 PM

Thanks to the author and HN - it was posted here sometime ago, and being that impressive it naturally stuck in my memory like i'm sure now it will in yours :)

by trhway

4/23/2026 at 10:22:35 PM

[dead]

by kitsune1

4/24/2026 at 12:05:12 AM

Contrary to the report, they are actually not difficult to keep as pets - they are just highly sensitive to pollutants in the water.

The unfortunate case for the wild population, is that they naturally inhabit a location which today has one of the highest human population densities in the world, and hence massive pressure on water resources. We could probably quite easily re-establish a breeding population in remote areas in Europe but would constitute an invasive species and hence wouldn't happen.

As a species, they are not endangered due to their very large populations now in the pet trade (though these then get inbred, become domesticated etc).

by hunglee2

4/24/2026 at 3:33:37 AM

Axolotls have also been used for over 200 years for medical research related to regenerative biology. They’re unique among vertebrates in that they can regenerate nearly every part of their body, even parts of their brain. https://orip.nih.gov/about-orip/research-highlights/amazing-...

by beeandapenguin

4/23/2026 at 7:35:28 PM

"in the wild" might be doing a lot of heavy lifting, or it may be based on subspecies or similar.

I don't really expect to find endangered species at the local pet store.

by bombcar

4/23/2026 at 8:14:11 PM

I have three axolotl's in the next room, there are no subspecies to my knowledge, except maybe for some cross breeding with Salamanders in the US.

They are common in scientific research as they have amazing regenerative abilities; they will often mistakenly bite each other's legs off as juveniles (they are not the smartest creatures) and then grow them back in a few weeks, good as new. They made it into the exotic pet trade and now they are quite common in captivity, but now critically endangered in the wild. There are attempts to breed and repopulate them, with some limited success.

Another interesting thing, in many countries and states it is legal to keep an axolotl and illegal to keep a Salamander.

They are actually fairly easy to keep in my experience, with two caveats. 1) you need to be able to keep the water below 24 Deg C, this means spending some money on chillers even in sub-tropical countries. 2) If you have a pair in the same tank (regardless of sexing) you need to be prepared to cull the eggs! (freeze them) Prices here went from ~$50NZ each down to around $10-15 each due to the Minecraft craze.

by JaggedNZ

4/23/2026 at 8:24:27 PM

Why are salamanders illegal?

by Ifkaluva

4/23/2026 at 8:33:42 PM

Because they burst into flame! 90% of wizard dwelling fires are caused by salamanders!

(in reality probably the law banning them as pets to protect them didn't include axolotls because the legislature didn't know they existed)

by bombcar

4/23/2026 at 8:47:27 PM

They're either an invasive species, and therefore should not be introduced to the area (and you know that many pets will be introduced once the novelty wears off). Or they're native to the area, and should be left alone because they're endangered or otherwise threatened.

Those are just two reasons, but I'd bet they cover a lot of cases.

by mikestew

4/23/2026 at 8:46:49 PM

Often Axolotls have been "grandfathered" into the legal exotic pet trade, and salamanders have not and they tend to be considered separate species, even though biologically it's a very blurry line. Also, it often happens in areas where there is a local wild salamander population that is being protected from poaching.

by JaggedNZ

4/23/2026 at 8:58:47 PM

You likely don't have wild axolotls nearby so if a pet escapes it'll just die and not affect the ecosystem. OTOH, an escaped salamander might thrive and displace wild salamanders and disrupt the ecosystem. Or carry a disease, or ...

by bryanlarsen

4/23/2026 at 8:48:41 PM

most places ban exotic pets that are able to survive in the local climate to prevent invasive species from outcompeting the local feral cat population.

by dmonitor

4/23/2026 at 10:14:40 PM

my understanding is that thr light skinned / pink variants are the results of mutation and selective breeding - and obviously racism, light skinned being considered more cute - in the pet population and almost all examples in the wild are dark skinned.

by prmoustache

4/24/2026 at 12:54:14 AM

Racism? Come on. A camouflaged pet you can't see in the tank isn't as fun as one where you can see all the crazy physical structures.

by anon84873628

4/23/2026 at 8:45:26 PM

It's a similar story for Venus fly trap plants. It has a tiny habitat so it's exotic. They're easy to breed so it's cheap to start selling them. But their limited habitat is being destroyed, so they are endangered and also on the clearance rack at the garden store.

by fineIllregister

4/23/2026 at 7:48:51 PM

Why not. We found plenty of endagered species at zoos. They are endangered not only as a function of the number of species, but due to their vanishing environments.

by elzbardico

4/24/2026 at 12:36:19 AM

It's a very strange definition. Would you consider domestic chickens "endangered"? Clearly if there are many kept in captivity and bred, there's little chance of them becoming extinct even if there are nearly none in the wild.

by userbinator

4/24/2026 at 8:54:13 AM

There is in fact a difference between domesticated animals and wild animals that are kept as pets.

Do you also find it strange that e.g. various wolves are/have been considered endangered even though dogs exist?

by filleduchaos

4/24/2026 at 12:48:51 AM

I believe all captive ones are cross-bred, so are distinct from the native species

by anitil

4/23/2026 at 7:54:19 PM

the pet ones are almostly entirely captive bred so they are pretty distinct by now

by liveoneggs

4/23/2026 at 7:16:48 PM

It amazes me she chanced upon it at the right time and even knew exactly what it was.

by codezero

4/23/2026 at 7:30:41 PM

Axolotl's have become a global icon. First as an anti-colonial protest symbol for indigenous peoples. But now it's even a creature in Minecraft

Edit: oh the article says as much

> Axolotls as pets have seen a surge in popularity in recent years after they were introduced to video games such as Minecraft and Roblox.

Also, the child seems quite familiar with the wildlife

> She said Evie was "always finding things" like newts and bugs, but said the axolotl discovery was a surprise.

What's even funnier is the mother's reaction who apparently didn't believe axolotl's were real

> "I've been telling Evie all this time that those creatures she watches on YouTube, they're not real.

by culi

4/23/2026 at 8:12:44 PM

Yeah, I didn't want to spoil the article with my comment, it was a good read, but it did immediately make sense why they were so popular now. I've met multiple people in passing who own Axolotl. I used to think I was super special that I met a guy who owned one, and I assumed it was because he was a famous neuroscientist, and had some special permission, but now they're relatively common as pets (to a degree).

by codezero

4/23/2026 at 7:46:21 PM

I stopped trying to correct my kid about wildlife facts when he turned 5…

by kasey_junk

4/23/2026 at 8:37:13 PM

> Experts have warned axolotls should never be bought on impulse as they can "very challenging" to look after.

> This is because they have the same environmental, dietary and behavioural needs in captivity as they do in the wild.

I thought this was just odd. Don’t most animals that aren’t heavily domesticated like that? I mean that’s true of most all pet fish, for example.

by MBCook

4/23/2026 at 8:59:27 PM

Unfortunately, the whole Minecraft thing caused a lot of people to buy them with little understanding of proper care, so I suspect there's some "that's cool but please don't rush in unprepared" in the hard to keep message. There are also some misconceptions around water quality requirements, they really don't like chemical pollutants, but I have no issues with local municipal water, other areas could have issues and require RO water, etc. but there are plenty of tropical fish keepers in this same situation.

And then there's the water temp thing, that caught me off-guard and I was using frozen water bottles for a few weeks until my chiller arrived, if the tank had been located in a different part of the house it might have been required.

by JaggedNZ

4/23/2026 at 8:44:17 PM

From another comment here: "you need to be able to keep the water below 24 Deg C, this means spending some money on chillers even in sub-tropical countries"

I think people anticipate needing heaters for certain types of fish, but I'd never have expected to buy a cooling unit for aquatic life.

by macintux

4/23/2026 at 9:02:40 PM

Yeah, adding in a chiller makes things way more complicated than just adding a resistive heater. A decent looking chiller for an aquarium is ~$1,000, plus you need temp sensors and control wiring to maintain the setpoint properly, and then you need to pray the electricity doesn’t go out. A 1/3rd HP chiller draws around 1kW including the circ pump

by quickthrowman

4/23/2026 at 9:06:54 PM

An aquarium backup battery for a simple pump is like $50 for something that'll last a few hours of outage, but for a chiller with that kind of draw, it's a bit more expensive.

by fragmede

4/23/2026 at 11:52:27 PM

They're also a symbol for asexuality, or at least they were where I grew up.

by Levitating

4/24/2026 at 1:12:07 AM

Is this because of Yolanda, the ace axolotl, in the show BoJack Horseman?

by culi

4/23/2026 at 8:51:29 PM

First time I learnt about it was while reading The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. Fantastic book.

by psychoslave

4/24/2026 at 3:36:33 AM

Fun fact: Axolotl have the largest animal genome ever sequenced with ~32b base pairs, 10x more than humans.

by beeandapenguin

4/23/2026 at 9:17:24 PM

> I've been telling Evie all this time that those creatures she watches on YouTube, they're not real.

This is a really strange side comment, lol. I guess the mom doesn’t believe in some animals?

by pinkmuffinere

4/24/2026 at 1:21:54 AM

To be fair, many people think Narwhals are a mythical creature. For good reason imo. They're fantastic

by culi

4/23/2026 at 7:50:05 PM

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.

by poolnoodle

4/23/2026 at 8:00:10 PM

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”

by loloquwowndueo

4/23/2026 at 8:03:35 PM

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.

by reactordev

4/23/2026 at 8:20:12 PM

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

by illwrks

4/23/2026 at 8:29:51 PM

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

by scns

4/23/2026 at 9:08:24 PM

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

by mr_toad

4/23/2026 at 9:35:39 PM

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

by culi

4/23/2026 at 10:26:58 PM

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.

by prmoustache

4/23/2026 at 10:44:58 PM

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

by culi

4/23/2026 at 10:51:11 PM

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.

by prmoustache

4/24/2026 at 1:17:07 AM

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.

by culi

4/23/2026 at 9:09:52 PM

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.

by WJW

4/23/2026 at 8:14:46 PM

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.

by oidar

4/23/2026 at 8:00:06 PM

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.

by neuralkoi

4/23/2026 at 9:04:00 PM

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

by bastardoperator

4/23/2026 at 9:18:01 PM

Because Wales is not its wild

by OJFord

4/23/2026 at 10:50:51 PM

Even if you are an endangered species, humans wont leave you alone.

by nilslindemann

4/23/2026 at 8:46:23 PM

The BBC paywall for US users is really a bummer

by standwportugul

4/23/2026 at 7:53:29 PM

Why did she name him Dippy and not a proper Welsh name like "Cadwaladr" or "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?"

by fortran77

4/23/2026 at 8:13:04 PM

I think her family was visiting Wales, rather than being natives :)

by codezero

4/24/2026 at 9:35:13 AM

Indeed. The article says the family was visiting from Leicester.

by ralferoo

4/23/2026 at 8:24:21 PM

[flagged]

by renewiltord

4/23/2026 at 9:40:18 PM

Wales is a lot smaller than the continental United States. What do you expect them to say? "Cardiff is part of Wales, unceded territory of the Welsh"? That would be entirely performative. If you feel strongly about this topic, you ought to demand more meaningful steps, such as the use of Welsh language place names.

by wizzwizz4

4/23/2026 at 9:53:28 PM

I just think they should acknowledge the native people whose land it is. It’s not performative unless you’re a MAGA fascist. It’s just considerate.

by renewiltord

4/23/2026 at 10:07:43 PM

What form would such an acknowledgement take?

by wizzwizz4

4/24/2026 at 5:47:28 AM

There are many good examples online if you care to actually do it rather than perform ironic questioning as an art form.

by renewiltord

4/24/2026 at 6:11:37 AM

rerewhiner

by da_lawyah

4/23/2026 at 10:25:37 PM

"We inhabitants of Dry Land must acknowledge that we all descended from these superior beings of Water Worlds. All the salt water in our veins is a debt and homage to the Water Beings from whom we stole it. We Dry Landers will forever devote ourselves to lifting up on a pedestal, these Water Beings, as long as that pedestal is submerged deep underwater. We solemnly pledge and promise the payment of reparations, in the form of Sea Monkeys for breakfast."

by ButlerianJihad

4/23/2026 at 8:27:32 PM

"siliogogogoch" for short :)

by tonyarkles

4/23/2026 at 11:41:59 PM

well good thing she was 10

by analog8374

4/23/2026 at 9:02:22 PM

Imagine if it were the other way around:

Mexican axolotl, 10, finds rare Girl under Welsh bridge.

by shevy-java

4/23/2026 at 10:52:17 PM

And how we would react if it catched her and put her in a small cage.

by nilslindemann

4/24/2026 at 12:07:47 AM

That would make her description in the article as a "young female" a little more fitting, at least.

by hibberl6

4/23/2026 at 10:38:39 PM

Imagine axolotl husband now cries of missing wife.

by varispeed

4/23/2026 at 8:30:56 PM

And dont you pronounce that 'x' as 'ks'! It's pronounced as 'sh'! Just like in 'xocolatl'.

by beeforpork

4/23/2026 at 8:35:36 PM

I have a feeling you're fighting a losing battle here

by Petersipoi

4/23/2026 at 9:52:49 PM

Prenounciation and correcting other's spelling is always a losing battle, probably for everyone involved.

by embedding-shape

4/23/2026 at 10:28:15 PM

*Pronunciation

by rezonant

4/24/2026 at 1:21:10 AM

Hey, that was the american spelling.

by penguin_booze

4/23/2026 at 10:41:15 PM

whoosh

by 867-5309

4/24/2026 at 2:07:25 AM

*wush

by dhosek

4/24/2026 at 12:20:26 AM

i think it's actually a whoosh for you :-)

by rezonant

4/23/2026 at 11:15:04 PM

That one is ancient history. My 6yo is currently fighting her friends and their parents alike to make them realize and learn that there is an "L" at the end - it's "axolotl", not "axolot".

by TeMPOraL

4/23/2026 at 11:32:05 PM

It's technically not just “an L” if we're trying to avoid Anglicizing the pronunciation, right? The “tl” cluster is its own affricate with a lateral fricative as its tail, or am I misremembering?

by dasyatidprime

4/23/2026 at 8:37:40 PM

Every scientific battle is worth fighting for!

by brunoborges

4/23/2026 at 8:43:28 PM

Scientific study of languages generally admits that language drift eventually.

by psychoslave

4/23/2026 at 9:32:23 PM

What is scientific about this pronunciation? Axolotl is not the scientfic name (its Ambystoma mexicanum), and usually the goal with pronouncing scientific names is for the listener to be able to spell the name after hearing it (at least for botany, which is what I am familiar with).

by whyenot

4/23/2026 at 11:39:15 PM

In Spanish, it's "ajolote".

In the Spanish of the 1490s and early 1500s, there was a "SH" sound, spelled with X, the same way there is today in other Iberian languages like Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, or Basque. They got to Mexico and wrote many indigenous words with "SH" sounds (like "Mexico" and "axolotl") with X. Shortly after this, the pronunciation shifted to the modern Spanish J sound (which in much of the Spanish speaking world is like the CH in loch, but in some countries is like an H sound).

by asveikau

4/24/2026 at 2:31:59 AM

I am Spanish myself and didn't know about this fact until recently. It explains many "old-fashioned" spellings like México, Pedro Ximenez, or Don Quixote (nowadays usually written as Quijote, but you will find the old spelling in other languages).

For those who are curious enough, this article explains the evolution of the Spanish sibilants and why our languages uses J and Z in a very different way from pretty much any other language:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Spanis...

by pezezin

4/24/2026 at 3:22:13 AM

My favorite example: It also explains why "sherry" wine comes from "Jerez" ... Because it used to be Xerez at the time that most European languages learned the name.

by asveikau

4/24/2026 at 3:26:26 AM

Was a bit disappointed that, in the Spanish dub of X-Men, it isn't pronounced "Profesor Javier".

by jolmg

4/23/2026 at 10:19:16 PM

Well most non nahuatl speaking mexicans simply call them by the spanish traduction, ajolote.

by prmoustache

4/24/2026 at 1:19:21 AM

That's nice for them, but how will I prove my intellectual superiority if I don't have a historically accurate pronunciation?

by culi

4/23/2026 at 11:50:31 PM

Well, actually I suppose the hardest part is to pronounce the other consonant hispanicized as -tl at the end (a soft lisp)

[ɬ] voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [0]

in a sufficient fluent manner (except you happen to speak e.g. Welsh, there the sound is written as ll so by happenstance the "axolotl" found in Wales can be pronounced fluently by the Welsh) otherwise you are saying it half correct which is arguably worse.

So let the nahuatl speaking people have a laugh at your expense for pronouncing it the germanic way or if you want to go unnoticed do it the evolved spanish romanic way, a good middle ground I guess.

Anyway I think it is generally a lot fun to hear words pronounced "wrong" by foreigners or having trouble hearing/pronouncing it "right" respectively heavy accents are hilarious icebreakers (:

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_and_alveolar_...

by dav_Oz

4/24/2026 at 1:23:38 AM

You're close.

The Welsh or Icelandic "ll" is not quite the same. That's a "voiceless lateral fricative", lacking the alveolar break that earned it the "t" in "tl" for the Latinized spelling. It's much closer than most languages get, but it is a different sound.

The Nahuatl consonant is a "voiceless alveolar lateral affricate". It is a single constant represented with [tɬ] or, more correctly, with a tie bar between those two glyphs: [t͡ɬ].

by da_chicken

4/24/2026 at 10:23:12 AM

I stand corrected you are right there is no isolated use of [ɬ] in nahuatl as a phoneme it is used only in the context of an affricative /t͡ɬ/ I got ahead of myself in trying to isolate the sound [ɬ] for untrained ears.

To get back to the original point though if I'm not mistaken again in standard mexican spanish /ʃ/ as a phoneme is lost entirely and only appears in the affricative /t͡ʃ/? So in all likelihood the original /ʃ/ in axolotl would be pronounced by way of habit as [t͡ʃ] (unless again you have say a argentinian dialect where e.g. "ll" (/ʝ/) in llamar is pronounced as [ʃ]) if you try to "correct" mexican spanish speakers.

by dav_Oz

4/24/2026 at 12:34:36 AM

No the "X" is pronounced "ten" like in "Mac OS X"

by taspeotis

4/24/2026 at 1:39:04 AM

Makes sense. I am running MacOS Tahoetl.

by hirvi74

4/23/2026 at 10:49:52 PM

If you want it to be pronounced "sh", just write it "sh".

by pif

4/23/2026 at 11:09:58 PM

They wanted it to be pronounced 'x', so they wrote it 'x': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuatl_orthography

by foldr

4/23/2026 at 11:17:03 PM

They can spell/pronounce things differently than we do and it's all cool either way. It's very common for animals to have different spellings, pronunciations, or even completely different names between languages. If you add time and regional axes, the same variances can be true even when keeping with the same language!

by zamadatix

4/23/2026 at 11:25:16 PM

I'm just explaining why it's written 'x' and pronounced [ʃ]. If it pleases people to knowingly mispronounce Nahuatl loan words, they can do so, but it seems rather silly given that [ʃ] is also in the phonemic inventory of English. What next? Are you going say 'fowks pass' for faux pas?

by foldr

4/23/2026 at 11:30:29 PM

Where I disagree is the premise it's supposed to be mispronunciation to say/spell a word differently than where it came from, doubly so when we change the spellings/pronunciations of our own words!

by zamadatix

4/23/2026 at 11:38:28 PM

I think the disconnect here is that I actually wasn't aware that 'axolotl' existed as an established word in English. If you're looking at it just as a Nahuatl word written using Nahuatl orthographic conventions, then it's weird for someone to suggest that it should be written with a 'sh' because that's how it's pronounced.

by foldr

4/23/2026 at 11:41:51 PM

All good, I just don't think it's so weird :).

by zamadatix

4/23/2026 at 11:45:06 PM

What I meant is that it would be weird for an English speaker to have views on how Nahuatl words should be written using Nahuatl orthography, since different languages obviously have different orthographic conventions and associate different symbols with different sounds.

by foldr

4/23/2026 at 11:47:07 PM

Oh, got ya - I thought they were talking about how English writes/pronounces its version of the word rather than how Nahuatl should do so! I agree fully in that case, it wouldn't make any sense at all for how foreign languages do something to dictate how another does - or to even expect them to be the same.

by zamadatix

4/23/2026 at 9:44:28 PM

And "valet" is supposed to rhyme with "ballot" not "ballet" but you'll still sound like an idiot if you say "take your car to the val-it"

by pants2

4/24/2026 at 12:24:37 AM

What's your reference? Cambridge: /ˈvæl.eɪ/ https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/valet

(britannica[0], merriam-webster[1])

[0]: https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/eb/audio?word=va%2Alet...

[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/valet

by gnabgib

4/24/2026 at 1:06:17 AM

Your Merriam Webster source has "val-it" as the first pronunciation (but I think in this case both are correct and valit is less common)

by pants2

4/24/2026 at 1:11:44 AM

It does.. and I've never heard anyone say it that way (and I appreciate that you chose the only dictionary that gave anything close to your argument).. but that's still nothing like "ballot".

by gnabgib

4/23/2026 at 10:30:23 PM

Drink some clarit with the valit over a good filit.

by aksss

4/24/2026 at 12:44:01 AM

Jeeves (the gentleman's personal gentleman) is a valet that would be pronounced VAL-et.

by Deebster

4/23/2026 at 9:44:44 PM

Or like Meshico

by bananzamba

4/23/2026 at 11:42:45 PM

That is how Mexico used to be pronounced in Old Spanish. Kind of like how X is sometimes pronounced "sh" in Portuguese. The name was based on an indigenous name which had the "sh" sound there.

by asveikau

4/24/2026 at 11:29:22 AM

> Kind of like how X is sometimes pronounced "sh" in Portuguese.

Including this case! México is still pronounced with the "sh" in Portuguese :)

by tiagod

4/24/2026 at 12:18:25 AM

If you're speaking Spanish yes.

by Salgat

4/23/2026 at 11:28:38 PM

Is there a word for foreign loan words that have their pronounciation changed?

I feel like axolotl fits in that category as it’s a commonly known animal in the English speaking world, that has a common pronounciation remarkedly different from the language it came from.

Loan words going from English -> Asian languages like Thai and Japanese such as “beer” becoming “beeru” fit the same vein.

by lovich

4/23/2026 at 10:59:30 PM

Given the damage to the abdomen, we might infer it was axed a little.

by contingencies

4/23/2026 at 9:03:11 PM

That’s like telling the Japanese that “cutlet” is not pronounced “katsu.” It ain’t gonna change. Or even having southerners pronounce squirrel with two sellable [autocorrect : syllables] Good luck with that!

by mc32

4/23/2026 at 10:03:12 PM

> two sellable

I'm a southerner and we generally have squirrels in plentiful quantities, so it's never occurred to me to sell them. /s

by anticorporate

4/23/2026 at 11:03:03 PM

Mepps buys the tails, they make fishing lures from them: https://www.mepps.com/squirrel-tail/

by pkaeding

4/23/2026 at 11:06:45 PM

At twelve cents for a half tail or twenty five cents for a full tail, I think I'll stick to just watching them climb trees and bury nuts. Especially since I'm expected to salt, straighten, and dry the tails first.

by anticorporate

4/23/2026 at 10:13:40 PM

[dead]

by jasonmp85

4/23/2026 at 8:37:13 PM

"Shocolate"? Who says it like that?

by fluoridation

4/23/2026 at 8:49:01 PM

People speaking languages other than English.

by patall

4/23/2026 at 9:05:53 PM

We're speaking English, so why even entertain the idea of pronouncing "axolotl" differently, in that case? The Japanese say "en", but that doesn't seem to inspire anyone else not to say "yen".

by fluoridation

4/23/2026 at 10:40:42 PM

That's because in English we get it via Spanish, which doesn't have ʃ (although interestingly, it was just in the process of losing that sound in the early 17th century). If we're going from Nahuatl direct to English, and the Nahuatl sound also exists in English, then you may as well just use the correct sound. Otherwise, what are you going to do with Xochimilco?

by foldr

4/24/2026 at 4:02:46 AM

>That's because in English we get it via Spanish

The misconception is that words enter "a language" and not individual people's minds. Most English speakers have never heard the word "axolotl" spoken in its original pronunciation, nor are they familiar with the orthography that spells a "sh" with X.

>Spanish, which doesn't have ʃ (although interestingly, it was just in the process of losing that sound in the early 17th century).

I don't know about 17th century, but some dialects of Spanish certainly do have that sound now.

>Otherwise, what are you going to do with Xochimilco?

In English, X at the start of a word is typically pronounced like a Z, as in "Xanadu", "Xanax", and "xylophone". I don't think anyone would bat an eye if you read it as "Zochimilco".

by fluoridation

4/24/2026 at 8:43:46 AM

It’s not a misconception that the English word ‘chocolate’ exists and that there’s a particular history of how that came to be the case. I think, reading the thread again, I didn’t make it clear that the sentence you quoted was talking about the history of ‘chocolate’ and not ‘axolotl’.

If pronouncing Xochimilco according to English orthographic conventions is important to you as a matter of principle, then of course you can do it. But it’s a Mexican place name that has a canonical pronunciation that is not difficult for English speakers to approximate, so I can’t really see the point.

(And yes, ʃ does exist in some modern dialects of Spanish, but those aren’t the dialects that would influence the pronunciation of Spanish to English loan words in most cases. The interesting thing is that this was much less obviously the case in the early 1600s. Apparently the exact origin of ‘chocolate’ in Spanish is a bit of a complex historical linguistic puzzle.)

by foldr

4/24/2026 at 12:48:56 PM

>If pronouncing Xochimilco according to English orthographic conventions is important to you as a matter of principle

No, not to me. I speak Spanish natively, but even I don't know how to say that. My first guess would be "Jochimilco", but I'd have to look it up (I'm not going to). I'm just saying that having Xs in weird places would not stop an English speaker from inventing a "wrong" pronunciation on the spot.

>But it’s a Mexican place name that has a canonical pronunciation that is not difficult for English speakers to approximate, so I can’t really see the point.

"Mexico" itself is also not difficult for English speakers to approximate, yet they don't. Clearly approximating the local pronunciation is not how foreign speakers decide how to pay toponyms, and that's fine. That's how languages are shaped.

My point is just that it makes no sense to get hung up on speakers not pronouncing loanwords "correctly". If we're going down this path, we should also complain that Spanish speakers write "fútbol" instead of "football", and that tea is called "tea" instead of "cha" and spelled "荼". We should demand that words be crystallized in their pronunciation and orthography when they cross language barriers.

by fluoridation

4/23/2026 at 9:00:44 PM

Not really - it is [t͡ʃ] (“ch”) not [ʃ] (“sh”).

by bromuro

4/23/2026 at 8:46:28 PM

Any self-respecting Aztecophile. They're also the cause of startup names dropping a vowl. Insufferable.

by jkestner

4/23/2026 at 11:36:46 PM

Are you sure that x is an ecks and not a chi that straightened up a bit?

The thing about script and type is they only really work by prior agreement.

There is a set of marks on the page that we all agree on "is" an axolotl. How we choose to say that out loud is up to the individual. On the other hand, if we were to converse with you directly ... vocally ... then you could tell us how you say the name and if we were convinced that you were at least Mexican, we might follow your lead.

Script, type and sounds rarely match up precisely, ever.

I live in a town called Yeovil (Somerset, UK). I have a mug with at least 65 different spellings of the name over the last ~1900 odd years. It started off as Gifle "bend in the river" in a Saxon language. We have had a "great vowel shift" in "english" and three different varieties of "english" noted since then, just in these parts, let alone elsewhere.

The place name was spelt as Evil or Euil for a while! No-one batted an eyelid because the concept of the grammar nazi was a long way in the future and spelling was pretty random in general. Ivel, Ivol, Givelle and many more have been documented.

Please record how you say the name and make it available. Fiddling with text will never cut it.

by gerdesj

4/23/2026 at 8:05:43 PM

[flagged]

by markhahn

4/23/2026 at 11:17:40 PM

These damn mexican immigrants are everywhere! Just kidding. I love you mexican folks, just couldn't miss the joke

by motbus3

4/23/2026 at 7:35:41 PM

This is so unlikely to happen. There is a good chance that they are not as rare as we currently think, at least in that particular area.

by nom

4/23/2026 at 7:38:45 PM

They are unique to like 2 lakes in Mexico. This is someone's pet that they dumped there. It would not have survived more than a week in Wales had it not been found.

by culi

4/23/2026 at 10:16:26 PM

There were more than 2 lakes but the specy is almost extinct so these areas are where you can still find some.

by prmoustache

4/23/2026 at 10:20:57 PM

Well it's native to the Xochimilco "lake system". Sometimes its hard to say what's a different lake or not but it's the same system of lakes. They also used to be in Lake Chalco which at certain times of the year could connect into the same lake as Xochimilco. Regardless, it's always been a tiny range

by culi

4/23/2026 at 10:28:22 PM

My understanding is they were in other mountainous areas as well in central Mexico but their habitat was much more reduced there so they went extinct even faster.

one example: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382147531_Chronicle...

by prmoustache

4/23/2026 at 10:47:26 PM

This paper is about the closely related Ambystoma velasci. The axolotl is Ambystoma mexicanum.

They are closely related enough that there's some evidence of hybridization but they are separate species. A. velasci is not endangered.

by culi

4/23/2026 at 10:53:18 PM

A. Velasci is definitely endangered in its natural habitats and it was also called Axolotl in nahuatl.

I don't think it is interesting to argue if there is one axolotl that is more important than the others, even if the one from Xochimilco has the particularity of staying in its larval state.

by prmoustache

4/24/2026 at 1:10:04 AM

Ambystoma velasci is actually classified as "Least Concern" by the IUCN

https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/62130287/53974804

I'm not arguing one is more important than the other but only one of them is critically endangered and only one of them is a powerful cultural indigenous symbol.

Ambystoma velasci is also an "actual" salamander. The unique thing about the axolotl is that it never goes to the stage where it leaves the water. It is the only salamander species known to do this.

by culi

4/23/2026 at 8:14:14 PM

I think it likely speaks to how much more common they are as exotic pets than they have been in the past. That she found it before it died is surprising, and the longer I think about this story the longer I wonder if they just bought it as a pet and the river discovery was a gag for online clout.

by codezero

4/23/2026 at 8:23:26 PM

One in a million chances happen nine times out of ten.

Especially with 8 billion humans wandering around.

by kreyenborgi

4/23/2026 at 10:50:09 PM

why is your reply faded

by rishikeshs

4/24/2026 at 10:07:58 AM

That means it is downvoted

by MetalSnake