Why axolotls seem to be everywhere — except in the one lake they call home

Scientist Dr. Randal Voss gets the occasional reminder that he’s working with a kind of superstar. When he does outreach events with his laboratory, he encounters people who are keen to meet his research subjects: aquatic salamanders called axolotls.

The amphibians’ fans tell Voss that they know the animals from the internet, or from caricatures or stuffed animals, exclaiming, “‘They’re so adorable, we love them,’” said Voss, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. “People are drawn to them.”

Take one look at an axolotl, and it’s easy to see why it’s so popular. With their wide eyes, upturned mouths and pastel pink coloring, axolotls look cheerful and vaguely Muppet-like.

They’ve skyrocketed in pop culture fame, in part thanks to the addition of axolotls to the video game Minecraft in 2021. These unusual salamanders are now found everywhere from Girl Scout patches to hot water bottles. But there’s more to axolotls than meets the eye: Their story is one of scientific discovery, exploitation of the natural world, and the work to rebuild humans’ connection with nature.

Axolotls are members of a class of animals called amphibians, which also includes frogs. Amphibians lay their jelly-like eggs in water, and the eggs hatch into water-dwelling larval states. (In frogs, these larvae are called tadpoles.)

Most amphibians, once they reach adulthood, are able to move to land. Since they breathe, in part, by absorbing oxygen through their moist skin, they tend to stay near water.

Axolotls, however, never complete the metamorphosis to a land-dwelling adult form and spend their whole lives in the water.

“They maintain their juvenile look throughout the course of their life,” Voss said. “They’re teenagers, at least in appearance, until they die.”