Axolotls are the new llamas. Which were, of course, the new unicorns. Which triggered a moment for narwhals. If you are an unusual-looking animal, this is your time. Even humans who have never seen an axolotl \u2013 a type of salamander \u2013 in the smooth and slimy flesh will have met a cartoon or cuddly one. Mexican axolotls have the kind of look that is made for commercial reproduction. The most popular domestic species is pink. Some glow in the dark \u2013 and their smile is bigger than Walter\u2019s in the Muppets.<\/p>\n
At Argos or Kmart, you can buy axolotls as cuddly toys, featured on socks, hoodies and bedding, or moulded into nightlights. You can crochet an axolotl, stick a rubber one on the end of your pencil or wear them on your underpants. The Economist says they\u2019re a \u201cglobal megastar\u201d<\/a>. More than 1,000 axolotl-themed products are listed on Walmart\u2019s website. They grace US Girl Scouts patches<\/a>, McDonald\u2019s Happy Meals, and the 50-peso bill, a design so popular that, last year, the Bank of Mexico reported that 12.9 million people were hoarding the notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n The animal\u2019s name \u2013 which comes from the Aztec god Xolotl \u2013 provides greetings card designers with infinite puns. Love you alotl! Thanks alotl! You can ask axolotl questions about how our infatuation came about, but you can\u2019t deny that this beguiling salamander has captured human hearts.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time I look at one, I can\u2019t help but smile back,\u201d says Nicole Rowe, who runs an axolotl rehoming centre<\/a> from her house in the West Midlands, England, between shifts at a craft store. \u201cYou know that saying: \u2018If you smile for long enough, eventually you will start to feel happier\u2019? That\u2019s the effect they have on me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018I love their little hands and feet\u2019 \u2026 Nicole Rowe in her Lotl Room. Photograph: Fabio De Paola\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Rowe is also an artist who used to design tattoos and now makes axolotl models for her Etsy shop<\/a>. She has a mug decorated with a pole-dancing axolotl and the words \u201cOnly Fins\u201d. On our video call, she\u2019s wearing an axolotl sweatshirt. Behind her, the wall of her spare room, which she calls the Lotl Room, is lined with tanks housing 30 adult axolotls, most of which she has rescued from people who can no longer care for them. There is a whole shelf of cuddly axolotl toys.<\/p>\n Rowe acquired her first living axolotl \u2013 a \u201cdirty leucistic morph\u201d (pale with dark spots) called Ghost \u2013 eight years ago, when she was in her mid-20s. She discovered them via Pok\u00e9mon (though in Japan they were old news, having broken out in cartoon form in a 1985 advert for UFO instant noodles<\/a>). In the early 2000s, when Rowe was 11, her favourite Pok\u00e9mon was Mudkip, and when she delved deeper, Google told her that Mudkip was a cross between a mudskipper fish and an axolotl.<\/p>\n A child\u2019s hoodie by clothing brand Rapanui, with a picture of the ubiquitous axolotl. Photograph: Rapanui<\/p>\n When Rowe acquired Ghost, axolotls were so rare that her pet shop had to order one especially for her. In the years since, they have proliferated in popular culture. In 2010, they were one of the inspirations for Toothless the dragon<\/a> in the film How to Train Your Dragon. In 2020, Fortnite released Axo, an axolotl skin. And the following year, Minecraft introduced axolotls \u2013 and a bucket to carry them in \u2013 to its 140 million monthly active players. The number of people acquiring pet axolotls surged. The American public radio network NPR ran warning stories of people accidentally breeding<\/a> them. (It is illegal to own axolotls in some US states and Canadian provinces.)<\/p>\n In the wilds of social media, the axolotl\u2019s viral forebears have often paired unusual facial features with a winning smile. A species name that contains challenging letter combinations definitely helps the social media profile. Take llamas, for instance. But also capybaras, which had a moment in the early 2020s<\/a>, and quokkas, who are known for their smiley facial expressions and as a result are practically fighting off selfie-hunters in south-western Australia<\/a>. Any k\u0101k\u0101p\u014ds<\/a> or okapis reading this may wish to lie low.<\/p>\n So what is it about axolotls that humans find so compulsively relatable?<\/p>\n From a commercial point of view, says Joe Evans, a buyer at Selfridges department store in the UK, who first encountered them in toy form, \u201cthey have exploded as a must-have character for gen Alpha, with brands such as Squishmallows, Lego and Posture Pals adding them to their ranges. With their soft, squishy shapes and expressive faces, axolotls tap into feelgood comfort. For some, there\u2019s a fascination that these almost mythical-looking creatures are real animals.\u201d<\/p>\n Nicole Rowe with just a few of her cuddly axolotls. Photograph: Fabio De Paola\/The Guardian<\/p>\n On the one hand, the axolotl is an anthropomorphist\u2019s dream. There is that smile, of course: at times, a childlike line-drawing of happiness, at others, a full, pink, apparently toothless grin. \u201cThey\u2019ve also got baby-like features, wide-set eyes,\u201d points out Prof Luis Zambrano, an ecologist conducting a census of the wild axolotl population in the floating gardens of Lake Xochimilco, southern Mexico<\/a> City, one of its last remaining habitats.<\/p>\n There are also those very human-looking hands. \u201cI love their fingers,\u201d Rowe says. \u201cI love their little hands and feet. Sometimes you see one hand holding on to a plant and the rest of their body floating, and they look like a little flag in the water. It\u2019s so cute.\u201d<\/p>\n On social media, an axolotl only has to do something vaguely human \u2013 such as yawn<\/a>, or \u201cdance\u201d \u2013 and it instantly generates content. They\u2019re a gift to doodlers<\/a>, often so still in their tank that owners have plenty of time to draw sunglasses and hats on to the glass and upload the videos to TikTok. Their head shape resembles that of a Funko Pop!, while their \u201cfloofs\u201d, or external gills, are a visual trademark as unique and instantly identifiable as a unicorn\u2019s horn.<\/p>\n Gen Alpha\u2019s must-have character \u2026 an axolotl keyring from New Look. Photograph: New Look<\/p>\n Fittingly, there is a sense of magic about axolotls. \u201cTheir looks might be the first thing that attracts you, but when you start digging into how these animals function, and the things they can do, it\u2019s amazing,\u201d says Aida Rodrigo Albors, who leads a research group<\/a> at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. \u201cThey\u2019re simple creatures, but they have amazing powers. If they lose their tail, they can regrow a whole new spinal cord within a new tail. Any tissue that you name, they can regenerate it. Even if they lose a big part of their brain, it grows back.\u201d Rodrigo Albors\u2019 ambition is \u201cto learn how regeneration works, and then try to implement that in animals that can\u2019t regenerate\u201d.<\/p>\n The power to regenerate isn\u2019t quite an instant health potion \u2013 it takes a few weeks to a few months to regrow a limb \u2013 but the implications for human healing are tantalising. When Rodrigo Albors was a PhD student in Dresden, Germany, in the early 2010s, people had no idea what she was talking about when she said she was researching axolotl regeneration. Now, of course, \u201cthat\u2019s completely flipped\u201d.<\/p>\n Unlike most salamanders, axolotls reach adulthood without ever metamorphosing. \u201cThey grow and grow, and live for over 20 years \u2013 but remain as tadpoles all their life,\u201d Rodrigo Albors explains.<\/p>\n At a time when longevity has gone from a fringe and sometimes wacky research interest to a multibillion-dollar industry<\/a>, the appeal is obvious. In this regard, axolotls represent a sort of fount of ancient knowledge. It is not quite eternal youth, or the philosopher\u2019s stone, but axolotls may be as close as we get on Earth. Perhaps that\u2019s why the knock-on effect for humans is to celebrate them in pretty infantile ways, such as singing along to Ask an Axolotl<\/a>, the 2025 YouTube song which had 16m views within a few days of its posting, and will make you pine for the sophistication and wit of The Duck Song<\/a>.<\/p>\n Axolotls\u2019 qualities clearly appeal to the human love of fantasy. Those feathery gills give them a mythical or alien look. (Rowe has named hers Ghost, Wraith, Banshee and Apsu, the last after the Babylonian sea god.) In Julio Cort\u00e1zar\u2019s 1956 short story Axolotl<\/a>, the narrator stares so hard at the salamanders in the zoo that he becomes one. The fact that axolotls are \u201cso different-looking\u201d is part of their appeal. \u201cThey look like they\u2019re not from this world,\u201d Rowe says softly.<\/p>\n Endangered \u2026 an axolotl tank at AquaRio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photograph: Pablo Porci\u00fancula\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n In the wild, axolotls sadly may not be long for this world. Zambrano says he will be lucky to see a single axolotl in the canals of Lake Xochimilco in the final phase of his census. His own passion for axolotls began with an offer of funding, but it was \u201clove at second sight\u201d, he says, when he encountered them in the work of some of his favourite biologists in history, such as Alexander von Humboldt, Georges Cuvier and Stephen Jay Gould. He has been studying axolotls for 25 years.<\/p>\n Drainage, the encroaching development of surrounding areas and the introduction of predatory fish such as carp and tilapia have all contributed to axolotls\u2019 critically endangered classification<\/a>. In 1998, Lake Xochimilco had 6,000 axolotls per square kilometre. By 2008, there were only 100, and in 2014 just 36.<\/p>\n Three years ago, Zambrano helped to launch a fundraising campaign called Adoptaxolotl<\/a> to fund the census and \u201craise concern about the situation of the axolotl in the wild\u201d. In his office, he has his fair share of toy axolotls \u2013 people keep giving them to him \u2013 but the wild axolotl is \u201ccompletely different to the pet one\u201d. It\u2019s brown or grey, and it rarely smiles. \u201cOf course not,\u201d he says. \u201cThey don\u2019t like you. Because they are wild \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Unsmiling \u2026 wild axolotl are brown or grey, \u2018completely different to the pet one\u2019. Photograph: izanbar\/Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n Axolotls abound in Mexico City\u2019s iconography. When the city co-hosts the World Cup this summer, its official mascot will be a bipedal axolotl<\/a>. \u201cI am a little bit afraid,\u201d Zambrano says, \u201cof what is going to happen in the World Cup \u2026 Everyone will think this is a very nice party, but the cost, particularly here, will be Xochimilco being seen as a tourist attraction instead of the home of the axolotl. People will arrive with garbage and noise, and everybody will want a mariachi in the boat.\u201d<\/p>\n