5 things to know about axolotls, the amphibious pet popping up in video games like Minecraft – LNP | LancasterOnline

“They’re here.” Those words were all That Fish Place/That Pet Place needed to post to set social media ablaze over the store’s first shipment of a trendy amphibian. “It’s been really cool to see everyone flocking to these axolotls,” says Tanner Bauman, fish room manager at the store on Centerville Road. Priced at $69.99 for the jumbo size, axolotls have sold well since showing up there in late July, Bauman says.

Axolotls – famous for their fancy gills, their plight to survive in the Mexican wild, faces that look like they’re smiling and an ability to regenerate body parts — are named for the Aztec god of fire. Fitting, as axolotls are hot right now. Here are five things to know about them.

They’re disappearing from nature

“Once widespread throughout the high-altitude lakes surrounding Mexico City, these footlong amphibians are now limited to only a few inland canals near Lake Xochimilco, where only between 50 and a thousand survive,” National Geographic reported in January. “This precariously small population faces a barrage of threats: water pollution; predation by invasive carp and tilapia; and most significantly, habitat loss.”

Mexico put an axolotl on its 50 peso note last year. Mexican scientists are breeding axolotls in labs and keeping them in university ponds but don’t plan to release them into Xochimilco unless the native population disappears, reports National Geographic.

Normally brown or grey in the wild, the magazine says axolotls that are white with pink highlights come from genetic mutation caused by captive breeding. That Fish Place/That Pet Place carries both color schemes, as do a handful of breeders in Pennsylvania.

They’ve got game

Wondering why your kids already know all this? You can likely thank games. When axolotls were added to Minecraft in the summer of 2021, Minecraft-adjacent YouTubers with millions of subscribers went all in on axolotl talk. Axolotls made it into a LEGO Minecraft set released this year.

“Minecraft was actually late to axolotls,” says James Farbo, owner of Farbo Co. in downtown Lancaster. Farbo first read up on the amphibians after an axolotl-inspired Pokemon character named Wooper arrived on the scene years ago. He says they were already a thing when he first opened his “general nerdery” gaming store in 2018. Farbo says while the popularity of creatures that appeal to his clientele often rises and falls quickly, axolotl-themed items still fly off the shelves. “Somehow axolotls have staying power,” he says.

They take TLC

“(T)heir care is extremely demanding and specific and any potential owners must be ready to meet their needs,” say the That Fish Place/That Pet Place axolotl care guides, which are having to be constantly replenished. Bauman says the store first carried axolotls a few years ago but had stopped because it was hard to keep chillers in stock, and chilling fans weren’t yet commonplace. It’s no longer a problem keeping in the things that keep axolotls comfy, he says. “They come from these pretty dark caves … pretty cold,” he says. “So the (recommended) temperatures to keep them at are usually like 60 to 68. Our tank we keep at 67.”

Axolotls should eat things like earthworms, blackworms, frozen or freeze-dried clams, mussels or shrimp, per the care guide. Some online discussions say it’s OK to keep fish with axolotls.

“We don’t recommend it. It’s usually very risky,” Bauman says. “They’re very delicate animals. They can get damaged very easily. Most fish tend to be nippy toward each other, and they usually see their gills as food and they’ll try to nip at that.”

Bauman says keeping axolotls of different sizes in the same tank doesn’t typically end well, either. The store keeps smooth items like driftwood, pieces of PVC pipe and random reptile hideaways with its axolotls. “They don’t like a lot of light,” he says. “So they’ll usually chill under there a lot of the time.”

They’re illegal in some states

When the Lancaster store announced on Facebook that axolotls were inbound, commenters chimed in from all over the country, including some who bemoaned their state laws making axolotl ownership illegal. They’re legal in most states, including Pennsylvania. Virginia just changed its law last year to allow them.

They’re merchandisable

More interested in inanimate axolotls? YouTube is loaded with tutorials on how to crochet them. Alison Liebgott, owner at Switchboard Studios & Gallery in Columbia, hosted an axolotl-themed kids event this year and says painting an axolotl isn’t hard. “Just … break it down into simple shapes and do it,” she says.

Amazon offers pages of axolotl backpacks, blankets, water bottles, etc. And Axolotl plushies have front-and-center display at Park City Center’s Go Calendars and Games – one of the roughly 1,200 stores and kiosks across the globe that report to Austin-based Go Retail Group. Those plushies are easier to hug than live amphibians in tanks.

“It was funny,” says Jennifer Schubert, Go Retail’s executive vice president of merchandising. “One of my staffers went to an aquarium in Houston … and she sent me pictures of the axolotls — the real ones — and she was like … ‘These are not cute.’ ”

Cute and cuddly was Schubert’s aim when she spearheaded the launch of an axolotl Snoozimal about three years ago.

“If you monitored Google Trends, and all that, you could see (the axolotl) was starting to pique people’s interest,” Schubert says. The axolotl Snoozimal is now outselling the company’s next best one — the turtle — four to one, she says, adding axolotls are the company’s No. 1 revenue producer.

“The exponential growth was really once the characters hit Minecraft,” she says. “It became this phenomenon.”

That’s why axolotls have such prominent display at places like Park City. Other trend-driven animals are up front, too.

“Sloths are still good,” Schubert says. “But they are behind the axolotls by a lot.”