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Axolotls: The Smiling Salamander from Mexico · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: shock in Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: should know, part of the ongoing, never ending, stupendously outstanding
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: animal editions.
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: That's right. And for us Friday morning edition, which never happens,
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: we had a little family issue yesterday and you guys
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: were very sweet and kind and sure agreed to punt
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: to the recording a day, and so now we are.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: We're in our morning show routine.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: That's right. I can't even begin to do a morning
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: show host impression. I'd like to, but I can't bring myself.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: To who likes lizards?
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: That was pretty good, Chuck, Yeah.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: And that's probably a morning show person. We would probably
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: call this a lizard.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, good point, because they're not lizards. They're amphibians.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: And what we're talking about are called ACXE Lottle's. And
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: before we get into it, I think we should give
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: a hat tip to a guest researcher who helped us
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: with the very initial research on axeltos, a listener named
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Charlie's Flores, who, by the way, her grandma calls her Chuck,
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: she mentioned.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: Ah, that's very sweet. Did she send us a sweet
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: letter in a picture that she drew?
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, a picture of her Axe Lottle Boba, And she
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: told us some pretty amazing initial things about Axe Lottle's
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: and she and her mom, Gabrielle listen out in Omaha.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: So thank you very much to Charlie's for helping us
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: out with this one. I guess we should also thank
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Dave Ruths too.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, but Dave's not what like six years old?
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: How old is Chuck?
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: She's ten going into she just started the fifth grade.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: Oh well, I feel like a dummy too. And I'm
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: a dad of an eight year old, and I guess
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: too young. You never know, You never know. You just
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: can't tell at that age. You're like, are you three?
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: Are you fifteen? I can't see?
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: Uh?
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: So should we talk pronunciation real quick? Because I, because
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: of my screwy day yesterday, I meant a thousand times
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: to go look up sort of the indigenous pronunciation of
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: what we call axe Lottele, and I failed to. But
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: you were schooling me before we started recording schooling in
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: a good way.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: I got you covered. Yeah, So that very strange looking
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: word is actually taken directly from the naw What language,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: which is the language of the Aztec people, and they
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: came up with this. We'll talk. Do you want to
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: just go ahead and talk about that part now?
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Sure, okay, good. So the the word axe a lottle,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: what we call acx a lotto, is actually as showlut,
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: even though it's spelled the exact same way in the
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: knaw What language, Atl is pronounced lut and x is
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: very often pronounced show. It can also be pronounced waw.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: It's kind of all over the place. It's like a
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: utility baseball player. It can do whatever.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: Wow, look at you.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: And by the way, also the Aztecs were called the mischika,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: and that x is a she in that case. So
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: the ax a lottel or a show lut is named
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: after the Aztec god show lut xolotl.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: That's right, the god of fire and lightning.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Correct, also what else?
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Also the god of physical deformities and dogs and death.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: And I'm glad we're starting here because this sort of
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: reinforces why the ax a lottle, by the way, which
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: is a very very cute little salamander amphibian. I think
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: you did say amphibian, But if you think you haven't
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: seen one, you probably have because of blown up the
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: internet semi recently with their cute smiles. But they're very
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: important to the lore and the culture of Mexico because
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: of the Aztec origins and specifically this god show Lut, who,
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: like we said, physical deformities, fire, lightning, death, and dogs.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Right, and so according to lore, Sholt was escaping Ketsukotl,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: which is Sholt's twin god sibling, and to escape he
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: transformed into three things. May's plant, which is show lut
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: in nowa language agave which is mesh mess show Lut,
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: and then a salamander alt and he still was caught
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: and killed. But I believe by transforming into those things
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: he made them exist per chance. So the reason that
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: the Asshola is kind of like a big deal in
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: as tech culture is that they were very hyper local
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: to the as tech people. They were where the as
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: tech were, and they were a huge food source, a
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: source of medicine, and also I guarantee a source of
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: amusement and delight because I don't care what era or
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: age or epoc you're living in. Yeah, Acxi Lotte's are
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: one of the cutest animals on the planet.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: They really are. I mean, there's something about that perma
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: smile that is undeniably cute and affectionate looking. And I
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: know this is humans putting their stuff on animals, but
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: you know, the thing smiles. What else can you say?
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: You can't there's nothing I need to say. But that's
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: the thing about Acxi Lottle's Chuck is, yes, if they
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: were just that cute and it stopped there, they'd still
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: be worth talking about. But they're really really worth talking about.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: And this what Charlie's Flores was trying to explain to
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: us is that there's so many other amazing, astounding things
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: about Axel Lotteles that this is just one of the
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: most interesting animals on the planet.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: It turns out, here's your Disney movie. It's centered around
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: I'm surprised you haven't done this quite frankly, it's centered
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: around and Axel Lottle.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Of course, na Axel.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: But sure, yeah, exactly perfect, thank you, and it is,
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: but it is. And you know, Disney movies always sort
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: of and you know Pixar all that stuff, they always
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: sort of have their larger point to make about emotions
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: or this or that. Maybe this one deals with mental
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: illness and you have an axe a lottle that is
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: actually depressed but smiles all the time anyway, and his
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: little buddies have to help him out and see him
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: through this.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and like the climax of the film is where
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: he've manages to frown, right.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: Maybe, so that's pretty great, chuck. Yeah, just to put
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: a sort of cherry on top of the original cultural story.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: Though when the Spanish came around as conquerors, they were like,
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: oh man, this stuff is delicious. It was. They tried
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: to they tried to keep a lot of records at
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: least of what was going on with the Aztec and
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: like what was important to them culturally. I'm not going
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: to say like so they could respect them or anything
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: like that, but they did keep records, and they did
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: learn about the axe lottle and learn that it was
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: a source of medicine, and they called it the food
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: of the lords, and there was there were festivals. It
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: was this. I mean, I don't want to eat one
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: of these things. But they had Tamali axe lottle, Tomaly's
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: and I like it. Tomali. So That's the only time
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: I was like, hmmm, I.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Could eat one of those if you wrapped it up
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: into tamali.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I really couldn't because all I could see
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: is that smile in my brain.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: So axe Lottle's are that would be tough to do,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: especially if the head's poking out the end of the
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: tamali just looking.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Oh man, no, you can't.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: So I said. Axi Lottel's were hyper local to where
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: the Mishika, the ASTech lived, uh. And they lived in
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: uh like, basically on a lake. Like Mexico City used
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: to be an az tech capital called tenock Teetlan, and
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: tenak Teetlan was built basically on top of lake Uh.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: What is it Toshoko?
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: I think probably Teshcoco.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Toshcoco, thank you.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: So.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Lake Toushcoco is where the the ax Lotto hails from.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: And it's again it's a salamander, and there are other
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: salamanders that live in that area. But the axe Lotto
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: only lived in the Lake Toshcoco area. And and as
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: the Spanish came along and said, you can't build a
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: city on a lake, what are you crazy, We're gonna
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: go ahead and drain this lake. One of the remnants
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: of that lake was an even smaller body of water.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: And it's not only a smaller body of water, it's
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: it's even harder to pronounce than Lake Teshcoco.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: It really is.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: It's Lake Sochi Milko and friends. Look up Sochi Mealko.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: It is not, in any way, shape or form, as
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: far as an English speaker is concerned, spelled like gets pronounced. Yeah,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: it's XO c Chi m I Lco. But Lake Sochi
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Mealko is a very small body of water. It's basically
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: a small system of freshwater canals that are the remnants
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: of Lake Teshcoco. And that is where x a Lotto's live.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Now in the entire world, there's nowhere else, even in Mexico.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: There's nowhere else you will find an ax Lottel in
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: the wild except for in Lake Sochi Milko.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm actually going to Mexico City for the
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: first time in November.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: It's a very cool town.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: I can't wait. Man, And uh, I'm not going to
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: go on an ax A Lottle tour. I don't know
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: if they have those. I bet they do. They do,
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: but they're they're generally not out during the day. But
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: we'll get to all this stuff as we go, right,
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: Should we start at the beginning?
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought we had started well.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: Historically the beginning, I just mean the beginning of axe
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: lottels as a species, because they are amphibians, like you said,
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: of the order Urudella, and that is all salamanders. The
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: scientific name is Ambistoma mexicanum, which very appropriate. I even
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: know what that means. Ambostoma means blunt mouth, and when
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: you see to axi lottle, it kind of has a
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: blunt looking mouth, so it all makes sense. And in Latin,
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: amphibia for amphibia means double life, and it's called double
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: life and amphibia because, as we all know, amphibians start
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: out in water when they're hatched as little eggs, and
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: they spend some time there as young and swimming around
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: and using their gills, and then eventually they metamorphosize and
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: transform into a land creature, which means they grow legs,
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: their little tails shrink, and they learn to use their
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: lungs and those gills aren't useful anymore, and sometimes they
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: even go all right.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's a that's a typical amphibian. That's just what
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: they do. Yeah, the gills go away, they start breathing
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: with their lungs and they live on land. They go
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: from living in the water living in the land. It's
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: what makes an amphibian of an amphibian, except except with
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: axe lottels and a couple other there's a couple other
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: species of amphibians, mud puppies, I think, is one that
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: they never leave the water. They're amphibians, but they don't
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: amphibiate essentially. Yeah, and it's it's something called naotiny, which
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: is they stay forever young, just like that Rod Stewart's song. Yeah,
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: and another word for it is pedamorphic, and like Rod Stewart,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: yeah exactly. Although no, no, that's not true at all.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: But that means that they even in their adult form,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: even in like they're fully grown up, they can reproduce,
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: they're drawing social security, they still are not only look
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: like their childhood form for all intentsive purposes, their body
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: inside and out is still in the childhood form.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't drop that tail like other sallyes do.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: They keep that tails called a body fin because it
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: kind of you know, once you see it, it kind of
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: looks like it runs up their body. Yeah, they keep
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: those well, they keep those legs. Their legs wouldn't go
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: way anyway, but they have those stubby little legs. They
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: do have lungs, and they also still have those gills,
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: which we'll talk about a little more in a second,
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: but they basically breathe almost exclusively through their gills and
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: they also never use their legs to walk on dry land.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: So you know, there's a term in Mexico, Mexican walking
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: fish is what they can be called, which Day very
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: funnily points out, like they are Mexican, but they're not
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: fish and they don't walk, so it's a bit of
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: a misnomer.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just a touch. There's a theory as to why
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: this is going on, like why would this happen? This
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: doesn't really make any sense.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Like why would they have legs?
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, that's a great question. And some one of
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: the theories is that there was a point in time
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: where they did amphibiate fully and make it out of
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: the water, so they needed their legs, they needed their lungs.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: They do have little tiny lungs, but they're very undeveloped,
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: so they can't they can survive out of water for
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: a very short time with those little tiny lungs, but
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: not for very long. They're clearly not designed to stay
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: out of water. So the idea is that somewhere in
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: their evolutionary history they spent some time on land. But
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: the place where they lived, either like Tushcoco or Lake
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Sochi Milko, was so such a great environment for them,
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: so ripe, with food so abundant. No, what's the opposite
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: of abundant, Oh, scarce? So there was such scarce predators.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: It was just a perfect place to live man, a
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: golden age to be an Axi lotto, I would say.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: And so they stayed in the water, and at some
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: point in time those genes got frozen in some individual organisms,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: and those got passed along, and those gave us Axi
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: lottos and chuck also, may, I retort to myself. Sure,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: So that is one theory. My theory which I would
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: like to share is wow, Axi lottles are only about
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: ten thousand years old as a species. Okay, they basically
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: evolve from other salamanders that they live among, and they
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: haven't fully I believe, evolved into it an entirely separate species.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: They can still procreate with other salamanders, and so I
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: think what it is, it's a remnant of the salamanders
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: that they evolved from. That they haven't fully evolved out
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: of that, and that if you looked at Axi lottles,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: you know, one hundred thousand years from now, they won't
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: have any legs anymore.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: And this is, uh, does anyone is this out there
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: at all? Is this all you?
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: I'm putting it out there, baby?
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Okay? So they used to mate with their other salamander friends.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: And they still can. Like Rod Stewart, that's right, that's right,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: he's had one or two salamanders in this time.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: All right, I like it. That makes sense to me.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: In one hundred thousand years, we'll know for sure, right right. Yeah,
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: once the earth is a big flaming ball of hot gas.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it'll have come and gone by then.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: All right, So maybe we should take a break. I
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: think that's a good setup and we talk about how
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: remarkable this thing is. Just hold on to your hats, everybody,
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: because this sort of blew my mind and it will
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: blow yours as well. Right after this, soft jaws.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Want to learn about terrors or color sord Actol, how
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: to take a perfect boom?
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: All about fractalink is con that's a little hunt the
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: Lizzie Borderers A.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Word up, Jerry.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: All right, So, uh, if you haven't looked up a
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: picture of an axe lottle, by now, pull your car
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: off or take a break from jogging or cleaning your
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: house or whatever you do when you listen to us.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: Wake up. Maybe if you're sleeping, look up a picture
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: of that cute little thing. You've probably seen them on
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: TikTok or YouTube. Uh, you've probably seen a bunch of
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: very colorful axe lottles. And those are bread specifically to
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: sell as pets in those amazing colors. That is not
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: what color they are in the wild. They are dark brownish,
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: sort of greenish or really really black. And kids don't
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: want that. Kids want a hot, pink one, and so
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: humans have made that possible, right.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: They want the Barbie version of ax lottles, the Barbie edition.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: We all do we want what Barbie versions of everything,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: don't we?
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah? For sure? So there's pink and the pink can
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: it's usually pretty pale, but I would say their faces
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: can be kind of hot pink. Yeah, white ones pale
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: yellow lavender. That's my favorite model, green gray. And they
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: also have glow in the dark ones, which are a
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: little bit misname because it's not glow in the dark.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: They glow under UV lights because they have the same
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: genes that jellyfish. Some jellyfish do and they were bred
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: into them. This is not a natural thing, although apparently
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: they can spontaneously generate that gene in the wild weirdly enough.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: But the upshot of it is if you have a
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: glow in the dark axilotel and you're showing it off
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: with the black light how it glows, you actually don't
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: want to do that very much because you're blasting them
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: with UV radiation and their skin is so delicate. It's
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: actually really bad for them.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you're a teenage boy and your mom's
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: in the room, you don't want to do that anyway.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Right, What do you mean I'm not catching that one?
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: That's right. Adults will understands. Moving on, They are about
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: ten inches long, or they can grow up to ten
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: inches long. They have those big, wide mouths that look
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: sort of unusually large for their size and for their head,
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: and they do have little teeth top and bottom, teeth
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: and their stubby little legs have four web toes on
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: the front and five on the rear. And we got
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: to talk about those gills, because the first thing you
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: might notice, aside from that winning smile when you look
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: at an Axi lotto, are those amazing feathery gills sticking
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: out from the head. They don't look like fish's gills
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: that you would see, just sort of, you know, just
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: like dumb old gills on the side of a fish head,
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: just opening back and forth like an air vent. These
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: things are, as Dave says, magnificent. There's no other to
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: describe these wispy, feathery, branched feathers.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: It almost looks like little pieces of coral coming off
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: of it. There's three, three pair on each side of
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: its head. Now there's a pair on each side of
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: its head, times three, right, Yeah, Okay, Chuck, no more
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Friday morning recording sessions for me.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: Okay, that was some tough mess.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: And they look like flowy and branched and philigreed because
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: they're essentially like our lungs. Our lungs have avoli, these
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: air sacs, and if you really look at a detail
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: of our lungs, they're branched in feathery and philigreed because
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: that expands the surface area for gas exchange. Same thing
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: with the axe lottel, except those are gills to them
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: because they do the oxygen exchange of the gas exchange
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: under water. And they're on their head.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's it looks like an adornment almost, you know,
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: or a hair do.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: Like a Larry Fine hairdo from the Three Stooges.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: Right, it's cuterer than that.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: I think Larry's hair was super cute.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Okay, As I mentioned earlier, I kind of teased about
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: an Axi lottle tour in Mexico City. I'm not sure
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: how they do those, but they are generally not around
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: during the day. They're pretty sedentary and they hide in
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: the mud. Nighttime is the right time for the Axi
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: lotte They come out and eat basically anything that they
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: can eat their carnivores, anything with a beating heart, whether
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: it's a worm or a mollusk, or even a crustacean
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: or a tiny fish, an Axi lotta will chow down
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: on them. And you mentioned earlier that they can even
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: though they never go through that metamorphosis that other amphibians
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: do in order to live a life on land and
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: do things like reproduce. They can reproduce. They are sexually
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: mature at six months old, and they're just it's called
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: the peter Pan state. They're sort of stuck in this
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: eternal childhood. But those children still want to have babies
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: and do that thing, you know.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So how do they do it?
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Well, like many animals, there's a little dancing ritual. It's
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: called the mating waltz where the male and the female
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: kind of swim very tightly together. They get their cloacas
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: and rub them against each other. Things are getting a
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: little steamy down there in the lake, and then the
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: male says, here you go, here's a big cone full
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: of sperm. And the female says, well, thank you very much.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: I we'll use my cloaca to accept that be whip
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: and fertilize my eggs. And those eggs are a lot.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: They are about three hundred to one thousand fertilized eggs.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: What I wondered is how, I mean, I know, we'll
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: talk about why they're so endangered, but if they're laying
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: that many eggs, how many come to fruition? Because that's
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: a lot of eggs.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: I got you. I found on some message boards. I
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: don't even know if they call them that any longer,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: but on the internet from people who raise acxilatos that
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: they're actually they a lot of them do, like more
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: than a than half. It was a news serve. Oh wow,
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: they they I saw somebody predict about eighty percent. Well hatch,
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: which is a big deal. If you have a female
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: and a male Acxi lotel in your tank, you really
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: have to keep an eye out for eggsacs floating around
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: because those you'll have a lot of acxi lottos on
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: your hands.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they if you get one as a pet,
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: and we'll talk about care a little bit at the end,
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: but be prepared to have that thing for a while
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: because in captivity they can live up to twenty five years.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: In the wild about ten to fifteen. And if you
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: remember our we talked about the proteus alemander a long
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: time ago.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: In our biosbiology episode.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: That's right, that was a good creepy episode. Those things
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: can live to be one hundred so it's not unusual
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: for a sally to have a long life.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and like you said, in captivity up to twenty
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: five years, And I just want to make sure that
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: everybody who's buying Acxi lottos as pets these days knows that, like,
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: you're twenty five years, you're going to have graduated college
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: and had your first job and maybe even have a
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: kid while your axilout is still around. So keep that
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: in mind.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: Well, in the Disney movie, maybe that's why the excel
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: suppress that might be a little too toy story that
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: the kid sort of doesn't care anymore, but hey, you
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: never know.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we couldn't do that they flushed him down
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: the toilet because that's like finding Nemo, right, Hmmm.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: Is that how Nemo got back into the wild?
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: I feel like that happened the summer at some point.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: I could be making that up, though it.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: Isn't drifted in and out of some of those, you.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Know, it's just sooned out.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean a lot of those I really like.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: But then you know, when you have a kid, you're
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: watching so many Sometimes you're working and you know you
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: know Nemo's down there, but you don't remember how he
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: got there. You know.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: I liked finding Nemo overall, but okay, moment to moment,
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: I didn't like that movie very much.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: But the whole is greater than the sum of its tissue.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Party, yes, yeah, well put well, put all.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: Right, all right, so we haven't blown your mind yet.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: Everyone's like, all right, they don't metamor size not the
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: biggest deal in the world, guys. Here's where the mind
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: blowing stuff comes in. Overall, salamanders and newts can regrow stuff.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: They can regenerate tissue. They can regrow a tail. We
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: all know that they can regrow a limb. That's fine,
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: and they come out usually okay. But the axe a
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: lodel can well you know what I should read, actually
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: what Stephanie Roy says. This is a researcher from the
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: University of Montreal.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Can you do your Stephanie Roy impression while you read it?
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: Sure, here we go. You can cut the spinal cord,
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: she sounds a lot like me. You can cut the
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: spinal cord, crush it, remove a segment and it will regenerate.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: You can cut the limbs at any level, the wrist,
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: the elbow, the upper arm. This all sounds very sadistic,
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: by the way, and it will regenerate and it's perfect.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: There's nothing missing, there's no scarring on the skin. At
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: the side of amputation, every tissue is repla. They can
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: regenerate the same limb fifty sixty one hundred times parentheses.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Trust me, I've cut off a lot of legs of
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: exilotis in parentheses and every time perfect.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And what's crazy is like this continues throughout their life.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Like they can do this when they're very young, they
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: can do it when they're very old. Apparently. The only
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: change is that it just takes longer the older they are.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: But that that new leg, that that new tail, it's
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: as good as new every time, no matter how old
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: they are. And that's pretty mind blowing in and of itself.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: It gets even crazier than that.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: Chuck that's here.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: In addition to like extremities and limbs and tails and stuff,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: they can do the same thing with organs. Yeah, and
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: like important organs too, like the heart and the brain
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: and their spinal cord. They can regrow it good as
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: new every time.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really amazing. And if you think they should
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: study this stuff to see if humans, you know, could
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: potentially do something like this with a little help from
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: ax a lot of stuff, right, they are studying this
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: stuff because and they've already found some pretty good breakthroughs,
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: but Axi lottels are very very valuable to study. And
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: what they've learned so far as far as these limbs
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: go and other things, is you get that little limb
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: cut off or something, and the cells nearest to that
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: limb wound differentiate immediately, so that means it's sort of
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: like a stem cell. That means they can become any
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: type of cell kind of instantaneously, and they form a
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: little a little pile around these undifferentiated cells, and that's
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: called a blastema. Or then this helps you to visualize
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: it more, it's also called a regeneration bud. So it's
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: like a little plant butd or something. Basically, we scar
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: up like dummies. We form scar like cut off your
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: arm and you're going to start forming scar tissue. Axe
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: Lott's say no, no, no, we're going to grow that
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: thing back with this blastoma, and they do that. They
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: generate stem cells, bone cells, muscle nerves, whatever you need
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: to replicate perfectly whatever is now missing.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is pretty amazing considering we have pretty much
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: the same genes we've figured out the Axi Lottel So
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: they sequenced an Axi Lottal genome in twenty eighteen. I
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: believe it's the largest genome ever sequenced because amazing, the
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Axi Lottal's genome is second only to the Australian lungfish
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: in size and number of base pairs. Humans have three
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: billion base pairs. We're doing pretty good with three billion
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: base pairs is kind of to be expected. That's a lot.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Axi Lotte's have ten almost eleven times the number of
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: base pairs that humans do, thirty two billion base pairs
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: in their genome. And so after examining all this, scientists
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: said like, hey, we've got some of these genes. What's
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: different They think is that with axe lotels, those genes
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: are stuck in the on position. Either they never make
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: the hormone that would turn those genes off, or they
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: continue to produce the hormone that keeps those genes on
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: regardless the fact that those genes are turned on and
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: then makes them able to just regrow like brand new
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: every time throughout their life.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really something else. There's another cool theory about
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: why this might be true evolutionarily speaking, and there are
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: scientists that think that maybe at one point in their
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: history when they were in that lake and they were landlocked,
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: and food may have been abundant at one time, but
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: maybe at one point there were too many Acxi lottels
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: and food wasn't as abundant, and so they may have
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: turned cannibalistic and said, hey, friend, no, we've been hanging
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: out a lot lately, but your rear leg is looking
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: pretty tasty to me, and so I'm just going to
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: bite that off and eat it if you don't mind.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: And that happened so much that the axe A lottos
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: who thrived were the ones who could grow those limbs
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: back quicker and survive.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which makes sense, not bad. I don't have a
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: rival theory for that one.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: Ah.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: Shoot, I could make one up real quick. No, I can't.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: It's Friday morning. Maybe if it were a Thursday afternoon.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: But I know.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: So you might say, like, oh, that's cool. I want
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: to try this at home with my ax a lot
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: I'm going to cut off its right front leg and
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: half of its brain and see what happens. Please don't
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: don't because they do have pain receptors, so they can't
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: feel pain. Apparently they have a high threshold pain, but
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: they will still feel pain if you essentially torture them
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: for your own amusement. So don't do that to your
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: axe a lottle at home. And by the way, is
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: these aren't messages to Charlie's flooras because based on her
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: her preliminary research, she knows what she's doing. She's taking
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: good care of Boba totally.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: Another amazing superpower that these little guys have is the
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: you know, not only can they grow back things and
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: grow back organs, but they can transplant organs perfectly, just
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: like they can grow things back. They don't have a
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: learned immune system like we do when you get and
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: we did an episode on organ transplant many years ago,
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: and as we all know, a lot of times, in fact,
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: about a third of the time, the human body will
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: reject the organ because we have a learned immune system
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: and we'll just say, no, this isn't, this isn't shouldn't
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: be on my body. Yeah, get this thing out of here.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: But axe lottos don't have that, so you can transplant.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: It's like one hundred percent non rejection rate for organ transplants.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean that's for axe lottel. Right, You
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: couldn't put like a pig heart in it or anything.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: I don't think they've tried, but probably you're right, I
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: would say.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: I don't know if we said it or not. But
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: the different kinds of like lab grown types and varieties
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: of ax lottols are called morphs. Did you say that.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: So there's a type of morph called the firefly morph.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: And when it's in the embryonic stage, they'll take if
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: it's a like a black or dark modeled Axi lottle,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: they'll take a tail from a white axe lotto or
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: pink one, and vice versa, and they will transplant the
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: tail in the embryonic stage and the thing grows up
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: and it's like black with a white tail or white
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: with a black tail. I don't think it's very cool looking,
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: but I think some people do.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Another superpower is that they are one thousand more
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: times resistant to cancer than other mammals. It's pretty amazing.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: And again researchers are studying this because like, could the
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: cure for cancer potentially be in these cute little sallies
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: And you know, you never know. They have treated breast
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: cancer patients with Axi loottle egg serum and it halted
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: the growth of cancerous tumors. So you know, know.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they looked into it and they think what happened
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: was that the axe Lottle juice reprogrammed the tumor suppressing
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: genes that had been turned off epigenetically went in and
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: turned it back on, and so the tumor fighting proteins
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: and hormones were able to fight that tumor and stop
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: it from growing. Wow. Yeah, Wow is right, And I
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: say that big wow calls for a message break. What
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: do you think? I agree, Stoff we Josh Soft.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: I want to learn about a terroristort in college Taradactyl,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: how to take the berg bo all about rectalink is gone.
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: That's a little hunt the Lizzie Borderers on the plane.
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: Everything should know.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Word up, Jerry, so Chuck. There's a big irony with ax.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Aside from the irony that they can reproduce even though
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: they're young and YadA YadA, they are critically endangered in
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: the wild because again there's one small, tiny body of
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: water in outside of Mexico City where they live, and
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: they live nowhere else in the wild, But there's countless
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: accil Lottels thriving and living in captivity. Because it was
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: very clear early on in the mid nineteenth century to
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: at least some French physicians that they would make great
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: lab animals to experiment and test on. And so they
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: took some sample Acxi lottels to France and from that
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: point on they just kept breeding them and breeding them
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: and breeding them. Another world has tons of Acxi lottels,
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: they're just not around in the wild much.
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, big time. You know, we talked about the habitat loss.
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: There's also a pollution problem. Also, the government introduce carp
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: i believe in Tilapia into where the axilottos were into
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: that lake and you know it for a food source
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: basically for fishermen, but they eat the plants where the
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: axil lottles like eggs. So that was a problem. And
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: here's some numbers for you. In nineteen ninety eight there
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: were about six thousand Axi lottles per square kilometer and
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: that is down to thirty five three five per square
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: kilometer today, which is very dead.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and again critically endangered. And one of the reasons
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: why there's so many in captivity. I was saying is
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: that they do make a great lab animal. Apparently they're
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: experimented on second or third only to rats and mice. Wow, yeah,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: that's surprising. That must be as far as vertebrates go.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: But they that's where the pink Axi lottels come from
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: and all the other specimens. Apparently there were there was
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: what are called lucistic axi lottels. They're almost oh buy
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: I no, not quite, but they were in that group
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: of thirty four X lottels that were first taken into Paris.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: And so every pink axe lotte is descended from those.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: I think there are like six original ones. But the
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: reason that they work so well in labs is that
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: they have some really interesting traits.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they are very easy to breed in captivity. They
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: are easy to keep alive.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: If you know what you're doing.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: Check sure, because we said, you know, they live a
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: long time. Apparently they have very big cells and they're
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: easy to look at and easy to examine. And I
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: think the eggs are thirty times larger than a.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Human, roughly the size of a beach ball.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: They're embryonic neurons are six hundred times larger.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: What's that it's the size of the Grand Canyon.
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: Okay in big max. Sorry, right, And you know they're
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: they're just ideal model organisms for the lab, and so
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: that's why, and you know, because of their superpower, that's
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: why they are studied a lot.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we found a few things from them already.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: We've figured out how organs develop invertebrates, including us, because,
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: like I said, we realized when we scan their genome
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: that we have a lot of the same genes. We
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: use those genes to grow limbs ourselves and lose our
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: tails ourselves while we're in utero, but after we're born,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: probably right before we're born, those genes get turned off.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: So we've figured out, thanks to the Axil Lottel how
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: those genes work and which ones are important. We figured
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: out how spina bifido works and where it comes from.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: And thyroid hormones you wanted those isolated Axi Lotte's got
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: you covered.
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. If you're in did you already
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: say that the fact that they're growing like tons and
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: tons of these in a lab doesn't mean you can
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: just throw them back in a lake because they have
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: a shortage.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: There, right, I did not say that.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Well, I just said it because that's what I was
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: thinking this whole time. I was researching. It was well,
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: why then, since they are critically endangered, can't you just
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: release you know, tens of thousands of these But it
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: just doesn't work that way. These morphs are bred for
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: the lab, they're not bread for that lake, and it
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: apparently just doesn't work.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: It'd be like moving your city cousin in with your
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: country cousin. Like you might have a decent sitcom on
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: your hands, but it's only going to last a season
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: or two, that's right.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: It all falls apart on Super Tuesdays exactly.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: So yeah, they can't do that. That's not to say
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: that they won't find a place where they could introduce
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: them to the wild. It's just apparently taking them back
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: to where they're from or where they originated is not
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: on the table.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And if you're wondering, well, what are they doing,
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: they are trying because the axe lotel is such a
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: culturally important thing, scientifically important animal. It is a flagship
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: species that they designated i think semi recently, which which
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: helps obviously protect it. They are now building sheltered areas
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: that don't have those grass eating tilapia. They're blocking them
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: out so they can lay those eggs safely. Where they
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: had for you know, eons. Actually, how long is an eon?
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: I probably misuse that. I don't know.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Let's say, I'm sure I'll get any pretty long time, Okay,
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: pretty long time.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: The tour guides and the locals have all been you know,
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: educated and trained on best practices for like fishing and
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: doing those tours, and you know, hopefully all that stuff
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: makes a difference and really sinks in because it is
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: a beloved cultural creature.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: So beloved in fact, chuck that. In twenty twenty, Mexico said, hey, everybody,
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: check out our new fifty payso bill. And everybody's like, oh,
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: it's pretty cool, all right, And then they said no, no,
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: turn it over, right, and everybody turned it over. They're like,
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: there's an axe lottle on the back of the fifty
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: payso bill. Now Mexico's government said, yep, cool.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, every time they do that trick, they put it
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: on the wrong side and just say, watching this, yeah exactly,
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: I tell them to turn it over. It kills.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: What's funny is the axe lottel appears to be floating
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: above the water weirdly. Yeah, it's a strange jam, but
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: it's cute as a button. On the back of the
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: fifty payso.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: Bill, Yeah, I agree, and also shout out to Minecraft. Uh,
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: that's a game that my daughter's obsessed with now, as
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: many young EN's are. And there is an axe Lottel
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: in Minecraft.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, I couldn't figure this out. What's a mob in Minecraft?
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: It seems to be referred to like an individual thing.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: I don't know, okay, apparently no, I don't play, so
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: I don't know. Okay, fair enough, you like, but do
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: you talk to your daughter?
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: And I'm curious though, ask her and let me know,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: will you? Yeah?
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll just she can text you now.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, tell her to text me what a mob is?
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: All right? She does have a phone, but she does
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: have a little email address, so it's cute text her
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: friends occasionally. She does have thumb and she does have
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: thumbs and they work pretty well. Get ready for lots
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: of memes.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: By the way, what do you mean, Oh, she's gonna
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: send me if your okay? Does she have the good ones?
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: I don't even know how to get a meme in
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: a text. I have no idea. And the first thing
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: she did was send me like sixty in a row.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: It's copy and paste buddy.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: I know, but I don't even know where to find them.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Oh that's a big first step.
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not going to give you your phone number.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: You'll your life will change, and not in a great way.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, then send me screenshots of her texts to you.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: Then all right, leave me out of it.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: So Mexico City in twenty seventeen said, hey, let's have
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: an emoji contest because, as as is the case with
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: cities these days, every city has to have its own
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: official emoji. And guess what the emojis are based on
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: in Mexico City to Molly's with the ax Lottle head
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: sticking out of the Oh no, no, just ax Lottle
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: doing stuff.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: That's great. Love it. So before we finish up, you
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: found some good stuff about ax A Lottle care. We
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: are not experts, but you did find some stuff. Where
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: did you find this?
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: I'll have to tell you in a moment.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: But go ahead, okay, And again you should you know,
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: if you're getting into the ax A Lottle game, as
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: pat wise, do all your own research. Don't just listen
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: to the next you know, five minutes and think I
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: got it covered. This is just sort of a broad overview, right, right.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's a few things that you need to
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: remember with ax a lottles. There very sensitive to water
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: temperature and water quality. Obviously you want to start with
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: fresh water, but you want to start with filtered freshwater
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: to begin with. But you can't just put fresh water
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: in there and say hey, it's all good, get in there,
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: ax a lottle. You want to tweak it enough so
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: that the ax a lottle can be happy and thrive
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: in there.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah. You also want to get a fish net. You
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: don't want to handle as much as you might want
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: to pet this thing. They have very sensitive skin. It's
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: very easily damaged, and so you don't want to pick
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: the thing up or pettit or anything like that. So
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: get out your little fish net when you're changing water
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: and stuff like that, and feed them a lot. Right.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, you want to feed them live stuff if possible,
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: especially when they're young, because they actually have a prey
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: a predator response, so it's got to be moving for
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: them to be like, oh that's food. They can eat
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: dead stuff later on as they get older, but you
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: want to also be very selective. Don't go out and
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: like save some money and harvest your own bloodworms. If
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: you even know how to do that. You want to
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: buy them from a reputable bloodworm dealer, which you can
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: find basically on any corner in any talent in America. Sure,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: But the reason why is because those things are typically
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: like disease free parasite free, and if they aren't, those
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: can basically make your axe a little sick.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: That's right. You don't want to do that. When tank
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: shopping too, you also want to and this is true
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: with any fish, and I think a common mistake is
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: that you don't get the right size tank and habitat.
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: For whatever it is, they need a little bit of room.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: So a twenty gallon aquarium is what they recommend for
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: like just one single Axi Lottel. If you want more
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: than one, they say you really shouldn't do that. You
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: should just have one. You don't get five or six
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: because you think it's five or six times as cute.
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: But if you are some sort of professional aquarium type
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: and you do want to house more than one, then
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: that tank has to grow, you know, proportionally.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The other thing I was saying about the water,
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: you need to tweak it. You want to keep your
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: water temperature between sixty and sixty four degrees farent height.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: Go figure it out yourself. For Celsius and the pH
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: you want somewhere between six point five and eight, but
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: ideally about seven point four to seven point six, which
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: is basically right in there at neutral. They like neutral
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: fresh water at sixty to sixty four degrees farent height.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: That's right. And they aren't like fish. You can't just
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: throw like fish gravel in there. And oh that's a
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: big way. They need their own really specific habitat the substrate.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: And you know, little shards of gravel can really really
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: harm an axi lottle it can. They tend to just
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: sort of gulp down water and in that water could
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: be little tiny shards of gravel. So maybe loose sand
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: could be a foundation. Definitely, don't just think. Get a
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: fish tank and fish tank stuff and it'll work for
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: your axe a lot.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And some people say, well, I'm just not going
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: to put anything down. They can just leave the bottom
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: of the tank bear, which your ax a lotta won't
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: cut their skin on anything. But they'll also be freaked
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: out because everything's so slippery. So sand is a good thing.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: And they also can burrow into sand if they're nervous
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: or scared or want to sleep too. That's right, there's
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: a lot more out there. By the way, that was
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: from the Atlantic City Aquarium. They know what they're talking
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: talking about, and you should probably do a lot more
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: research before you actually get your ax A Lottle and
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: set its tank up.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's right. And also now since we are wrapping
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: this up, this means that we can go listen to
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: the ninety nine percent Invisible Episode Model Organism, which also
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: covers the ax A Lottle. But Dave, who helped us
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: with this, was like, don't listen to that first, because
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: you're just gonna want to steal it all because Roman
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: and the gang there does they do such a great
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: job and they have forever and Roman as a friend
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: of the show, and I can't wait to go listen
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: to it. I'm sure it's amazing here.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks to Roman for making that amazing episode, Thanks
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: to Charlie's Flores and her mom Gabrielle for sending in
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: that preliminary research. Thanks to Dave for helping us out,
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: and thanks to you for listening. Since I thank you
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: guys for listening and Chuck just said okay, tacitly by
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: his silence, that means it's time for listener mail.
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: That's right. And also thanks to Charlie's their own sure
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: and Rod Stewart, we got shout out. I mean we
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: have been picking on him. I was just watching the
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: videos of old Sir Rod. Is he a sir?
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: I believe?
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: So?
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sir, thanks for being such a great sport rotten.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: Uh all right, I'm gonna call this one. Which one
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: should I do? I'll do this one. I'll call this
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: bede bed.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: Oh man, what's wrong? I wanted to go the rest
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: of my life without correcting that.
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: Well. Sorry, Uh hey guys, longtime listener of stuff you
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: should know from uh Wollongong, Australia.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, Wallongong, I guarantee that's not how it's pronounced.
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: Wal I gong all you have to do to be
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: Australian to sound surprise at everything while I go.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: I think that was a New Zealand accent too.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: By the way, probably hey guys, heard your podcast and
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: how the English language developed and have to correct your
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: pronunciation of b E. Saint b d E is a
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: famous Catholic saint who was a learned scholar from the
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: Jarro area of northern England. He's famous for writing a
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: history of the English speaking people in English as opposed
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: to Latin. I think he also had something to do
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: with the change to the calendar and using BC and
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: AD and prefixes for dates before and after the birth
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: of Jesus. Now this is something deserving of a separate
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: so if you should know topic one day. Anyway, as
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: I am named after him, I can assure you that
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: the pronunciation of his name is the same as Bead.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: Is that a disappointment, Yes, that's a disappointment, but I'm
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: not even convinced. I mean, that's what Bed says.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: Well, Beide says, I've long had to put up with
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: people mispronouncing my name Bead Bead I and could you die. Well,
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: that's what he says, and could not help but correct
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: your attempts to get his name right. Keep up the
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: great work. Cheers that is from Bade Richie.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Beatty or Bead. I will call you
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: Bead because you said that's how your name is pronounced.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: But this doesn't necessarily mean by extension unless you have
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: a time machine handy that I don't know about that
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: Beatie's name wasn't pronounced.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: Beatie auh greedy.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: Uh. Well, if you want to get in touch with
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: this like bad did, thanks a lot. By the way, Bead,
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: you can send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.