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.

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).

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

>Axolotl's have become a global icon.

Sure, but odds are that if you think you've seen an axolotl in the wild, it's far more likely to be a juvenile salamander or one of the other more populous species of salamanders exhibiting neoteny.

> 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Yeah, you’d need a 1500 VA UPS to back it up, plus a decent amount of batteries (I don’t know the math on those, someone else figures that part out for me haha)

Aquarium circ pumps can probably be powered directly by 12VDC? That would make sense if it’s only $50 for battery backup.

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

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

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