March 10, 2005

The Amazing Axlotl: The salamander that refuses to grow up. Thanks to this perpetual pre-adolescent, humans may someday regenerate their amputated limbs. But while we're waiting, they also make a lovely snack when you're in a fix.
posted by maryh 19 years ago
  • axlotl, atlatl. in teaching monkeys 'A'-words i'll join maryh's battle.
  • If you had a whole colony of axolotls, could you farm them for their limbs?
  • I'm striving for the Least Pronounceable FFP award, in quantity if not quality.
  • (Thanks for the Favorite Word link, coppermac. Great site! Went straight to my bookmarks.)
  • Wow. That link on limb regeneration is a wicked cool read, maryh. And that's back from 1997... wonder if transgenic salamanders are any more of a possibility today? Link at the bottom of that page takes one to a time lapse animation (GIF, ~2.8 MB) of a regenerating salamander limb. Science aside, that's pretty cool to watch.
  • You mean that, my leg that was cut off so I could be a master begger, will one day grow back? Woohoo Someone call Jon Wayne Bobbit two, he's been waiting years for that.
  • You're welcome, maryh. Thanks for the two interesting links you've supplied in the past couple of days. Bobbit was un-Bobbited shortly after his incident, crackpot. I recall he even made a couple of porn films to display the function of his newly reattached dick.
  • axlotl,axlotl,axlotl,axlotl,axlotl,axlotl,axlotl,axlotl Man, I love that word, too. Where's Bees to compose us a poem about the axlotl? You can ax a lotl questions Of the four limbed axlotl, Such as: if he's on the botl, And if he likes to potl In the garden in the evening. You can ax him exactly whotl He's do with a atlatl, And he's liabl to tip his hatl But it's doubtful he will tattl Indeed, an axlotl is not fond of prattl.
  • An axolotl, not as autological as atlatl My haiku lies, but it's fun to say
  • This is why I would like to learn ancient Aztec, or whatever the language is called. All those awesome atls and otls.
  • to you BlueHorse- Wonderful! Whoa, pianistic, how the hell did I miss that gif?! Many thanks for the link.
  • My local museum used to have a pair of these fuckers. They were beautiful. And just saying axlotl cheers me up.
  • My favourite words while in Mexico were; Tlaquepaque (a place), Xoloitzquintle (a dog), and Popocatepetl (a volcano). Nahuatl is the language these words come from; Also known as Mexican language, it was the language spoken by the people now known as Aztecs and their predecessors (the Colhua, Tecpanec, Acolhua, and the famous Toltecs in one interpretation of the term). Recently, there have begun to appear more and more suggestions, from several diverse fields of Mesoamerican research, that Nahuatl might have been one of the languages spoken at the legendary Teotihuacan. The 'tl' sound is heard in native languages in coastal B.C., like the Tlingit (square 3-D), and is much of the basis for the native "accent" in English - that and a "schhh" kind of sound. Tlingit is related to Dene; I was told the Dene word for chicken was something I'll try and spell like it sounds; tchlee-ko.
  • I had an axolotl once. We called him "The Ancestor" because he looked like the first thing to crawl out of the primordial soup. He had beady eyes with a thousand yard stare, and people would get all creeped out looking at him there in the tank, and to put on a show, you could feed him live earthworms. He used to snap them up real violently while they writhed around, causing shudders among the uninitiated. Yeah, he was wicked cool. Sadly he died one night when he escaped from the tank... At least we thought so, we never found the body...
  • Axolotl poems by bees and others here
  • )))) for BlueHorse!!! Please, folk, don't sit or careless step upon our missing axolotl! He left his tank, we've searched and called in voices loud if somewhat glotl: Come back, dear axolotl, here! We'll feed you fatted worms and read to ye from Aristotl! He was not moved, he never came, he'd caught onto our litl game which is to rob a locl bank then start the car, step on the throtl and leave on the scene that empty tank which held a too-wise axolotl.
  • To feed, the Axolotl opens its mouth suddenly and water and any food rushes in. me too! particularly around ice cream.
  • ))), bees!!
  • So THAT'S where Herbert got the name. Learn sumptin' ever day...
  • My surname has the "tl" sound in it, so I have always had a fondness for the axolotl and Nahuatl in generatl. Speaking of Nahuatl, the fruit that we call the avocado is, I understand, based on a Spanish rendering of a Nahuatl word meaning "testicle". Something to do with the shape.
  • Oooo... great post. Thanxalotl!
  • I thought the same exact thing InnocentBystander when I saw that word
  • O! to laze on a coral atoll reading verses to an axolotl! We sought this isle in dour rebuttal of wintry winds and snow that's brutal. He often helps, this axolotl, compose the rhymes we send in bottles.
  • which makes much more sense than trying to figure out how to prevent these casualties in the first place...duh!