Hola, language lovers! Thank you for joining me for this episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Today we are travelling to Mexico, so get out your snorkel and get ready for some swimming because today we are talking about: axolotls.

An axolotl, also known as the Mexican walking fish, is a neotenic salamander related to the tiger salamander. It’s basically a funky looking underwater lizard, found in the elevated lakes of Mexico. Salamanders, unlike other amphibians and insects, go through a process known as metamorphosis, which means they look completely different as adults than their young or larval form. Axolotls, however, do not go through this process naturally. They exhibit what is known as neoteny, which means they look young or retain their larval form for the rest of their lives, almost looking like babies forever.They can be made to undergo metamorphosis with a shot of iodine and they completely transform, looking like tiger salamanders but with spots instead of stripes.

The word axolotl comes from the Spanish word ‘Nahuatl’, which literally means ‘servant of water’. Nahuatl comes from ‘atl’, meaning ‘water’, and ‘xolotl’, which means ‘slippery or wrinkled one; servant or slave’. Tough gig for the axolotl!

There is, however, some debate about the origins of the word axolotl. Some say it comes from the Aztec god of death, Xolotl, who was also known as the god of deformities, and would sometimes change into a dog or a salamander. The myth tells us that Xolotl changed into a salamander when the souls of the underworld rose up against him, and he stayed safely at the bottom of Lake Xochimilco, where he stayed so long, he could no longer walk on land, and thus the comparison to the axolotl. Others suppose that axolotl comes from the phrase ‘water dog’, where the ‘xolotl’ portion refers to a dog, rather than a slave. It is not to be confused with its cousin, the tiger salamander, though, which is also called a waterdog when in its larval form.

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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