A mom was left stunned when her 10-year-old daughter spotted a critically-endangered axolotl under a bridge in Wales—an exciting moment that made the family cut their vacation short to rescue and research the rare salamander.
Melanie Hill and her family were traveling around South Wales in their camper van when on April 10 her daughter Evie was playing down by the River Ogmore in Bridgend, and made the discovery.
The nature-loving youngster saw the nine inch (22cm) pale salamander nestled in the rocks after lifting up a discarded mat in the river. She immediately identified it from watching videos about them on Youtube.
She excitedly rushed to tell her mother, who would not believe her, and told her it was probably a newt or lizard.
“But she was about to make me eat my words—because now I have one in my kitchen,” she told SWNS news agency.
The clever girl knew what it was straight away after seeing its unique gills.
“I ran up to my mum shouting ‘I’ve found an axolotl, I’ve found an axolotl’—but she did not believe me at all.”
“She told me not to go back in the water, but then I went down to the bank and spotted it again. So I jumped in and caught it with my hands.”
The undaunted girl carried the amphibian back to the camper and said, “Sorry I broke the rules, but look, I’ve caught the axolotl’.”
“I really couldn’t believe it,” said her mom, who grabbed her sister-in-law’s gravy boat so Evie could put it down.
The next day they went to the nearest store to get a suitable container and contacted a local breeder, to get advice about the damage on the creature’s tail and stomach.
Although the discovery is being described as the first sighting of an axolotl “in the wild” in Britain, it was likely surviving in captivity as someone’s pet before ending up in the river.
The endemic species, Ambystoma mexicanum, thrived in Mexican lakes until the Aztecs began diverting their water, which dried up much of their habitat. Invasive species then ruined more of their wetland home located near Mexico City during the 20th century. Today only 50 to 1,000 adult individuals remain in the wild there.
Axolotls as pets, however, have seen an explosion in popularity in recent years, thanks to game like Minecraft and Roblox, with up to a million currently housed in captivity.
Specimens are used extensively in scientific research for their remarkable ability to regenerate parts of their bodies, including limbs, gills and parts of their eyes and brains.
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After getting advice on how to care for it, Evie’s mom said the axolotl is recovering well back at their home in Leicester, England.
“We spent hours doing our research on how best to keep it healthy and Evie has named him Dippy D—Dippy after the bridge where it was found and D for dragon, as it’s our Welsh Dragon.”
It is illegal to release or leave a non-native species in the wild, says Chris Newman, director of the National Centre for Reptile Welfare, who told the BBC that Evie probably saved Dippy’s life.
“It would not have lived very long if Evie hadn’t seen it,” he said. “Predatory animals would have had it for lunch, and it already had bite marks on its back.”
“I think she did a remarkable job to find him—and catching them is no mean feat,” he said. “They’re quite slippery, so I think she did really well.”
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