'Water Monster' About to Die Off

Mexico’s “water monster"—a mere foot long but once central to the Aztec legend and diet—is close to dying out, the AP reports. Axolotls have long endured in the polluted Venice-like canals of Lake Xochimilco in Mexico City, but baby-gobbling fish and ebbing water quality are killing them off. Scientists are in a rush to save them, but can't agree on how.

The salamanders currently thrive in laboratories, where scientists marvel at their ability to regenerate lost limbs; they have been crucial to studies of embryology and evolution. Their extinction, says a biologist, “would not only be a great loss to biodiversity but to Mexican culture." A local fisherman is more specific: "I used to love axolotl tamales," he says with a laugh.
(More endangered species stories.)