Kids and tweens can’t get enough of axolotls, an unlikely mascot and the ‘perfect creature for our time’ | Canada Voices

Like many little kids, Zoë Auch Schleit has already been through many different phases in her young life. When she was 5, she loved the kids’ show Octonauts, and had an Octonaut-themed birthday party. When she was 6, she was fixated on unicorns, so her parents threw her a unicorn-themed party.

So leading up to Zoë‘s seventh birthday this year, it was no surprise that she would request a party based on her new obsession: axolotls. There were axolotl invitations. Axolotl games. An axolotl cake.

Anybody with young children will require no introduction to the axolotl. But for the uninitiated, axolotls are real-life creatures: salamanders that live mostly underwater and look like Pokémon. In the wild, they exist only in Mexico City’s Lake Xochimilco, where, owing to habitat degradation, they’re critically endangered. Fewer than 1,000 are estimated remaining. They are, by all measures, unlikely celebrities.

And yet, axolotls have become global superstars. They’re beloved mascots among, especially, the tween-and-under Gen Alpha set. They’re as ubiquitous in kid culture as puppies, pandas and unicorns – all over TV shows, video games and every corner of the toy store.

“It’s in our zeitgeist,” said Shari Bricks, owner of Toytown in Toronto. She’s seen kid trends going back decades. “Axolotl,” she said, “is the new ‘it’ thing.”

The axolotl’s popularity might have something to do with our time, and the uncertainty that many young people are facing, said Ryan Walter, a Chicago-based children’s songwriter.

“[The axolotl] looks happy, and I think people want to feel happy, especially at a time when it doesn’t always feel that way,” said Mr. Walter, who goes by “Doctor Waffle” on social media. His axolotl song, co-written with fiancée Abby Lyons, has been viewed more than 28 million times.

“It’s the perfect creature for our time.”

Or the answer might in fact be much simpler. As seven-year-old Zoë sat in her home in Halifax – eating a cheese string with one hand and clutching a pink axolotl stuffie in the other – she pointed at the creature’s big bulbous head, cartoonish eyes and wide, enigmatic smile. To the pink gills that framed its face like a crown.

“I just like how cute they are.”

In Mexico, where axolotls have existed for at least 10,000 years, the creature has long been a beloved fixture. The artist Diego Rivera included them in his murals. The Mexican 50-peso bill has a purple axolotl on its back.

Outside of Mexico, however, they remained mostly obscure until more recently. In 1999, Pokémon (the franchise from Japan, where the kawaii, or “cute,” aesthetic originates) created an axolotl-like character called Wooper. In 2020, Fortnite, a video game, added an axolotl character too.

But 2021 is when axolotls exploded. That’s when Mojang Studios, the company behind the juggernaut Minecraft, created an axolotl character in its continuing campaign to raise awareness about endangered species – part of a long tradition of recruiting kids for animal-welfare campaigns, from Keiko the orca in Free Willy to the Earth Rangers.

Nine-year-old Noora Speed discovered axolotls from Minecraft. Since then, Noora, who lives in Vancouver, has become obsessed. She has axolotl stuffies, an axolotl Lego set, even an axolotl nightlight.

She knows that they’re endangered. “You know how some animals are extinct? It’s like that, except there’s only a little more left,” she said. “It’s not totally zero.”

How does that make her feel?

She makes a crying motion with her fist. “Sad.”

But whether the attention has helped with conservation efforts is questionable.

“I think it’s a good thing that people really love the animal and that people are aware of the situation,” said Esther Quintero from Conservation International Mexico.

But she emphasized that the most important issue facing axolotls is pollution of their habitat – a problem that requires the slow-moving and complicated work of governments and scientists to restore native environments.

The explosion in popularity has also led to a booming pet industry, including here in Canada. (Most of these pets descend from laboratory-bred axolotls that have been used for scientific research, distinct from the wild variety.)

Crystal Bonds, an axolotl breeder in Welland, Ont., said that the popularity of Minecraft led many families to take on axolotls as pets, only to later abandon them. In 2021 alone, she said, she rescued 173 axolotls.

“For breeders, it’s definitely set us back,” she said.

(Owning axolotls as pets, she stressed, is not for the faint-hearted. She spends $120 each week on food alone for her hundreds of axolotls – on live earthworms she cuts with scissors into smaller pieces to feed the babies by hand. “For people who have the heebie-jeebies and can’t deal with the squirming,” she said, “you can use a pizza cutter.”)

But for some kids, it’s partly because they’re endangered that the axolotls are so loveable.

When Faith Cellan, an 11-year-old in Clarington, Ont., first learned about axolotls a few years ago, she felt immediately drawn to them.

As a class project – which she’s since turned into a book – she wrote a story about Archer, an axolotl who learns to stand up for himself against bullies.

“I know because of my own experience. Because I got bullied too,” she said. With the story, she said, “I felt like I could help other kids.”

She cited another remarkable axolotl fact — another reason why kids are so drawn to the little creatures. Axolotls can regenerate body parts and limbs that are lost or broken.

“Every time an axolotl gets hurt, they regrow,” she said. “They bounce back.”