Evie Hill, 10, was poking around under the Dipping Bridge on the River Ogmore in south Wales last week when she lifted a discarded mat and found a pale, speckled axolotl in the shallows. The 9in, or 22cm, amphibian had injuries to its tail and stomach, and the family later took it to their Leicester home in a fish tank.
Hill said she spotted “this thing with gills on its head” and told her mother, then went back into the water and caught it anyway. The family, who are documenting the axolotl’s recovery on TikTok, said they asked whether it might have been abandoned by a pet owner. After seeking expert advice, they were told they are allowed to keep it at home.
The rescue matters because the animal is not a local river species. Axolotls are aquatic salamanders native to Mexico, and wild ones are found only in Lake Xochimilco near Mexico City. They are considered critically endangered, and specialists said the creature had little chance of living very long if it had not been rescued.
That made the next step more complicated than simply bringing home an unusual find. Axolotls have become popular as pets in recent years, helped by exposure on TikTok, Instagram, Minecraft and Roblox, but they need cool water, ideally between 16C and 18C, and they can suffer badly if kept incorrectly. They can also regrow tissue and even grow a new spinal cord within a new tail if they lose it, which has made them especially well known among animal enthusiasts.
Chris Newman of the National Centre for Reptile Welfare said the family “did him a real favour” by getting the axolotl out of the river. The same group said it is illegal to release axolotls into the wild, leaving open the possibility that this one had been dumped by someone who no longer wanted it. For now, Hill’s family says they are keeping watch in Leicester, and the tiny animal’s survival depends on the rescue working.