1
00:00:01,480 --> 00:00:07,240
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

2
00:00:11,280 --> 00:00:14,280
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's

3
00:00:14,520 --> 00:00:17,479
Speaker 2: shock in Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you

4
00:00:17,560 --> 00:00:24,040
Speaker 2: should know, part of the ongoing, never ending, stupendously outstanding

5
00:00:24,200 --> 00:00:25,680
Speaker 2: animal editions.

6
00:00:27,400 --> 00:00:32,280
Speaker 3: That's right. And for us Friday morning edition, which never happens,

7
00:00:32,600 --> 00:00:35,400
Speaker 3: we had a little family issue yesterday and you guys

8
00:00:35,400 --> 00:00:39,280
Speaker 3: were very sweet and kind and sure agreed to punt

9
00:00:39,320 --> 00:00:42,159
Speaker 3: to the recording a day, and so now we are.

10
00:00:42,479 --> 00:00:43,960
Speaker 3: We're in our morning show routine.

11
00:00:44,560 --> 00:00:48,720
Speaker 2: That's right. I can't even begin to do a morning

12
00:00:48,760 --> 00:00:52,559
Speaker 2: show host impression. I'd like to, but I can't bring myself.

13
00:00:52,159 --> 00:00:54,200
Speaker 3: To who likes lizards?

14
00:00:54,640 --> 00:00:57,080
Speaker 2: That was pretty good, Chuck, Yeah.

15
00:00:56,880 --> 00:00:58,760
Speaker 3: And that's probably a morning show person. We would probably

16
00:00:58,760 --> 00:00:59,440
Speaker 3: call this a lizard.

17
00:01:00,440 --> 00:01:03,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, good point, because they're not lizards. They're amphibians.

18
00:01:03,560 --> 00:01:07,240
Speaker 2: And what we're talking about are called ACXE Lottle's. And

19
00:01:07,319 --> 00:01:09,360
Speaker 2: before we get into it, I think we should give

20
00:01:09,400 --> 00:01:12,840
Speaker 2: a hat tip to a guest researcher who helped us

21
00:01:13,360 --> 00:01:17,960
Speaker 2: with the very initial research on axeltos, a listener named

22
00:01:18,440 --> 00:01:22,280
Speaker 2: Charlie's Flores, who, by the way, her grandma calls her Chuck,

23
00:01:22,480 --> 00:01:23,480
Speaker 2: she mentioned.

24
00:01:23,520 --> 00:01:26,520
Speaker 3: Ah, that's very sweet. Did she send us a sweet

25
00:01:26,600 --> 00:01:29,240
Speaker 3: letter in a picture that she drew?

26
00:01:29,520 --> 00:01:32,760
Speaker 2: Yes, a picture of her Axe Lottle Boba, And she

27
00:01:32,880 --> 00:01:36,399
Speaker 2: told us some pretty amazing initial things about Axe Lottle's

28
00:01:36,560 --> 00:01:40,039
Speaker 2: and she and her mom, Gabrielle listen out in Omaha.

29
00:01:40,240 --> 00:01:42,760
Speaker 2: So thank you very much to Charlie's for helping us

30
00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:46,000
Speaker 2: out with this one. I guess we should also thank

31
00:01:46,400 --> 00:01:47,240
Speaker 2: Dave Ruths too.

32
00:01:48,120 --> 00:01:51,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, but Dave's not what like six years old?

33
00:01:51,680 --> 00:01:52,720
Speaker 3: How old is Chuck?

34
00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:56,040
Speaker 2: She's ten going into she just started the fifth grade.

35
00:01:56,400 --> 00:01:59,240
Speaker 3: Oh well, I feel like a dummy too. And I'm

36
00:01:59,280 --> 00:02:01,120
Speaker 3: a dad of an eight year old, and I guess

37
00:02:01,200 --> 00:02:03,720
Speaker 3: too young. You never know, You never know. You just

38
00:02:03,760 --> 00:02:05,720
Speaker 3: can't tell at that age. You're like, are you three?

39
00:02:05,880 --> 00:02:07,400
Speaker 3: Are you fifteen? I can't see?

40
00:02:09,400 --> 00:02:09,560
Speaker 4: Uh?

41
00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:13,520
Speaker 3: So should we talk pronunciation real quick? Because I, because

42
00:02:13,520 --> 00:02:16,040
Speaker 3: of my screwy day yesterday, I meant a thousand times

43
00:02:16,080 --> 00:02:19,600
Speaker 3: to go look up sort of the indigenous pronunciation of

44
00:02:19,639 --> 00:02:24,040
Speaker 3: what we call axe Lottele, and I failed to. But

45
00:02:24,160 --> 00:02:26,640
Speaker 3: you were schooling me before we started recording schooling in

46
00:02:26,680 --> 00:02:27,079
Speaker 3: a good way.

47
00:02:27,120 --> 00:02:31,919
Speaker 2: I got you covered. Yeah, So that very strange looking

48
00:02:31,960 --> 00:02:36,680
Speaker 2: word is actually taken directly from the naw What language,

49
00:02:36,840 --> 00:02:40,760
Speaker 2: which is the language of the Aztec people, and they

50
00:02:41,480 --> 00:02:43,880
Speaker 2: came up with this. We'll talk. Do you want to

51
00:02:43,919 --> 00:02:45,480
Speaker 2: just go ahead and talk about that part now?

52
00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:46,480
Speaker 3: Yeah?

53
00:02:46,520 --> 00:02:50,919
Speaker 2: Sure, okay, good. So the the word axe a lottle,

54
00:02:50,960 --> 00:02:54,399
Speaker 2: what we call acx a lotto, is actually as showlut,

55
00:02:55,200 --> 00:02:57,680
Speaker 2: even though it's spelled the exact same way in the

56
00:02:57,760 --> 00:03:03,960
Speaker 2: knaw What language, Atl is pronounced lut and x is

57
00:03:04,080 --> 00:03:07,160
Speaker 2: very often pronounced show. It can also be pronounced waw.

58
00:03:07,680 --> 00:03:09,520
Speaker 2: It's kind of all over the place. It's like a

59
00:03:09,720 --> 00:03:14,400
Speaker 2: utility baseball player. It can do whatever.

60
00:03:15,440 --> 00:03:16,320
Speaker 3: Wow, look at you.

61
00:03:16,720 --> 00:03:20,359
Speaker 2: And by the way, also the Aztecs were called the mischika,

62
00:03:21,120 --> 00:03:25,120
Speaker 2: and that x is a she in that case. So

63
00:03:25,919 --> 00:03:29,360
Speaker 2: the ax a lottel or a show lut is named

64
00:03:29,400 --> 00:03:34,240
Speaker 2: after the Aztec god show lut xolotl.

65
00:03:35,160 --> 00:03:37,760
Speaker 3: That's right, the god of fire and lightning.

66
00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:39,520
Speaker 2: Correct, also what else?

67
00:03:40,360 --> 00:03:44,240
Speaker 3: Also the god of physical deformities and dogs and death.

68
00:03:45,040 --> 00:03:48,160
Speaker 3: And I'm glad we're starting here because this sort of

69
00:03:48,200 --> 00:03:51,160
Speaker 3: reinforces why the ax a lottle, by the way, which

70
00:03:51,200 --> 00:03:55,040
Speaker 3: is a very very cute little salamander amphibian. I think

71
00:03:55,040 --> 00:03:58,320
Speaker 3: you did say amphibian, But if you think you haven't

72
00:03:58,320 --> 00:04:00,600
Speaker 3: seen one, you probably have because of blown up the

73
00:04:00,640 --> 00:04:05,240
Speaker 3: internet semi recently with their cute smiles. But they're very

74
00:04:05,280 --> 00:04:09,000
Speaker 3: important to the lore and the culture of Mexico because

75
00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:15,240
Speaker 3: of the Aztec origins and specifically this god show Lut, who,

76
00:04:15,280 --> 00:04:20,120
Speaker 3: like we said, physical deformities, fire, lightning, death, and dogs.

77
00:04:19,960 --> 00:04:25,480
Speaker 2: Right, and so according to lore, Sholt was escaping Ketsukotl,

78
00:04:25,680 --> 00:04:32,560
Speaker 2: which is Sholt's twin god sibling, and to escape he

79
00:04:32,680 --> 00:04:37,960
Speaker 2: transformed into three things. May's plant, which is show lut

80
00:04:38,120 --> 00:04:45,480
Speaker 2: in nowa language agave which is mesh mess show Lut,

81
00:04:46,360 --> 00:04:51,120
Speaker 2: and then a salamander alt and he still was caught

82
00:04:51,160 --> 00:04:55,040
Speaker 2: and killed. But I believe by transforming into those things

83
00:04:55,080 --> 00:05:00,560
Speaker 2: he made them exist per chance. So the reason that

84
00:05:00,600 --> 00:05:04,320
Speaker 2: the Asshola is kind of like a big deal in

85
00:05:05,240 --> 00:05:11,279
Speaker 2: as tech culture is that they were very hyper local

86
00:05:11,760 --> 00:05:14,120
Speaker 2: to the as tech people. They were where the as

87
00:05:14,160 --> 00:05:18,479
Speaker 2: tech were, and they were a huge food source, a

88
00:05:18,520 --> 00:05:21,240
Speaker 2: source of medicine, and also I guarantee a source of

89
00:05:21,279 --> 00:05:25,159
Speaker 2: amusement and delight because I don't care what era or

90
00:05:25,279 --> 00:05:28,800
Speaker 2: age or epoc you're living in. Yeah, Acxi Lotte's are

91
00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:31,440
Speaker 2: one of the cutest animals on the planet.

92
00:05:32,160 --> 00:05:34,719
Speaker 3: They really are. I mean, there's something about that perma

93
00:05:34,800 --> 00:05:40,880
Speaker 3: smile that is undeniably cute and affectionate looking. And I

94
00:05:40,920 --> 00:05:43,560
Speaker 3: know this is humans putting their stuff on animals, but

95
00:05:44,240 --> 00:05:46,360
Speaker 3: you know, the thing smiles. What else can you say?

96
00:05:46,600 --> 00:05:49,840
Speaker 2: You can't there's nothing I need to say. But that's

97
00:05:49,880 --> 00:05:52,880
Speaker 2: the thing about Acxi Lottle's Chuck is, yes, if they

98
00:05:52,920 --> 00:05:56,120
Speaker 2: were just that cute and it stopped there, they'd still

99
00:05:56,120 --> 00:05:59,720
Speaker 2: be worth talking about. But they're really really worth talking about.

100
00:05:59,760 --> 00:06:03,159
Speaker 2: And this what Charlie's Flores was trying to explain to

101
00:06:03,240 --> 00:06:07,000
Speaker 2: us is that there's so many other amazing, astounding things

102
00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:08,920
Speaker 2: about Axel Lotteles that this is just one of the

103
00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:10,719
Speaker 2: most interesting animals on the planet.

104
00:06:10,720 --> 00:06:15,320
Speaker 3: It turns out, here's your Disney movie. It's centered around

105
00:06:15,320 --> 00:06:17,560
Speaker 3: I'm surprised you haven't done this quite frankly, it's centered

106
00:06:17,560 --> 00:06:19,000
Speaker 3: around and Axel Lottle.

107
00:06:19,160 --> 00:06:21,520
Speaker 2: Of course, na Axel.

108
00:06:22,800 --> 00:06:26,800
Speaker 3: But sure, yeah, exactly perfect, thank you, and it is,

109
00:06:27,320 --> 00:06:29,800
Speaker 3: but it is. And you know, Disney movies always sort

110
00:06:29,839 --> 00:06:31,680
Speaker 3: of and you know Pixar all that stuff, they always

111
00:06:31,720 --> 00:06:34,560
Speaker 3: sort of have their larger point to make about emotions

112
00:06:34,640 --> 00:06:38,560
Speaker 3: or this or that. Maybe this one deals with mental

113
00:06:39,160 --> 00:06:42,360
Speaker 3: illness and you have an axe a lottle that is

114
00:06:42,400 --> 00:06:46,680
Speaker 3: actually depressed but smiles all the time anyway, and his

115
00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:49,200
Speaker 3: little buddies have to help him out and see him

116
00:06:49,200 --> 00:06:49,520
Speaker 3: through this.

117
00:06:49,839 --> 00:06:52,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like the climax of the film is where

118
00:06:52,520 --> 00:06:54,760
Speaker 2: he've manages to frown, right.

119
00:06:55,120 --> 00:06:59,520
Speaker 3: Maybe, so that's pretty great, chuck. Yeah, just to put

120
00:06:59,560 --> 00:07:02,440
Speaker 3: a sort of cherry on top of the original cultural story.

121
00:07:02,440 --> 00:07:05,760
Speaker 3: Though when the Spanish came around as conquerors, they were like,

122
00:07:05,839 --> 00:07:10,320
Speaker 3: oh man, this stuff is delicious. It was. They tried

123
00:07:10,320 --> 00:07:13,880
Speaker 3: to they tried to keep a lot of records at

124
00:07:13,960 --> 00:07:16,240
Speaker 3: least of what was going on with the Aztec and

125
00:07:16,360 --> 00:07:19,120
Speaker 3: like what was important to them culturally. I'm not going

126
00:07:19,200 --> 00:07:22,360
Speaker 3: to say like so they could respect them or anything

127
00:07:22,400 --> 00:07:25,600
Speaker 3: like that, but they did keep records, and they did

128
00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:28,240
Speaker 3: learn about the axe lottle and learn that it was

129
00:07:28,280 --> 00:07:31,160
Speaker 3: a source of medicine, and they called it the food

130
00:07:31,160 --> 00:07:34,440
Speaker 3: of the lords, and there was there were festivals. It

131
00:07:34,560 --> 00:07:36,720
Speaker 3: was this. I mean, I don't want to eat one

132
00:07:36,720 --> 00:07:39,720
Speaker 3: of these things. But they had Tamali axe lottle, Tomaly's

133
00:07:40,200 --> 00:07:41,960
Speaker 3: and I like it. Tomali. So That's the only time

134
00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:44,120
Speaker 3: I was like, hmmm, I.

135
00:07:44,760 --> 00:07:46,520
Speaker 2: Could eat one of those if you wrapped it up

136
00:07:46,520 --> 00:07:47,200
Speaker 2: into tamali.

137
00:07:47,440 --> 00:07:49,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I really couldn't because all I could see

138
00:07:49,360 --> 00:07:51,040
Speaker 3: is that smile in my brain.

139
00:07:51,480 --> 00:07:55,400
Speaker 2: So axe Lottle's are that would be tough to do,

140
00:07:55,680 --> 00:07:57,600
Speaker 2: especially if the head's poking out the end of the

141
00:07:57,600 --> 00:07:58,480
Speaker 2: tamali just looking.

142
00:07:58,560 --> 00:08:00,280
Speaker 3: Oh man, no, you can't.

143
00:08:00,680 --> 00:08:03,320
Speaker 2: So I said. Axi Lottel's were hyper local to where

144
00:08:03,360 --> 00:08:08,920
Speaker 2: the Mishika, the ASTech lived, uh. And they lived in

145
00:08:09,160 --> 00:08:12,720
Speaker 2: uh like, basically on a lake. Like Mexico City used

146
00:08:12,760 --> 00:08:16,560
Speaker 2: to be an az tech capital called tenock Teetlan, and

147
00:08:16,640 --> 00:08:20,840
Speaker 2: tenak Teetlan was built basically on top of lake Uh.

148
00:08:21,240 --> 00:08:22,360
Speaker 2: What is it Toshoko?

149
00:08:23,080 --> 00:08:24,960
Speaker 3: I think probably Teshcoco.

150
00:08:24,560 --> 00:08:25,560
Speaker 2: Toshcoco, thank you.

151
00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:26,080
Speaker 3: So.

152
00:08:26,280 --> 00:08:33,040
Speaker 2: Lake Toushcoco is where the the ax Lotto hails from.

153
00:08:33,679 --> 00:08:36,760
Speaker 2: And it's again it's a salamander, and there are other

154
00:08:36,800 --> 00:08:40,080
Speaker 2: salamanders that live in that area. But the axe Lotto

155
00:08:40,480 --> 00:08:45,440
Speaker 2: only lived in the Lake Toshcoco area. And and as

156
00:08:45,480 --> 00:08:47,680
Speaker 2: the Spanish came along and said, you can't build a

157
00:08:47,720 --> 00:08:50,040
Speaker 2: city on a lake, what are you crazy, We're gonna

158
00:08:50,040 --> 00:08:52,840
Speaker 2: go ahead and drain this lake. One of the remnants

159
00:08:52,880 --> 00:08:56,200
Speaker 2: of that lake was an even smaller body of water.

160
00:08:57,320 --> 00:09:00,000
Speaker 2: And it's not only a smaller body of water, it's

161
00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:03,040
Speaker 2: it's even harder to pronounce than Lake Teshcoco.

162
00:09:03,600 --> 00:09:04,280
Speaker 3: It really is.

163
00:09:04,640 --> 00:09:09,800
Speaker 2: It's Lake Sochi Milko and friends. Look up Sochi Mealko.

164
00:09:10,200 --> 00:09:12,320
Speaker 2: It is not, in any way, shape or form, as

165
00:09:12,400 --> 00:09:16,400
Speaker 2: far as an English speaker is concerned, spelled like gets pronounced. Yeah,

166
00:09:16,640 --> 00:09:20,800
Speaker 2: it's XO c Chi m I Lco. But Lake Sochi

167
00:09:20,880 --> 00:09:23,920
Speaker 2: Mealko is a very small body of water. It's basically

168
00:09:23,920 --> 00:09:27,040
Speaker 2: a small system of freshwater canals that are the remnants

169
00:09:27,080 --> 00:09:31,000
Speaker 2: of Lake Teshcoco. And that is where x a Lotto's live.

170
00:09:31,080 --> 00:09:34,640
Speaker 2: Now in the entire world, there's nowhere else, even in Mexico.

171
00:09:34,800 --> 00:09:37,600
Speaker 2: There's nowhere else you will find an ax Lottel in

172
00:09:37,640 --> 00:09:40,720
Speaker 2: the wild except for in Lake Sochi Milko.

173
00:09:41,360 --> 00:09:43,599
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm actually going to Mexico City for the

174
00:09:43,600 --> 00:09:44,520
Speaker 3: first time in November.

175
00:09:44,520 --> 00:09:45,480
Speaker 2: It's a very cool town.

176
00:09:46,000 --> 00:09:49,400
Speaker 3: I can't wait. Man, And uh, I'm not going to

177
00:09:49,480 --> 00:09:51,360
Speaker 3: go on an ax A Lottle tour. I don't know

178
00:09:51,400 --> 00:09:52,760
Speaker 3: if they have those. I bet they do. They do,

179
00:09:53,400 --> 00:09:55,400
Speaker 3: but they're they're generally not out during the day. But

180
00:09:55,400 --> 00:09:58,800
Speaker 3: we'll get to all this stuff as we go, right,

181
00:09:58,800 --> 00:09:59,880
Speaker 3: Should we start at the beginning?

182
00:10:00,080 --> 00:10:02,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought we had started well.

183
00:10:02,320 --> 00:10:05,240
Speaker 3: Historically the beginning, I just mean the beginning of axe

184
00:10:05,240 --> 00:10:09,200
Speaker 3: lottels as a species, because they are amphibians, like you said,

185
00:10:09,240 --> 00:10:14,240
Speaker 3: of the order Urudella, and that is all salamanders. The

186
00:10:14,360 --> 00:10:20,600
Speaker 3: scientific name is Ambistoma mexicanum, which very appropriate. I even

187
00:10:20,600 --> 00:10:24,559
Speaker 3: know what that means. Ambostoma means blunt mouth, and when

188
00:10:24,600 --> 00:10:26,200
Speaker 3: you see to axi lottle, it kind of has a

189
00:10:26,280 --> 00:10:29,920
Speaker 3: blunt looking mouth, so it all makes sense. And in Latin,

190
00:10:30,200 --> 00:10:33,840
Speaker 3: amphibia for amphibia means double life, and it's called double

191
00:10:33,840 --> 00:10:36,920
Speaker 3: life and amphibia because, as we all know, amphibians start

192
00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:41,120
Speaker 3: out in water when they're hatched as little eggs, and

193
00:10:41,240 --> 00:10:43,960
Speaker 3: they spend some time there as young and swimming around

194
00:10:43,960 --> 00:10:47,440
Speaker 3: and using their gills, and then eventually they metamorphosize and

195
00:10:47,520 --> 00:10:52,360
Speaker 3: transform into a land creature, which means they grow legs,

196
00:10:52,400 --> 00:10:55,400
Speaker 3: their little tails shrink, and they learn to use their

197
00:10:55,480 --> 00:10:59,280
Speaker 3: lungs and those gills aren't useful anymore, and sometimes they

198
00:10:59,280 --> 00:11:00,720
Speaker 3: even go all right.

199
00:11:00,720 --> 00:11:03,640
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a that's a typical amphibian. That's just what

200
00:11:03,679 --> 00:11:06,600
Speaker 2: they do. Yeah, the gills go away, they start breathing

201
00:11:07,520 --> 00:11:09,240
Speaker 2: with their lungs and they live on land. They go

202
00:11:09,280 --> 00:11:11,520
Speaker 2: from living in the water living in the land. It's

203
00:11:11,559 --> 00:11:15,800
Speaker 2: what makes an amphibian of an amphibian, except except with

204
00:11:15,960 --> 00:11:18,839
Speaker 2: axe lottels and a couple other there's a couple other

205
00:11:18,880 --> 00:11:23,320
Speaker 2: species of amphibians, mud puppies, I think, is one that

206
00:11:24,120 --> 00:11:28,520
Speaker 2: they never leave the water. They're amphibians, but they don't

207
00:11:28,720 --> 00:11:34,679
Speaker 2: amphibiate essentially. Yeah, and it's it's something called naotiny, which

208
00:11:34,720 --> 00:11:39,320
Speaker 2: is they stay forever young, just like that Rod Stewart's song. Yeah,

209
00:11:40,040 --> 00:11:43,400
Speaker 2: and another word for it is pedamorphic, and like Rod Stewart,

210
00:11:44,040 --> 00:11:47,160
Speaker 2: yeah exactly. Although no, no, that's not true at all.

211
00:11:47,559 --> 00:11:51,600
Speaker 2: But that means that they even in their adult form,

212
00:11:51,840 --> 00:11:54,520
Speaker 2: even in like they're fully grown up, they can reproduce,

213
00:11:54,880 --> 00:11:59,480
Speaker 2: they're drawing social security, they still are not only look

214
00:11:59,760 --> 00:12:04,000
Speaker 2: like their childhood form for all intentsive purposes, their body

215
00:12:04,000 --> 00:12:07,359
Speaker 2: inside and out is still in the childhood form.

216
00:12:07,640 --> 00:12:10,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't drop that tail like other sallyes do.

217
00:12:11,400 --> 00:12:13,320
Speaker 3: They keep that tails called a body fin because it

218
00:12:13,400 --> 00:12:15,080
Speaker 3: kind of you know, once you see it, it kind of

219
00:12:15,120 --> 00:12:17,640
Speaker 3: looks like it runs up their body. Yeah, they keep

220
00:12:17,679 --> 00:12:20,439
Speaker 3: those well, they keep those legs. Their legs wouldn't go

221
00:12:20,440 --> 00:12:23,520
Speaker 3: way anyway, but they have those stubby little legs. They

222
00:12:23,559 --> 00:12:26,280
Speaker 3: do have lungs, and they also still have those gills,

223
00:12:26,679 --> 00:12:28,960
Speaker 3: which we'll talk about a little more in a second,

224
00:12:29,000 --> 00:12:34,719
Speaker 3: but they basically breathe almost exclusively through their gills and

225
00:12:34,800 --> 00:12:37,400
Speaker 3: they also never use their legs to walk on dry land.

226
00:12:37,520 --> 00:12:41,880
Speaker 3: So you know, there's a term in Mexico, Mexican walking

227
00:12:41,920 --> 00:12:44,319
Speaker 3: fish is what they can be called, which Day very

228
00:12:44,320 --> 00:12:47,120
Speaker 3: funnily points out, like they are Mexican, but they're not

229
00:12:47,200 --> 00:12:49,160
Speaker 3: fish and they don't walk, so it's a bit of

230
00:12:49,200 --> 00:12:49,840
Speaker 3: a misnomer.

231
00:12:50,360 --> 00:12:54,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a touch. There's a theory as to why

232
00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:57,200
Speaker 2: this is going on, like why would this happen? This

233
00:12:57,240 --> 00:12:58,920
Speaker 2: doesn't really make any sense.

234
00:12:58,960 --> 00:12:59,960
Speaker 3: Like why would they have legs?

235
00:13:00,520 --> 00:13:03,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, that's a great question. And some one of

236
00:13:03,559 --> 00:13:06,000
Speaker 2: the theories is that there was a point in time

237
00:13:06,200 --> 00:13:11,959
Speaker 2: where they did amphibiate fully and make it out of

238
00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:14,480
Speaker 2: the water, so they needed their legs, they needed their lungs.

239
00:13:14,480 --> 00:13:17,120
Speaker 2: They do have little tiny lungs, but they're very undeveloped,

240
00:13:17,160 --> 00:13:20,320
Speaker 2: so they can't they can survive out of water for

241
00:13:20,520 --> 00:13:23,200
Speaker 2: a very short time with those little tiny lungs, but

242
00:13:23,280 --> 00:13:26,240
Speaker 2: not for very long. They're clearly not designed to stay

243
00:13:26,240 --> 00:13:28,880
Speaker 2: out of water. So the idea is that somewhere in

244
00:13:28,880 --> 00:13:33,800
Speaker 2: their evolutionary history they spent some time on land. But

245
00:13:34,120 --> 00:13:38,920
Speaker 2: the place where they lived, either like Tushcoco or Lake

246
00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:43,520
Speaker 2: Sochi Milko, was so such a great environment for them,

247
00:13:43,600 --> 00:13:50,720
Speaker 2: so ripe, with food so abundant. No, what's the opposite

248
00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:55,640
Speaker 2: of abundant, Oh, scarce? So there was such scarce predators.

249
00:13:55,880 --> 00:13:58,080
Speaker 2: It was just a perfect place to live man, a

250
00:13:58,120 --> 00:14:00,720
Speaker 2: golden age to be an Axi lotto, I would say.

251
00:14:01,160 --> 00:14:04,240
Speaker 2: And so they stayed in the water, and at some

252
00:14:04,320 --> 00:14:10,240
Speaker 2: point in time those genes got frozen in some individual organisms,

253
00:14:10,360 --> 00:14:13,000
Speaker 2: and those got passed along, and those gave us Axi

254
00:14:13,040 --> 00:14:17,800
Speaker 2: lottos and chuck also, may, I retort to myself. Sure,

255
00:14:18,320 --> 00:14:21,760
Speaker 2: So that is one theory. My theory which I would

256
00:14:21,800 --> 00:14:25,360
Speaker 2: like to share is wow, Axi lottles are only about

257
00:14:25,400 --> 00:14:30,000
Speaker 2: ten thousand years old as a species. Okay, they basically

258
00:14:30,040 --> 00:14:35,760
Speaker 2: evolve from other salamanders that they live among, and they

259
00:14:35,880 --> 00:14:42,080
Speaker 2: haven't fully I believe, evolved into it an entirely separate species.

260
00:14:42,080 --> 00:14:46,880
Speaker 2: They can still procreate with other salamanders, and so I

261
00:14:46,960 --> 00:14:52,440
Speaker 2: think what it is, it's a remnant of the salamanders

262
00:14:52,440 --> 00:14:55,440
Speaker 2: that they evolved from. That they haven't fully evolved out

263
00:14:55,440 --> 00:14:58,440
Speaker 2: of that, and that if you looked at Axi lottles,

264
00:14:59,120 --> 00:15:01,800
Speaker 2: you know, one hundred thousand years from now, they won't

265
00:15:01,800 --> 00:15:03,360
Speaker 2: have any legs anymore.

266
00:15:04,400 --> 00:15:07,080
Speaker 3: And this is, uh, does anyone is this out there

267
00:15:07,080 --> 00:15:07,840
Speaker 3: at all? Is this all you?

268
00:15:07,960 --> 00:15:09,400
Speaker 2: I'm putting it out there, baby?

269
00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:14,760
Speaker 3: Okay? So they used to mate with their other salamander friends.

270
00:15:14,480 --> 00:15:18,640
Speaker 2: And they still can. Like Rod Stewart, that's right, that's right,

271
00:15:18,640 --> 00:15:20,720
Speaker 2: he's had one or two salamanders in this time.

272
00:15:21,120 --> 00:15:23,160
Speaker 3: All right, I like it. That makes sense to me.

273
00:15:23,200 --> 00:15:23,480
Speaker 2: Thank you.

274
00:15:23,760 --> 00:15:28,479
Speaker 3: In one hundred thousand years, we'll know for sure, right right. Yeah,

275
00:15:28,600 --> 00:15:32,000
Speaker 3: once the earth is a big flaming ball of hot gas.

276
00:15:31,760 --> 00:15:33,680
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it'll have come and gone by then.

277
00:15:34,360 --> 00:15:36,840
Speaker 3: All right, So maybe we should take a break. I

278
00:15:36,840 --> 00:15:39,560
Speaker 3: think that's a good setup and we talk about how

279
00:15:39,560 --> 00:15:42,080
Speaker 3: remarkable this thing is. Just hold on to your hats, everybody,

280
00:15:42,120 --> 00:15:44,720
Speaker 3: because this sort of blew my mind and it will

281
00:15:44,720 --> 00:15:49,520
Speaker 3: blow yours as well. Right after this, soft jaws.

282
00:15:58,880 --> 00:16:01,120
Speaker 1: Want to learn about terrors or color sord Actol, how

283
00:16:01,160 --> 00:16:01,920
Speaker 1: to take a perfect boom?

284
00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:04,560
Speaker 4: All about fractalink is con that's a little hunt the

285
00:16:04,640 --> 00:16:06,000
Speaker 4: Lizzie Borderers A.

286
00:16:12,960 --> 00:16:13,920
Speaker 2: Word up, Jerry.

287
00:16:14,920 --> 00:16:17,960
Speaker 3: All right, So, uh, if you haven't looked up a

288
00:16:17,960 --> 00:16:20,400
Speaker 3: picture of an axe lottle, by now, pull your car

289
00:16:20,480 --> 00:16:23,480
Speaker 3: off or take a break from jogging or cleaning your

290
00:16:23,520 --> 00:16:25,000
Speaker 3: house or whatever you do when you listen to us.

291
00:16:25,040 --> 00:16:28,400
Speaker 3: Wake up. Maybe if you're sleeping, look up a picture

292
00:16:28,400 --> 00:16:30,440
Speaker 3: of that cute little thing. You've probably seen them on

293
00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:33,560
Speaker 3: TikTok or YouTube. Uh, you've probably seen a bunch of

294
00:16:33,640 --> 00:16:38,160
Speaker 3: very colorful axe lottles. And those are bread specifically to

295
00:16:38,400 --> 00:16:42,160
Speaker 3: sell as pets in those amazing colors. That is not

296
00:16:42,200 --> 00:16:45,880
Speaker 3: what color they are in the wild. They are dark brownish,

297
00:16:46,160 --> 00:16:51,360
Speaker 3: sort of greenish or really really black. And kids don't

298
00:16:51,360 --> 00:16:54,040
Speaker 3: want that. Kids want a hot, pink one, and so

299
00:16:54,520 --> 00:16:56,280
Speaker 3: humans have made that possible, right.

300
00:16:56,720 --> 00:16:59,800
Speaker 2: They want the Barbie version of ax lottles, the Barbie edition.

301
00:17:00,640 --> 00:17:02,680
Speaker 3: We all do we want what Barbie versions of everything,

302
00:17:02,680 --> 00:17:02,960
Speaker 3: don't we?

303
00:17:03,120 --> 00:17:07,719
Speaker 2: Yeah? For sure? So there's pink and the pink can

304
00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:10,560
Speaker 2: it's usually pretty pale, but I would say their faces

305
00:17:10,600 --> 00:17:14,720
Speaker 2: can be kind of hot pink. Yeah, white ones pale

306
00:17:14,880 --> 00:17:20,000
Speaker 2: yellow lavender. That's my favorite model, green gray. And they

307
00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:22,040
Speaker 2: also have glow in the dark ones, which are a

308
00:17:22,040 --> 00:17:24,440
Speaker 2: little bit misname because it's not glow in the dark.

309
00:17:24,440 --> 00:17:28,320
Speaker 2: They glow under UV lights because they have the same

310
00:17:29,080 --> 00:17:32,520
Speaker 2: genes that jellyfish. Some jellyfish do and they were bred

311
00:17:32,520 --> 00:17:35,080
Speaker 2: into them. This is not a natural thing, although apparently

312
00:17:35,080 --> 00:17:39,119
Speaker 2: they can spontaneously generate that gene in the wild weirdly enough.

313
00:17:39,520 --> 00:17:41,320
Speaker 2: But the upshot of it is if you have a

314
00:17:41,440 --> 00:17:45,320
Speaker 2: glow in the dark axilotel and you're showing it off

315
00:17:45,760 --> 00:17:48,800
Speaker 2: with the black light how it glows, you actually don't

316
00:17:48,800 --> 00:17:50,960
Speaker 2: want to do that very much because you're blasting them

317
00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:53,920
Speaker 2: with UV radiation and their skin is so delicate. It's

318
00:17:53,960 --> 00:17:55,280
Speaker 2: actually really bad for them.

319
00:17:56,080 --> 00:17:58,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you're a teenage boy and your mom's

320
00:17:58,600 --> 00:17:59,959
Speaker 3: in the room, you don't want to do that anyway.

321
00:18:01,480 --> 00:18:03,760
Speaker 2: Right, What do you mean I'm not catching that one?

322
00:18:04,240 --> 00:18:14,439
Speaker 3: That's right. Adults will understands. Moving on, They are about

323
00:18:14,960 --> 00:18:16,800
Speaker 3: ten inches long, or they can grow up to ten

324
00:18:16,840 --> 00:18:20,360
Speaker 3: inches long. They have those big, wide mouths that look

325
00:18:20,440 --> 00:18:23,359
Speaker 3: sort of unusually large for their size and for their head,

326
00:18:24,040 --> 00:18:26,399
Speaker 3: and they do have little teeth top and bottom, teeth

327
00:18:26,920 --> 00:18:29,879
Speaker 3: and their stubby little legs have four web toes on

328
00:18:29,920 --> 00:18:33,520
Speaker 3: the front and five on the rear. And we got

329
00:18:33,520 --> 00:18:36,159
Speaker 3: to talk about those gills, because the first thing you

330
00:18:36,240 --> 00:18:39,280
Speaker 3: might notice, aside from that winning smile when you look

331
00:18:39,280 --> 00:18:43,800
Speaker 3: at an Axi lotto, are those amazing feathery gills sticking

332
00:18:43,800 --> 00:18:47,639
Speaker 3: out from the head. They don't look like fish's gills

333
00:18:47,680 --> 00:18:49,639
Speaker 3: that you would see, just sort of, you know, just

334
00:18:49,680 --> 00:18:52,119
Speaker 3: like dumb old gills on the side of a fish head,

335
00:18:53,000 --> 00:18:56,760
Speaker 3: just opening back and forth like an air vent. These

336
00:18:56,800 --> 00:19:00,240
Speaker 3: things are, as Dave says, magnificent. There's no other to

337
00:19:00,280 --> 00:19:03,120
Speaker 3: describe these wispy, feathery, branched feathers.

338
00:19:03,359 --> 00:19:08,040
Speaker 2: It almost looks like little pieces of coral coming off

339
00:19:08,080 --> 00:19:11,359
Speaker 2: of it. There's three, three pair on each side of

340
00:19:11,400 --> 00:19:14,119
Speaker 2: its head. Now there's a pair on each side of

341
00:19:14,119 --> 00:19:17,840
Speaker 2: its head, times three, right, Yeah, Okay, Chuck, no more

342
00:19:17,880 --> 00:19:20,040
Speaker 2: Friday morning recording sessions for me.

343
00:19:20,200 --> 00:19:22,360
Speaker 3: Okay, that was some tough mess.

344
00:19:23,200 --> 00:19:28,359
Speaker 2: And they look like flowy and branched and philigreed because

345
00:19:28,359 --> 00:19:33,080
Speaker 2: they're essentially like our lungs. Our lungs have avoli, these

346
00:19:33,119 --> 00:19:35,399
Speaker 2: air sacs, and if you really look at a detail

347
00:19:35,400 --> 00:19:38,200
Speaker 2: of our lungs, they're branched in feathery and philigreed because

348
00:19:38,240 --> 00:19:42,440
Speaker 2: that expands the surface area for gas exchange. Same thing

349
00:19:42,480 --> 00:19:45,480
Speaker 2: with the axe lottel, except those are gills to them

350
00:19:45,920 --> 00:19:48,760
Speaker 2: because they do the oxygen exchange of the gas exchange

351
00:19:48,800 --> 00:19:51,359
Speaker 2: under water. And they're on their head.

352
00:19:52,840 --> 00:19:56,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's it looks like an adornment almost, you know,

353
00:19:56,800 --> 00:19:57,360
Speaker 3: or a hair do.

354
00:19:57,800 --> 00:19:59,960
Speaker 2: Like a Larry Fine hairdo from the Three Stooges.

355
00:20:00,359 --> 00:20:02,800
Speaker 3: Right, it's cuterer than that.

356
00:20:03,119 --> 00:20:04,880
Speaker 2: I think Larry's hair was super cute.

357
00:20:05,119 --> 00:20:08,920
Speaker 3: Okay, As I mentioned earlier, I kind of teased about

358
00:20:08,920 --> 00:20:11,120
Speaker 3: an Axi lottle tour in Mexico City. I'm not sure

359
00:20:11,119 --> 00:20:14,399
Speaker 3: how they do those, but they are generally not around

360
00:20:14,480 --> 00:20:17,520
Speaker 3: during the day. They're pretty sedentary and they hide in

361
00:20:17,560 --> 00:20:20,359
Speaker 3: the mud. Nighttime is the right time for the Axi

362
00:20:20,400 --> 00:20:24,720
Speaker 3: lotte They come out and eat basically anything that they

363
00:20:24,800 --> 00:20:29,240
Speaker 3: can eat their carnivores, anything with a beating heart, whether

364
00:20:29,280 --> 00:20:31,879
Speaker 3: it's a worm or a mollusk, or even a crustacean

365
00:20:31,960 --> 00:20:34,800
Speaker 3: or a tiny fish, an Axi lotta will chow down

366
00:20:34,920 --> 00:20:38,760
Speaker 3: on them. And you mentioned earlier that they can even

367
00:20:38,760 --> 00:20:43,920
Speaker 3: though they never go through that metamorphosis that other amphibians

368
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:47,320
Speaker 3: do in order to live a life on land and

369
00:20:47,359 --> 00:20:50,680
Speaker 3: do things like reproduce. They can reproduce. They are sexually

370
00:20:50,720 --> 00:20:54,320
Speaker 3: mature at six months old, and they're just it's called

371
00:20:54,320 --> 00:20:56,359
Speaker 3: the peter Pan state. They're sort of stuck in this

372
00:20:56,800 --> 00:21:01,200
Speaker 3: eternal childhood. But those children still want to have babies

373
00:21:01,320 --> 00:21:02,359
Speaker 3: and do that thing, you know.

374
00:21:02,560 --> 00:21:03,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, So how do they do it?

375
00:21:04,800 --> 00:21:09,040
Speaker 3: Well, like many animals, there's a little dancing ritual. It's

376
00:21:09,040 --> 00:21:11,040
Speaker 3: called the mating waltz where the male and the female

377
00:21:11,359 --> 00:21:14,720
Speaker 3: kind of swim very tightly together. They get their cloacas

378
00:21:14,760 --> 00:21:17,679
Speaker 3: and rub them against each other. Things are getting a

379
00:21:17,680 --> 00:21:20,840
Speaker 3: little steamy down there in the lake, and then the

380
00:21:20,840 --> 00:21:26,520
Speaker 3: male says, here you go, here's a big cone full

381
00:21:26,560 --> 00:21:29,480
Speaker 3: of sperm. And the female says, well, thank you very much.

382
00:21:29,640 --> 00:21:32,359
Speaker 3: I we'll use my cloaca to accept that be whip

383
00:21:32,359 --> 00:21:37,719
Speaker 3: and fertilize my eggs. And those eggs are a lot.

384
00:21:37,720 --> 00:21:40,440
Speaker 3: They are about three hundred to one thousand fertilized eggs.

385
00:21:41,600 --> 00:21:44,360
Speaker 3: What I wondered is how, I mean, I know, we'll

386
00:21:44,359 --> 00:21:46,760
Speaker 3: talk about why they're so endangered, but if they're laying

387
00:21:46,840 --> 00:21:48,919
Speaker 3: that many eggs, how many come to fruition? Because that's

388
00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:49,720
Speaker 3: a lot of eggs.

389
00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:52,919
Speaker 2: I got you. I found on some message boards. I

390
00:21:52,920 --> 00:21:55,000
Speaker 2: don't even know if they call them that any longer,

391
00:21:55,040 --> 00:21:58,439
Speaker 2: but on the internet from people who raise acxilatos that

392
00:21:58,520 --> 00:22:01,440
Speaker 2: they're actually they a lot of them do, like more

393
00:22:01,440 --> 00:22:05,639
Speaker 2: than a than half. It was a news serve. Oh wow,

394
00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:10,439
Speaker 2: they they I saw somebody predict about eighty percent. Well hatch,

395
00:22:10,600 --> 00:22:13,680
Speaker 2: which is a big deal. If you have a female

396
00:22:13,720 --> 00:22:15,960
Speaker 2: and a male Acxi lotel in your tank, you really

397
00:22:16,040 --> 00:22:20,200
Speaker 2: have to keep an eye out for eggsacs floating around

398
00:22:20,280 --> 00:22:23,280
Speaker 2: because those you'll have a lot of acxi lottos on

399
00:22:23,320 --> 00:22:24,080
Speaker 2: your hands.

400
00:22:24,480 --> 00:22:26,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they if you get one as a pet,

401
00:22:26,880 --> 00:22:28,920
Speaker 3: and we'll talk about care a little bit at the end,

402
00:22:28,960 --> 00:22:31,760
Speaker 3: but be prepared to have that thing for a while

403
00:22:31,840 --> 00:22:35,479
Speaker 3: because in captivity they can live up to twenty five years.

404
00:22:36,160 --> 00:22:39,359
Speaker 3: In the wild about ten to fifteen. And if you

405
00:22:39,400 --> 00:22:43,000
Speaker 3: remember our we talked about the proteus alemander a long

406
00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:43,640
Speaker 3: time ago.

407
00:22:43,560 --> 00:22:45,240
Speaker 2: In our biosbiology episode.

408
00:22:45,320 --> 00:22:47,760
Speaker 3: That's right, that was a good creepy episode. Those things

409
00:22:47,760 --> 00:22:50,040
Speaker 3: can live to be one hundred so it's not unusual

410
00:22:50,080 --> 00:22:51,640
Speaker 3: for a sally to have a long life.

411
00:22:51,800 --> 00:22:53,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like you said, in captivity up to twenty

412
00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:55,600
Speaker 2: five years, And I just want to make sure that

413
00:22:55,640 --> 00:22:59,280
Speaker 2: everybody who's buying Acxi lottos as pets these days knows that, like,

414
00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:02,680
Speaker 2: you're twenty five years, you're going to have graduated college

415
00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:04,840
Speaker 2: and had your first job and maybe even have a

416
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:07,560
Speaker 2: kid while your axilout is still around. So keep that

417
00:23:07,600 --> 00:23:08,000
Speaker 2: in mind.

418
00:23:08,600 --> 00:23:11,000
Speaker 3: Well, in the Disney movie, maybe that's why the excel

419
00:23:11,119 --> 00:23:13,679
Speaker 3: suppress that might be a little too toy story that

420
00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:16,560
Speaker 3: the kid sort of doesn't care anymore, but hey, you

421
00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:16,960
Speaker 3: never know.

422
00:23:17,080 --> 00:23:19,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we couldn't do that they flushed him down

423
00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:23,440
Speaker 2: the toilet because that's like finding Nemo, right, Hmmm.

424
00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:26,440
Speaker 3: Is that how Nemo got back into the wild?

425
00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:28,800
Speaker 2: I feel like that happened the summer at some point.

426
00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:30,600
Speaker 2: I could be making that up, though it.

427
00:23:30,560 --> 00:23:32,400
Speaker 3: Isn't drifted in and out of some of those, you.

428
00:23:32,320 --> 00:23:34,320
Speaker 2: Know, it's just sooned out.

429
00:23:35,240 --> 00:23:36,960
Speaker 3: Well, I mean a lot of those I really like.

430
00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:38,520
Speaker 3: But then you know, when you have a kid, you're

431
00:23:38,560 --> 00:23:42,240
Speaker 3: watching so many Sometimes you're working and you know you

432
00:23:42,520 --> 00:23:44,119
Speaker 3: know Nemo's down there, but you don't remember how he

433
00:23:44,160 --> 00:23:44,679
Speaker 3: got there. You know.

434
00:23:44,800 --> 00:23:49,560
Speaker 2: I liked finding Nemo overall, but okay, moment to moment,

435
00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:51,399
Speaker 2: I didn't like that movie very much.

436
00:23:52,800 --> 00:23:55,320
Speaker 3: But the whole is greater than the sum of its tissue.

437
00:23:55,320 --> 00:23:57,680
Speaker 2: Party, yes, yeah, well put well, put all.

438
00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:01,040
Speaker 3: Right, all right, so we haven't blown your mind yet.

439
00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:03,520
Speaker 3: Everyone's like, all right, they don't metamor size not the

440
00:24:03,520 --> 00:24:06,520
Speaker 3: biggest deal in the world, guys. Here's where the mind

441
00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:12,919
Speaker 3: blowing stuff comes in. Overall, salamanders and newts can regrow stuff.

442
00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:16,720
Speaker 3: They can regenerate tissue. They can regrow a tail. We

443
00:24:16,800 --> 00:24:20,479
Speaker 3: all know that they can regrow a limb. That's fine,

444
00:24:20,640 --> 00:24:24,280
Speaker 3: and they come out usually okay. But the axe a

445
00:24:24,359 --> 00:24:28,879
Speaker 3: lodel can well you know what I should read, actually

446
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:31,960
Speaker 3: what Stephanie Roy says. This is a researcher from the

447
00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:33,000
Speaker 3: University of Montreal.

448
00:24:33,119 --> 00:24:35,640
Speaker 2: Can you do your Stephanie Roy impression while you read it?

449
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:38,720
Speaker 3: Sure, here we go. You can cut the spinal cord,

450
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:40,920
Speaker 3: she sounds a lot like me. You can cut the

451
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:45,080
Speaker 3: spinal cord, crush it, remove a segment and it will regenerate.

452
00:24:45,400 --> 00:24:47,560
Speaker 3: You can cut the limbs at any level, the wrist,

453
00:24:47,720 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 3: the elbow, the upper arm. This all sounds very sadistic,

454
00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 3: by the way, and it will regenerate and it's perfect.

455
00:24:54,520 --> 00:24:57,280
Speaker 3: There's nothing missing, there's no scarring on the skin. At

456
00:24:57,280 --> 00:25:00,840
Speaker 3: the side of amputation, every tissue is repla. They can

457
00:25:00,880 --> 00:25:05,680
Speaker 3: regenerate the same limb fifty sixty one hundred times parentheses.

458
00:25:05,760 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 3: Trust me, I've cut off a lot of legs of

459
00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:13,240
Speaker 3: exilotis in parentheses and every time perfect.

460
00:25:13,640 --> 00:25:17,359
Speaker 2: Yeah. And what's crazy is like this continues throughout their life.

461
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:20,239
Speaker 2: Like they can do this when they're very young, they

462
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 2: can do it when they're very old. Apparently. The only

463
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 2: change is that it just takes longer the older they are.

464
00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 2: But that that new leg, that that new tail, it's

465
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 2: as good as new every time, no matter how old

466
00:25:34,640 --> 00:25:37,240
Speaker 2: they are. And that's pretty mind blowing in and of itself.

467
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:39,480
Speaker 2: It gets even crazier than that.

468
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:41,000
Speaker 3: Chuck that's here.

469
00:25:41,160 --> 00:25:45,800
Speaker 2: In addition to like extremities and limbs and tails and stuff,

470
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:49,639
Speaker 2: they can do the same thing with organs. Yeah, and

471
00:25:49,720 --> 00:25:52,720
Speaker 2: like important organs too, like the heart and the brain

472
00:25:53,200 --> 00:25:56,760
Speaker 2: and their spinal cord. They can regrow it good as

473
00:25:56,840 --> 00:25:58,080
Speaker 2: new every time.

474
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:01,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really amazing. And if you think they should

475
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:06,440
Speaker 3: study this stuff to see if humans, you know, could

476
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:08,680
Speaker 3: potentially do something like this with a little help from

477
00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:11,720
Speaker 3: ax a lot of stuff, right, they are studying this

478
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:15,040
Speaker 3: stuff because and they've already found some pretty good breakthroughs,

479
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 3: but Axi lottels are very very valuable to study. And

480
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:20,320
Speaker 3: what they've learned so far as far as these limbs

481
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:23,240
Speaker 3: go and other things, is you get that little limb

482
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 3: cut off or something, and the cells nearest to that

483
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:32,080
Speaker 3: limb wound differentiate immediately, so that means it's sort of

484
00:26:32,080 --> 00:26:33,840
Speaker 3: like a stem cell. That means they can become any

485
00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:37,159
Speaker 3: type of cell kind of instantaneously, and they form a

486
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:43,360
Speaker 3: little a little pile around these undifferentiated cells, and that's

487
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:47,120
Speaker 3: called a blastema. Or then this helps you to visualize

488
00:26:47,119 --> 00:26:50,600
Speaker 3: it more, it's also called a regeneration bud. So it's

489
00:26:50,600 --> 00:26:55,000
Speaker 3: like a little plant butd or something. Basically, we scar

490
00:26:55,200 --> 00:26:58,240
Speaker 3: up like dummies. We form scar like cut off your

491
00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:01,120
Speaker 3: arm and you're going to start forming scar tissue. Axe

492
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:03,159
Speaker 3: Lott's say no, no, no, we're going to grow that

493
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:06,560
Speaker 3: thing back with this blastoma, and they do that. They

494
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:10,320
Speaker 3: generate stem cells, bone cells, muscle nerves, whatever you need

495
00:27:10,840 --> 00:27:14,119
Speaker 3: to replicate perfectly whatever is now missing.

496
00:27:14,320 --> 00:27:20,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is pretty amazing considering we have pretty much

497
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:24,159
Speaker 2: the same genes we've figured out the Axi Lottel So

498
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 2: they sequenced an Axi Lottal genome in twenty eighteen. I

499
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:33,879
Speaker 2: believe it's the largest genome ever sequenced because amazing, the

500
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:37,560
Speaker 2: Axi Lottal's genome is second only to the Australian lungfish

501
00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:41,200
Speaker 2: in size and number of base pairs. Humans have three

502
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:44,200
Speaker 2: billion base pairs. We're doing pretty good with three billion

503
00:27:44,240 --> 00:27:46,720
Speaker 2: base pairs is kind of to be expected. That's a lot.

504
00:27:47,560 --> 00:27:51,439
Speaker 2: Axi Lotte's have ten almost eleven times the number of

505
00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:54,439
Speaker 2: base pairs that humans do, thirty two billion base pairs

506
00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:58,120
Speaker 2: in their genome. And so after examining all this, scientists

507
00:27:58,119 --> 00:28:01,600
Speaker 2: said like, hey, we've got some of these genes. What's

508
00:28:01,800 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 2: different They think is that with axe lotels, those genes

509
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:09,080
Speaker 2: are stuck in the on position. Either they never make

510
00:28:09,119 --> 00:28:12,360
Speaker 2: the hormone that would turn those genes off, or they

511
00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:15,199
Speaker 2: continue to produce the hormone that keeps those genes on

512
00:28:15,800 --> 00:28:18,240
Speaker 2: regardless the fact that those genes are turned on and

513
00:28:18,240 --> 00:28:22,920
Speaker 2: then makes them able to just regrow like brand new

514
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:24,399
Speaker 2: every time throughout their life.

515
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:28,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really something else. There's another cool theory about

516
00:28:28,200 --> 00:28:33,879
Speaker 3: why this might be true evolutionarily speaking, and there are

517
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:37,160
Speaker 3: scientists that think that maybe at one point in their

518
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:40,640
Speaker 3: history when they were in that lake and they were landlocked,

519
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 3: and food may have been abundant at one time, but

520
00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:47,080
Speaker 3: maybe at one point there were too many Acxi lottels

521
00:28:47,080 --> 00:28:49,640
Speaker 3: and food wasn't as abundant, and so they may have

522
00:28:50,640 --> 00:28:55,480
Speaker 3: turned cannibalistic and said, hey, friend, no, we've been hanging

523
00:28:55,480 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 3: out a lot lately, but your rear leg is looking

524
00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 3: pretty tasty to me, and so I'm just going to

525
00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:04,400
Speaker 3: bite that off and eat it if you don't mind.

526
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,200
Speaker 3: And that happened so much that the axe A lottos

527
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:10,960
Speaker 3: who thrived were the ones who could grow those limbs

528
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:12,240
Speaker 3: back quicker and survive.

529
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, which makes sense, not bad. I don't have a

530
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 2: rival theory for that one.

531
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:17,000
Speaker 3: Ah.

532
00:29:17,040 --> 00:29:21,440
Speaker 2: Shoot, I could make one up real quick. No, I can't.

533
00:29:21,600 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 2: It's Friday morning. Maybe if it were a Thursday afternoon.

534
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:25,160
Speaker 3: But I know.

535
00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:28,959
Speaker 2: So you might say, like, oh, that's cool. I want

536
00:29:29,040 --> 00:29:30,640
Speaker 2: to try this at home with my ax a lot

537
00:29:30,640 --> 00:29:34,480
Speaker 2: I'm going to cut off its right front leg and

538
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 2: half of its brain and see what happens. Please don't

539
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:40,920
Speaker 2: don't because they do have pain receptors, so they can't

540
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 2: feel pain. Apparently they have a high threshold pain, but

541
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:47,120
Speaker 2: they will still feel pain if you essentially torture them

542
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 2: for your own amusement. So don't do that to your

543
00:29:49,320 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 2: axe a lottle at home. And by the way, is

544
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 2: these aren't messages to Charlie's flooras because based on her

545
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 2: her preliminary research, she knows what she's doing. She's taking

546
00:29:57,920 --> 00:29:59,960
Speaker 2: good care of Boba totally.

547
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:05,320
Speaker 3: Another amazing superpower that these little guys have is the

548
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:07,360
Speaker 3: you know, not only can they grow back things and

549
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:12,520
Speaker 3: grow back organs, but they can transplant organs perfectly, just

550
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:14,560
Speaker 3: like they can grow things back. They don't have a

551
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:17,719
Speaker 3: learned immune system like we do when you get and

552
00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:22,000
Speaker 3: we did an episode on organ transplant many years ago,

553
00:30:22,080 --> 00:30:24,000
Speaker 3: and as we all know, a lot of times, in fact,

554
00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:26,880
Speaker 3: about a third of the time, the human body will

555
00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:30,040
Speaker 3: reject the organ because we have a learned immune system

556
00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:32,800
Speaker 3: and we'll just say, no, this isn't, this isn't shouldn't

557
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 3: be on my body. Yeah, get this thing out of here.

558
00:30:36,600 --> 00:30:39,080
Speaker 3: But axe lottos don't have that, so you can transplant.

559
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:44,040
Speaker 3: It's like one hundred percent non rejection rate for organ transplants.

560
00:30:44,120 --> 00:30:46,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean that's for axe lottel. Right, You

561
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:48,719
Speaker 2: couldn't put like a pig heart in it or anything.

562
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:52,600
Speaker 3: I don't think they've tried, but probably you're right, I

563
00:30:52,600 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 3: would say.

564
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:54,080
Speaker 2: I don't know if we said it or not. But

565
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:57,719
Speaker 2: the different kinds of like lab grown types and varieties

566
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:00,520
Speaker 2: of ax lottols are called morphs. Did you say that.

567
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 2: So there's a type of morph called the firefly morph.

568
00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:08,120
Speaker 2: And when it's in the embryonic stage, they'll take if

569
00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:11,880
Speaker 2: it's a like a black or dark modeled Axi lottle,

570
00:31:12,160 --> 00:31:15,320
Speaker 2: they'll take a tail from a white axe lotto or

571
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 2: pink one, and vice versa, and they will transplant the

572
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 2: tail in the embryonic stage and the thing grows up

573
00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:24,920
Speaker 2: and it's like black with a white tail or white

574
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:27,880
Speaker 2: with a black tail. I don't think it's very cool looking,

575
00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:29,360
Speaker 2: but I think some people do.

576
00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another superpower is that they are one thousand more

577
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:41,920
Speaker 3: times resistant to cancer than other mammals. It's pretty amazing.

578
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:45,560
Speaker 3: And again researchers are studying this because like, could the

579
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:49,280
Speaker 3: cure for cancer potentially be in these cute little sallies

580
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:51,760
Speaker 3: And you know, you never know. They have treated breast

581
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:57,200
Speaker 3: cancer patients with Axi loottle egg serum and it halted

582
00:31:57,200 --> 00:32:00,440
Speaker 3: the growth of cancerous tumors. So you know, know.

583
00:32:00,520 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, they looked into it and they think what happened

584
00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:08,760
Speaker 2: was that the axe Lottle juice reprogrammed the tumor suppressing

585
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 2: genes that had been turned off epigenetically went in and

586
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:16,800
Speaker 2: turned it back on, and so the tumor fighting proteins

587
00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 2: and hormones were able to fight that tumor and stop

588
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 2: it from growing. Wow. Yeah, Wow is right, And I

589
00:32:23,720 --> 00:32:27,920
Speaker 2: say that big wow calls for a message break. What

590
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:37,719
Speaker 2: do you think? I agree, Stoff we Josh Soft.

591
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:44,120
Speaker 1: I want to learn about a terroristort in college Taradactyl,

592
00:32:44,160 --> 00:32:46,800
Speaker 1: how to take the berg bo all about rectalink is gone.

593
00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:50,000
Speaker 4: That's a little hunt the Lizzie Borderers on the plane.

594
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:53,160
Speaker 4: Everything should know.

595
00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:59,920
Speaker 2: Word up, Jerry, so Chuck. There's a big irony with ax.

596
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:02,960
Speaker 2: Aside from the irony that they can reproduce even though

597
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 2: they're young and YadA YadA, they are critically endangered in

598
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:12,000
Speaker 2: the wild because again there's one small, tiny body of

599
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 2: water in outside of Mexico City where they live, and

600
00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 2: they live nowhere else in the wild, But there's countless

601
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:25,560
Speaker 2: accil Lottels thriving and living in captivity. Because it was

602
00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:29,520
Speaker 2: very clear early on in the mid nineteenth century to

603
00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 2: at least some French physicians that they would make great

604
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:37,280
Speaker 2: lab animals to experiment and test on. And so they

605
00:33:37,320 --> 00:33:40,680
Speaker 2: took some sample Acxi lottels to France and from that

606
00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:43,400
Speaker 2: point on they just kept breeding them and breeding them

607
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:46,360
Speaker 2: and breeding them. Another world has tons of Acxi lottels,

608
00:33:46,640 --> 00:33:49,320
Speaker 2: they're just not around in the wild much.

609
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:53,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, big time. You know, we talked about the habitat loss.

610
00:33:53,920 --> 00:34:00,520
Speaker 3: There's also a pollution problem. Also, the government introduce carp

611
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:05,000
Speaker 3: i believe in Tilapia into where the axilottos were into

612
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 3: that lake and you know it for a food source

613
00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:11,239
Speaker 3: basically for fishermen, but they eat the plants where the

614
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:14,200
Speaker 3: axil lottles like eggs. So that was a problem. And

615
00:34:14,640 --> 00:34:17,120
Speaker 3: here's some numbers for you. In nineteen ninety eight there

616
00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:21,120
Speaker 3: were about six thousand Axi lottles per square kilometer and

617
00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:26,280
Speaker 3: that is down to thirty five three five per square

618
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:28,439
Speaker 3: kilometer today, which is very dead.

619
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:32,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again critically endangered. And one of the reasons

620
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:35,840
Speaker 2: why there's so many in captivity. I was saying is

621
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:39,360
Speaker 2: that they do make a great lab animal. Apparently they're

622
00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:45,640
Speaker 2: experimented on second or third only to rats and mice. Wow, yeah,

623
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 2: that's surprising. That must be as far as vertebrates go.

624
00:34:49,200 --> 00:34:53,400
Speaker 2: But they that's where the pink Axi lottels come from

625
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 2: and all the other specimens. Apparently there were there was

626
00:34:56,400 --> 00:35:00,359
Speaker 2: what are called lucistic axi lottels. They're almost oh buy

627
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:03,399
Speaker 2: I no, not quite, but they were in that group

628
00:35:03,440 --> 00:35:05,960
Speaker 2: of thirty four X lottels that were first taken into Paris.

629
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:08,640
Speaker 2: And so every pink axe lotte is descended from those.

630
00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 2: I think there are like six original ones. But the

631
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:16,200
Speaker 2: reason that they work so well in labs is that

632
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:19,680
Speaker 2: they have some really interesting traits.

633
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:26,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are very easy to breed in captivity. They

634
00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 3: are easy to keep alive.

635
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:28,160
Speaker 2: If you know what you're doing.

636
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 3: Check sure, because we said, you know, they live a

637
00:35:30,600 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 3: long time. Apparently they have very big cells and they're

638
00:35:33,760 --> 00:35:36,799
Speaker 3: easy to look at and easy to examine. And I

639
00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:38,759
Speaker 3: think the eggs are thirty times larger than a.

640
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:40,640
Speaker 2: Human, roughly the size of a beach ball.

641
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:44,760
Speaker 3: They're embryonic neurons are six hundred times larger.

642
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:47,520
Speaker 2: What's that it's the size of the Grand Canyon.

643
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 3: Okay in big max. Sorry, right, And you know they're

644
00:35:54,320 --> 00:35:57,440
Speaker 3: they're just ideal model organisms for the lab, and so

645
00:35:57,520 --> 00:36:00,680
Speaker 3: that's why, and you know, because of their superpower, that's

646
00:36:00,680 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 3: why they are studied a lot.

647
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:04,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we found a few things from them already.

648
00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:09,040
Speaker 2: We've figured out how organs develop invertebrates, including us, because,

649
00:36:09,040 --> 00:36:12,480
Speaker 2: like I said, we realized when we scan their genome

650
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 2: that we have a lot of the same genes. We

651
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:18,440
Speaker 2: use those genes to grow limbs ourselves and lose our

652
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:21,840
Speaker 2: tails ourselves while we're in utero, but after we're born,

653
00:36:22,160 --> 00:36:25,320
Speaker 2: probably right before we're born, those genes get turned off.

654
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 2: So we've figured out, thanks to the Axil Lottel how

655
00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:31,320
Speaker 2: those genes work and which ones are important. We figured

656
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 2: out how spina bifido works and where it comes from.

657
00:36:34,440 --> 00:36:39,040
Speaker 2: And thyroid hormones you wanted those isolated Axi Lotte's got

658
00:36:39,120 --> 00:36:39,600
Speaker 2: you covered.

659
00:36:40,400 --> 00:36:44,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. If you're in did you already

660
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:47,880
Speaker 3: say that the fact that they're growing like tons and

661
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 3: tons of these in a lab doesn't mean you can

662
00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 3: just throw them back in a lake because they have

663
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:52,880
Speaker 3: a shortage.

664
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:53,799
Speaker 2: There, right, I did not say that.

665
00:36:54,560 --> 00:36:56,719
Speaker 3: Well, I just said it because that's what I was

666
00:36:56,760 --> 00:37:00,399
Speaker 3: thinking this whole time. I was researching. It was well,

667
00:37:00,560 --> 00:37:03,799
Speaker 3: why then, since they are critically endangered, can't you just

668
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:07,319
Speaker 3: release you know, tens of thousands of these But it

669
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:10,400
Speaker 3: just doesn't work that way. These morphs are bred for

670
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:14,520
Speaker 3: the lab, they're not bread for that lake, and it

671
00:37:14,560 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 3: apparently just doesn't work.

672
00:37:16,520 --> 00:37:19,719
Speaker 2: It'd be like moving your city cousin in with your

673
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:24,000
Speaker 2: country cousin. Like you might have a decent sitcom on

674
00:37:24,040 --> 00:37:26,000
Speaker 2: your hands, but it's only going to last a season

675
00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 2: or two, that's right.

676
00:37:27,520 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 3: It all falls apart on Super Tuesdays exactly.

677
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:34,359
Speaker 2: So yeah, they can't do that. That's not to say

678
00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 2: that they won't find a place where they could introduce

679
00:37:36,560 --> 00:37:40,759
Speaker 2: them to the wild. It's just apparently taking them back

680
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:43,600
Speaker 2: to where they're from or where they originated is not

681
00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:44,480
Speaker 2: on the table.

682
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:48,120
Speaker 3: Yeah. And if you're wondering, well, what are they doing,

683
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:51,520
Speaker 3: they are trying because the axe lotel is such a

684
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:57,800
Speaker 3: culturally important thing, scientifically important animal. It is a flagship

685
00:37:57,840 --> 00:38:01,920
Speaker 3: species that they designated i think semi recently, which which

686
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 3: helps obviously protect it. They are now building sheltered areas

687
00:38:06,200 --> 00:38:10,879
Speaker 3: that don't have those grass eating tilapia. They're blocking them

688
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 3: out so they can lay those eggs safely. Where they

689
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:16,200
Speaker 3: had for you know, eons. Actually, how long is an eon?

690
00:38:16,239 --> 00:38:19,279
Speaker 3: I probably misuse that. I don't know.

691
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:23,040
Speaker 2: Let's say, I'm sure I'll get any pretty long time, Okay,

692
00:38:23,120 --> 00:38:23,919
Speaker 2: pretty long time.

693
00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:28,600
Speaker 3: The tour guides and the locals have all been you know,

694
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:32,799
Speaker 3: educated and trained on best practices for like fishing and

695
00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:36,080
Speaker 3: doing those tours, and you know, hopefully all that stuff

696
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 3: makes a difference and really sinks in because it is

697
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:41,960
Speaker 3: a beloved cultural creature.

698
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:45,160
Speaker 2: So beloved in fact, chuck that. In twenty twenty, Mexico said, hey, everybody,

699
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:48,879
Speaker 2: check out our new fifty payso bill. And everybody's like, oh,

700
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 2: it's pretty cool, all right, And then they said no, no,

701
00:38:51,120 --> 00:38:53,960
Speaker 2: turn it over, right, and everybody turned it over. They're like,

702
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 2: there's an axe lottle on the back of the fifty

703
00:38:56,680 --> 00:39:00,239
Speaker 2: payso bill. Now Mexico's government said, yep, cool.

704
00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, every time they do that trick, they put it

705
00:39:03,200 --> 00:39:06,000
Speaker 3: on the wrong side and just say, watching this, yeah exactly,

706
00:39:06,360 --> 00:39:08,040
Speaker 3: I tell them to turn it over. It kills.

707
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:10,760
Speaker 2: What's funny is the axe lottel appears to be floating

708
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 2: above the water weirdly. Yeah, it's a strange jam, but

709
00:39:14,600 --> 00:39:16,799
Speaker 2: it's cute as a button. On the back of the

710
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:17,719
Speaker 2: fifty payso.

711
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:22,200
Speaker 3: Bill, Yeah, I agree, and also shout out to Minecraft. Uh,

712
00:39:22,239 --> 00:39:24,920
Speaker 3: that's a game that my daughter's obsessed with now, as

713
00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:28,200
Speaker 3: many young EN's are. And there is an axe Lottel

714
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:28,920
Speaker 3: in Minecraft.

715
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 2: Okay, I couldn't figure this out. What's a mob in Minecraft?

716
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:34,799
Speaker 2: It seems to be referred to like an individual thing.

717
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:39,680
Speaker 3: I don't know, okay, apparently no, I don't play, so

718
00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:42,560
Speaker 3: I don't know. Okay, fair enough, you like, but do

719
00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:43,359
Speaker 3: you talk to your daughter?

720
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:46,440
Speaker 2: And I'm curious though, ask her and let me know,

721
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:47,640
Speaker 2: will you? Yeah?

722
00:39:47,719 --> 00:39:49,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll just she can text you now.

723
00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:51,759
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, tell her to text me what a mob is?

724
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 3: All right? She does have a phone, but she does

725
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:58,160
Speaker 3: have a little email address, so it's cute text her

726
00:39:58,280 --> 00:40:01,759
Speaker 3: friends occasionally. She does have thumb and she does have

727
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:04,279
Speaker 3: thumbs and they work pretty well. Get ready for lots

728
00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:04,760
Speaker 3: of memes.

729
00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:06,919
Speaker 2: By the way, what do you mean, Oh, she's gonna

730
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:10,840
Speaker 2: send me if your okay? Does she have the good ones?

731
00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:13,440
Speaker 3: I don't even know how to get a meme in

732
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:15,920
Speaker 3: a text. I have no idea. And the first thing

733
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:18,239
Speaker 3: she did was send me like sixty in a row.

734
00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:20,120
Speaker 2: It's copy and paste buddy.

735
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:22,200
Speaker 3: I know, but I don't even know where to find them.

736
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 2: Oh that's a big first step.

737
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:26,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not going to give you your phone number.

738
00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:29,319
Speaker 3: You'll your life will change, and not in a great way.

739
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 2: Okay, well, then send me screenshots of her texts to you.

740
00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:34,480
Speaker 2: Then all right, leave me out of it.

741
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 3: Sorry.

742
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:38,560
Speaker 2: So Mexico City in twenty seventeen said, hey, let's have

743
00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:42,120
Speaker 2: an emoji contest because, as as is the case with

744
00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:44,520
Speaker 2: cities these days, every city has to have its own

745
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:48,759
Speaker 2: official emoji. And guess what the emojis are based on

746
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 2: in Mexico City to Molly's with the ax Lottle head

747
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:58,080
Speaker 2: sticking out of the Oh no, no, just ax Lottle

748
00:40:58,280 --> 00:40:58,880
Speaker 2: doing stuff.

749
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:02,400
Speaker 3: That's great. Love it. So before we finish up, you

750
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:06,239
Speaker 3: found some good stuff about ax A Lottle care. We

751
00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:09,960
Speaker 3: are not experts, but you did find some stuff. Where

752
00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:10,480
Speaker 3: did you find this?

753
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:14,359
Speaker 2: I'll have to tell you in a moment.

754
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:18,359
Speaker 3: But go ahead, okay, And again you should you know,

755
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 3: if you're getting into the ax A Lottle game, as

756
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:23,880
Speaker 3: pat wise, do all your own research. Don't just listen

757
00:41:23,920 --> 00:41:25,680
Speaker 3: to the next you know, five minutes and think I

758
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:29,440
Speaker 3: got it covered. This is just sort of a broad overview, right, right.

759
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:31,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's a few things that you need to

760
00:41:31,680 --> 00:41:36,840
Speaker 2: remember with ax a lottles. There very sensitive to water

761
00:41:36,880 --> 00:41:40,560
Speaker 2: temperature and water quality. Obviously you want to start with

762
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:43,400
Speaker 2: fresh water, but you want to start with filtered freshwater

763
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:45,680
Speaker 2: to begin with. But you can't just put fresh water

764
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:48,200
Speaker 2: in there and say hey, it's all good, get in there,

765
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:50,319
Speaker 2: ax a lottle. You want to tweak it enough so

766
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:52,400
Speaker 2: that the ax a lottle can be happy and thrive

767
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:52,879
Speaker 2: in there.

768
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:56,680
Speaker 3: Yeah. You also want to get a fish net. You

769
00:41:56,680 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 3: don't want to handle as much as you might want

770
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:02,279
Speaker 3: to pet this thing. They have very sensitive skin. It's

771
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:05,319
Speaker 3: very easily damaged, and so you don't want to pick

772
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:07,440
Speaker 3: the thing up or pettit or anything like that. So

773
00:42:07,680 --> 00:42:09,680
Speaker 3: get out your little fish net when you're changing water

774
00:42:09,719 --> 00:42:14,359
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, and feed them a lot. Right.

775
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:17,680
Speaker 2: Yes, you want to feed them live stuff if possible,

776
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 2: especially when they're young, because they actually have a prey

777
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:23,480
Speaker 2: a predator response, so it's got to be moving for

778
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:25,879
Speaker 2: them to be like, oh that's food. They can eat

779
00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:29,000
Speaker 2: dead stuff later on as they get older, but you

780
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:31,239
Speaker 2: want to also be very selective. Don't go out and

781
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:34,080
Speaker 2: like save some money and harvest your own bloodworms. If

782
00:42:34,080 --> 00:42:35,880
Speaker 2: you even know how to do that. You want to

783
00:42:35,920 --> 00:42:39,319
Speaker 2: buy them from a reputable bloodworm dealer, which you can

784
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:44,160
Speaker 2: find basically on any corner in any talent in America. Sure,

785
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:47,440
Speaker 2: But the reason why is because those things are typically

786
00:42:47,560 --> 00:42:51,799
Speaker 2: like disease free parasite free, and if they aren't, those

787
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 2: can basically make your axe a little sick.

788
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 3: That's right. You don't want to do that. When tank

789
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:00,200
Speaker 3: shopping too, you also want to and this is true

790
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:02,600
Speaker 3: with any fish, and I think a common mistake is

791
00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:06,280
Speaker 3: that you don't get the right size tank and habitat.

792
00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:10,399
Speaker 3: For whatever it is, they need a little bit of room.

793
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:15,319
Speaker 3: So a twenty gallon aquarium is what they recommend for

794
00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:19,759
Speaker 3: like just one single Axi Lottel. If you want more

795
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:21,800
Speaker 3: than one, they say you really shouldn't do that. You

796
00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:24,400
Speaker 3: should just have one. You don't get five or six

797
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:26,520
Speaker 3: because you think it's five or six times as cute.

798
00:43:27,719 --> 00:43:32,120
Speaker 3: But if you are some sort of professional aquarium type

799
00:43:32,160 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 3: and you do want to house more than one, then

800
00:43:34,640 --> 00:43:37,000
Speaker 3: that tank has to grow, you know, proportionally.

801
00:43:37,360 --> 00:43:40,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. The other thing I was saying about the water,

802
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:41,839
Speaker 2: you need to tweak it. You want to keep your

803
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:44,919
Speaker 2: water temperature between sixty and sixty four degrees farent height.

804
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:48,880
Speaker 2: Go figure it out yourself. For Celsius and the pH

805
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:51,759
Speaker 2: you want somewhere between six point five and eight, but

806
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:55,080
Speaker 2: ideally about seven point four to seven point six, which

807
00:43:55,120 --> 00:43:57,960
Speaker 2: is basically right in there at neutral. They like neutral

808
00:43:58,040 --> 00:44:01,239
Speaker 2: fresh water at sixty to sixty four degrees farent height.

809
00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:05,200
Speaker 3: That's right. And they aren't like fish. You can't just

810
00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:08,400
Speaker 3: throw like fish gravel in there. And oh that's a

811
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:13,320
Speaker 3: big way. They need their own really specific habitat the substrate.

812
00:44:13,880 --> 00:44:17,120
Speaker 3: And you know, little shards of gravel can really really

813
00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:20,200
Speaker 3: harm an axi lottle it can. They tend to just

814
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 3: sort of gulp down water and in that water could

815
00:44:23,600 --> 00:44:28,160
Speaker 3: be little tiny shards of gravel. So maybe loose sand

816
00:44:28,960 --> 00:44:32,640
Speaker 3: could be a foundation. Definitely, don't just think. Get a

817
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:35,239
Speaker 3: fish tank and fish tank stuff and it'll work for

818
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:35,680
Speaker 3: your axe a lot.

819
00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:37,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, And some people say, well, I'm just not going

820
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:39,920
Speaker 2: to put anything down. They can just leave the bottom

821
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:42,399
Speaker 2: of the tank bear, which your ax a lotta won't

822
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 2: cut their skin on anything. But they'll also be freaked

823
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:47,959
Speaker 2: out because everything's so slippery. So sand is a good thing.

824
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:50,920
Speaker 2: And they also can burrow into sand if they're nervous

825
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 2: or scared or want to sleep too. That's right, there's

826
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:56,360
Speaker 2: a lot more out there. By the way, that was

827
00:44:56,400 --> 00:45:00,000
Speaker 2: from the Atlantic City Aquarium. They know what they're talking

828
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:03,279
Speaker 2: talking about, and you should probably do a lot more

829
00:45:03,400 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 2: research before you actually get your ax A Lottle and

830
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:06,879
Speaker 2: set its tank up.

831
00:45:07,360 --> 00:45:11,000
Speaker 3: Okay, that's right. And also now since we are wrapping

832
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:14,279
Speaker 3: this up, this means that we can go listen to

833
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:19,360
Speaker 3: the ninety nine percent Invisible Episode Model Organism, which also

834
00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:22,400
Speaker 3: covers the ax A Lottle. But Dave, who helped us

835
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:24,960
Speaker 3: with this, was like, don't listen to that first, because

836
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:28,240
Speaker 3: you're just gonna want to steal it all because Roman

837
00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 3: and the gang there does they do such a great

838
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 3: job and they have forever and Roman as a friend

839
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:35,120
Speaker 3: of the show, and I can't wait to go listen

840
00:45:35,160 --> 00:45:36,720
Speaker 3: to it. I'm sure it's amazing here.

841
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 2: Well, thanks to Roman for making that amazing episode, Thanks

842
00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:44,200
Speaker 2: to Charlie's Flores and her mom Gabrielle for sending in

843
00:45:44,239 --> 00:45:46,759
Speaker 2: that preliminary research. Thanks to Dave for helping us out,

844
00:45:47,080 --> 00:45:49,640
Speaker 2: and thanks to you for listening. Since I thank you

845
00:45:49,680 --> 00:45:53,399
Speaker 2: guys for listening and Chuck just said okay, tacitly by

846
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:55,839
Speaker 2: his silence, that means it's time for listener mail.

847
00:45:59,040 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 3: That's right. And also thanks to Charlie's their own sure

848
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:05,960
Speaker 3: and Rod Stewart, we got shout out. I mean we

849
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:07,480
Speaker 3: have been picking on him. I was just watching the

850
00:46:07,680 --> 00:46:09,839
Speaker 3: videos of old Sir Rod. Is he a sir?

851
00:46:10,040 --> 00:46:10,600
Speaker 2: I believe?

852
00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:10,759
Speaker 1: So?

853
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:14,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, sir, thanks for being such a great sport rotten.

854
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:22,520
Speaker 3: Uh all right, I'm gonna call this one. Which one

855
00:46:22,560 --> 00:46:24,040
Speaker 3: should I do? I'll do this one. I'll call this

856
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:25,680
Speaker 3: bede bed.

857
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 2: Oh man, what's wrong? I wanted to go the rest

858
00:46:29,120 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 2: of my life without correcting that.

859
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:35,799
Speaker 3: Well. Sorry, Uh hey guys, longtime listener of stuff you

860
00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:40,000
Speaker 3: should know from uh Wollongong, Australia.

861
00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:44,719
Speaker 2: Okay, Wallongong, I guarantee that's not how it's pronounced.

862
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 3: Wal I gong all you have to do to be

863
00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:50,880
Speaker 3: Australian to sound surprise at everything while I go.

864
00:46:51,160 --> 00:46:52,839
Speaker 2: I think that was a New Zealand accent too.

865
00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:55,960
Speaker 3: By the way, probably hey guys, heard your podcast and

866
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:58,600
Speaker 3: how the English language developed and have to correct your

867
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:03,759
Speaker 3: pronunciation of b E. Saint b d E is a

868
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:06,879
Speaker 3: famous Catholic saint who was a learned scholar from the

869
00:47:07,080 --> 00:47:11,319
Speaker 3: Jarro area of northern England. He's famous for writing a

870
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:14,320
Speaker 3: history of the English speaking people in English as opposed

871
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:16,319
Speaker 3: to Latin. I think he also had something to do

872
00:47:16,360 --> 00:47:18,520
Speaker 3: with the change to the calendar and using BC and

873
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:21,439
Speaker 3: AD and prefixes for dates before and after the birth

874
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:24,960
Speaker 3: of Jesus. Now this is something deserving of a separate

875
00:47:25,200 --> 00:47:28,120
Speaker 3: so if you should know topic one day. Anyway, as

876
00:47:28,200 --> 00:47:30,400
Speaker 3: I am named after him, I can assure you that

877
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:34,840
Speaker 3: the pronunciation of his name is the same as Bead.

878
00:47:37,640 --> 00:47:40,480
Speaker 2: Is that a disappointment, Yes, that's a disappointment, but I'm

879
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:43,000
Speaker 2: not even convinced. I mean, that's what Bed says.

880
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:46,400
Speaker 3: Well, Beide says, I've long had to put up with

881
00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:54,000
Speaker 3: people mispronouncing my name Bead Bead I and could you die. Well,

882
00:47:54,000 --> 00:47:56,120
Speaker 3: that's what he says, and could not help but correct

883
00:47:56,120 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 3: your attempts to get his name right. Keep up the

884
00:47:57,680 --> 00:48:00,760
Speaker 3: great work. Cheers that is from Bade Richie.

885
00:48:01,960 --> 00:48:04,920
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Beatty or Bead. I will call you

886
00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:07,120
Speaker 2: Bead because you said that's how your name is pronounced.

887
00:48:07,200 --> 00:48:10,319
Speaker 2: But this doesn't necessarily mean by extension unless you have

888
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:12,799
Speaker 2: a time machine handy that I don't know about that

889
00:48:13,080 --> 00:48:15,040
Speaker 2: Beatie's name wasn't pronounced.

890
00:48:14,640 --> 00:48:16,280
Speaker 3: Beatie auh greedy.

891
00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:19,080
Speaker 2: Uh. Well, if you want to get in touch with

892
00:48:19,080 --> 00:48:21,000
Speaker 2: this like bad did, thanks a lot. By the way, Bead,

893
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:24,759
Speaker 2: you can send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at

894
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:28,320
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.

895
00:48:29,200 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 4: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

896
00:48:32,160 --> 00:48:36,359
Speaker 4: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

897
00:48:36,480 --> 00:48:38,320
Speaker 4: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.