Original subtitles

meet the

axolot a Mexican salamander that

scientists and the internet alike love

for their amazing ability to regenerate

Limbs and probably for that Derpy

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smile hi I'm Danielle defo and you're

watching animal logic axotal are members

of the Ambi stoad family and are native

to a very small region in Mexico axelos

were revered by Aztec and their capital

city was built on islands and the lakes

inhabited by the creatures but when the

Spanish settled in 1521 they drained the

lakes and built their city in its place

a first step in driving Axel towards

Extinction as Mexico's City continues to

grow and pollute the Axel population is

pushed further and further towards the

brink today they can only be found in

the wild in Mexico's Sochi milco Lake

complex near Mexico City axolotes are

unique among salamanders because they

are neotenic which means that they reach

adulthood without going through

metamorphosis so they retain all of

their juvenile features like us

Millennials While most salamanders will

grow up lose their gills and their

dorsal fin as they get bigger and emerge

onto land axotal will keep their

feathery external gills and remain

underwater permanently it is extremely

rare but sometimes axotal will reach

maturity and go through metamorphosis

but even then they tend to keep to the

water this has been a comp lished in the

lab by injecting them with a shot of

iodine after which they more closely

resemble their relatives the tiger

salamander axelos can get pretty big

measuring around a foot or 30 cm long

fully grown and they have long lives

around 15 years in the wild but probably

the most interesting thing about them is

their intense ability to regenerate many

amphibians do have the ability to

regenerate but axotal blow the

competition out of the water not only

can they perfectly and seemingly

endlessly regenerate limbs but they can

also regenerate their spinal cord jaw

tail and skin all without scarring no

matter how many times you cut off their

limbs they'll grow back perfectly every

single time and you wouldn't even be

able to tell that you would cut off

their limbs in the first place you could

also even cut out a chunk of their spine

come back in a month and a half and

they'll be no worse for wear they are

also a thousand times more resist

resistant to cancer than any other

animal it works like this after the

amputation the cells at the S of the

amputation lose their identity so

instead of being skin cells or blood

cells they become similar to stem cells

called plop poent cells and they're able

to make any cell or tissue that the body

would need to repair itself in this case

they use the plop poent cells to

generate all the cells and tissues

needed to create new perfect limbs this

phenomenon is a favorite among the

scientific Community for its potential

to help burn victims amputees and even

cancer victims scientists have

experimented with modifying the genetic

makeup of axolotes to include the green

fluorescent protein which is the protein

that makes many jellyfish bioluminescent

while not just making axotal look cooler

the glowing protein allows scientists to

see things inside the axotal that they

couldn't before for example they'll tag

cancerous cells with the protein and

then they can actually see how it

spreads throughout their bodies even

more interesting is that axotal have

plug andplay body parts you can amputate

one Axel's leg and place it in another

Axel and it'll attach itself it's

especially interesting because you don't

even need the whole limb just a few

cells if you take cells from a neon

aelole and place them on an amputated

body of an albino aelole the albino

aelole will actually grow a neon limb

since their skin is quite translucent

you can actually watch the neon green

bone grow out of an otherwise white Axel

lottle this has led to some fairly

morally compromising work in a study

published in Science magazine in

1968 scientists were able to

successfully transplant an aelole head

onto the back of another axel autle one

subject lived for 65 weeks after the

operation with its second head growing

right along with the first head what

animal should I check out next please

let me know in the comments if you want

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watching

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