Question: BBC Filming - Axolotl behaviours?

Hi everyone,

I work at the BBC and am thinking about the potential of filming axolotls as part of a new series. I am just wondering what interesting behaviour they show and thought you guys would be the perfect people to ask! I know one of the most interesting things about axolotls is their ability to regenerate limbs – however what I am interested in is their courtship display behaviours and behaviours towards eggs (for example behaviours such as folding individual eggs within a leaf as other species do).

It would be great to hear your thoughts! Thank you so much.

Abi

The only courtship behavior I can think of off the bat would be that the male will nudge the female’s hind end with his nose to stimulate her letting down eggs to be fertilized. Essentially she will walk around leaving a trail for him to then fertilize. I don’t have any personal experience with mating but that’s what I’ve heard. Also Axolotls are known for their cute little yawns, that might be something you’d be interested in featuring. Another unique feature to Axolotls is that they stay in the neonatal phase Unlike most salamanders, and are fully aquatic, never leaving the water (except for rare cases).

Close! What happens is the male leaves little sperm packets lying about and then nudges the female around to each packet in kind of a dance. When she is over the packet, she takes in the packets to fertilize her eggs. Then 12 to 72 hours later, she will lay up to 1,500 eggs (averaging between 150 and 450), individually, pretty much anywhere In wild, leucistic, and melanoid axolotls, these eggs will be black, while in albino, gold, and copper the eggs will be white. Mom has literally no maternal instinct and axolotls snap at pretty much anything that moves, so they will eat their young if they are not removed. Likewise, juvenile axolotls are well know for their cannibalistic tendencies, resulting in missing limbs if they are not separated until 5 inches in length.

For interesting behaviour, they seem MUCH more social and aware than say a fish would be, recognizing individual people and swimming up to meet them, even poking the tip of their snoots out to say hi. Mine will also swim over and rest in my hand....before trying to eat me XD Axolotl's actually ingest their food through sucking in water very quickly and, while they technically have teeth, they are more used for detaining prey as they dont have the jaw strength to actually hurt a human with them.

Another cute behaviour that goes along with the yawning, is that juveniles will go to the surface for air occasionally and can produce an adorable sound called barking as they quickly suck the air through the water's surface.

A very interesting trait, in addition to the regeneration you mentioned, is that they are one of the few creatures to exhibit neoteny, making them distinct from many other amphibians. Like most amphibians, they have a juvenile form adapted to water, but they never reach their adult form and, thus will spend their entire lives in the water. They do have rudimentary lungs, but these are under-developed and used as a secondary means of getting oxygen, with the primary being, of course, their branchial gills.

As for "behaviour towards eggs", I think there is close to none; at least from my experience.
The female tries to attach the eggs to suitable surface (plants, decorations, whatever else is in the tank), but after that they don't seem to be paying any attention.
When mine ran out of plants, she just attached the eggs to the substrate. Their behaviour didn't seem to change.
Once the eggs started to move, I'm even sure she ate some of them.

Courtship behaviour can be interesting. The female releases pheromones that alert males to her willingness. The response from the males is fairly interesting, with bright red gills and frantic swimming around.
They plant packets of sperm on the ground and then try to direct the female towards those - there is indeed a lot of pushing snouts into stomachs involved. Depending on the eagerness of the female, it can be quite a silly struggle.

I should mention that I've seen this courtship "dance" in my all-male tank as well, though without the sperm or the eggs. Sometimes they just get it in their heads to start pushing others around.