Glowing Axolotl

[prettykttkat]

I have a female leucistic axolotl. She is a couple years old. I recently bought a mini microscope for my phone for my son to look at things. This microscope has a LED light and an ultraviolet light. We shined the ultraviolet light on the Axolotl and her skeleton glowed neon green. It was only for a few minutes. We have done this twice. Today I noticed that she is still glowing green even though she is only under regular light. It's very strange. When I turn off the regular light she stops glowing. What happened to her that she now glows under regular lights? She never did before. It honestly looks like she is a glow in the dark toy that has absorbed light and glows in normal lighting. I will attach what she looked like under the ultraviolet light.

 

[prettykttkat]

I have a female leucistic axolotl. She is a couple years old. I recently bought a mini microscope for my phone for my son to look at things. This microscope has a LED light and an ultraviolet light. We shined the ultraviolet light on the Axolotl and her skeleton glowed neon green. It was only for a few minutes. We have done this twice. Today I noticed that she is still glowing green even though she is only under regular light. It's very strange. When I turn off the regular light she stops glowing. What happened to her that she now glows under regular lights? She never did before. It honestly looks like she is a glow in the dark toy that has absorbed light and glows in normal lighting. I will attach what she looked like under the ultraviolet light.

Here she is under regular light now.

 

[michael]

Your axolotl is gfp. The axolotl line it was bred from had green fluorescent protein from a jellyfish spliced in them at one time. GFP is now transferred genetically through breeding. The flourescence responds to ultraviolet light. Since daylight and daylight bulbs have ultraviolet as a component gfp axolotls also fluoresce under daylight.

 

[prettykttkat]

Thanks for telling me. That's very interesting. Also very cool! So do all Axolotls in the pet trade do this? Or are there some sold as pets that do not come from that lineage?

 

[MotherofAxolotls]

Thanks for telling me. That's very interesting. Also very cool! So do all Axolotls in the pet trade do this? Or are there some sold as pets that do not come from that lineage?

No, it’s not all of them but the gene can be carried down through breeding and is pretty common!

 

[michael]

Only some axolotls in the pet trade are gfp. Their are gfp versions of most of the common color types in the pet trade. Gfp in axolotls was first developed as a research tool and found its w