Mexican axolotl found by 10 year-old under a bridge in Wales
Evie found the axolotl in the river and knew straight away what it was
- Published
An endangered Mexican axolotl has been found living under a bridge, by a ten-year-old girl.
Evie found the axolotl, which she's named Dippy, after the bridge, near Brigend in south Wales.
It was hiding under a bit of green mat that was floating in the river.
"I lifted it up, I saw an axolotl and shouted 'there's an axolotl!,'" she told BBC correspondent Niki Cardwell.
"I saw it in the water and then I caught it."
Her cousins and her mum didn't believe her at first but when she came out holding it - all 22 centimetres and speckled freckles of it - they had to.
"We both saw this thing with gills on its head and I'm like, that's an axolotl," Evie said.
Dippy is almost 9 inches long, the same size as a small cat!
Dippy is roughly the size of a small cat and its discovery is the first documented of the species being found in the wild in the UK.
It's illegal to return or leave a non-native species in the wild, so Evie's family cut short their holiday to take the axolotl back to their home in Leicester.
It's been the "best holiday ever", for animal lover Evie, and she said she's spent "hours researching axolotls".
She plans to find more weird and wonderful animals on her next holiday and would love to find a gecko.
Discoveries like this should be reported to a Government body such as the National Council for Reptile Welfare.
It's director Chris Newman said this is the first time a Mexican axolotl has been found in the UK in the wild.
[Evie] did remarkably well to find him," he said. "They're quite slippery!"
Axolotls are a species of aquatic salamander, meaning they like to stay in water.
Endangered axolotls successfully released in the wild in Mexico
- Published1 May 2025
The waters of Xochimilco used to be full of axolotls
The axolotl is a species of salamander, a group of amphibians that often have a lizard-like appearance.
Amphibians are vertebrates (animals with backbones) which are able, when adult, to live both in water and on land.
However, unlike other amphibians, Axolotls like to remain in water.
Axolotls are fragile creatures, because most of their body is made of cartilage rather than bone. That means they should not be handled unless absolutely necessary.
In the wild the animal is critically endangered and native only to Mexico City's Lake Xochimilco.
