Mexico City’s water monster, an Axoloti salamander (Ambystoma mexicanum), is about one foot long (30cm).

According to scientists at the Chapultepec Zoo, the monster is about to go extinct because its lake habitat is draining, the water quality is deteriorating and non-native fish species started eating its eggs and larva, and competing for its food.

The Muppet-looking critter is also known as the “Mexican walking fish” and holds a key part in Aztec legend and diet.

“If the axolotl disappears, it would not only be a great loss to biodiversity but to Mexican culture, and would reflect the degeneration of a once-great lake system,” says a biologist at the Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM.

The monster appears in American legend as well - Ogden Nash writes, “I’ve never met an axolotl, But Harvard has one in a bottle.” Pretty soon, the only ones we’ll see will be those in a bottle.

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The International Gorilla Conservation Program says that almost half of the world’s monkeys and apes are feeling the worsening threat of extinction. The causes are deforestation and hunting for meat. I don’t get this report. Now, I love the animals as much as the next person. My wife even thinks I am an ape at times, but that’s not relevant. How can half of a species face extinction? Shouldn’t be the whole species is or isn’t? Does the report mean to say that monkeys and apes are losing their homes? That the overall world population of the bunch is decreasing because of problems in certain areas?

Let’s protect our friends, not relatives mind you, our friends, but let’s also be accurate in our reports and not alarmists or exaggerating.

In any event, it’s humans who are at fault here…taking these critters trees and worse, serving them up for dinner. What do you think should be done?

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With the size of a small muscular dog, the Tasmanian Devil is the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world, only found in the Australian island state of Tasmania. It has black fur and is renowned for its disturbing call, ferocious temperament and the fact that it releases an offensive odor when stressed.

The Tasmanian Devil, also referred to simply as “the devil” is now facing extinction and was listed as an endangered species by the Tasmanian state government. The cause is a disfiguring facial cancer that kills an animal in just a few months, that decimated the island state’s wild devil population by as much as 60 percent.

The transmittable parasitic cancer causes tumors to form in and around the mouth, interfering with feeding so that an animal may starve to death. It originates from a single contagious cell that has spread through biting during fights for food or mates. However, they may be hope because David Llewellyn, Tasmanian Primary Industries Minister, said that some devils from Western Tasmania had developed antibodies to this facial tumor.

“While it is still very early days, discoveries such as this provide hope that the disease may be managed in the longer term and that devils with genetic diversity will survive it,” he said.

Photo by blather