Axolotls can regenerate their limbs as well as their spines, brains, and nearly every other body part. They exhibit a trait called neoteny, which means that they never outgrow their juvenile characteristics like other salamanders. For example, they have both gills and lungs. The name “axolotl” means “water monster.”

The axolotl is a type of salamander. It has a long tail, flat head, and four lizard-like limbs, which it uses to move around the lake floor. But unlike other salamanders, axolotls are neotenic, meaning they keep juvenile characteristics into adulthood. The axolotl remains aquatic, like larvae, their entire life.

An axolotl's skeleton is comprised mostly of cartilage. They exhibit neoteny, meaning they retain juvenile characteristics into adulthood. They are aquatic, and although they posses rudimentary lungs, they breathe primarily through their gills and, to a lesser extent, their skin.

Axolotls are neotenic, meaning they keep many of the characteristics from their young form into their adult stage. Axolotls have both gills and lungs, though they remain in the water most of their life. They also retain juvenile traits, like a tail and body fin, that other salamanders lose in adulthood.