The Axolotl That Grows Back Almost Everything

The axolotl looks like someone asked a child to draw a dragon and then shrank it down to about 12 inches. It has frilly external gills, a permanent grin, and a party trick that makes every other animal on the planet seem embarrassingly fragile: it can regrow almost any part of its body from scratch.

Lose a leg? Growing it back. Damage your spinal cord? Patching it up. Suffer a significant injury to your heart? No problem. Scientists have even found that axolotls can regenerate portions of their brain with full functional recovery ? which is the kind of thing that makes neuroscientists sit down and take a very long, quiet breath.

The secret lies in their cells. When an axolotl is injured, the cells near the wound de-differentiate ? basically they forget what they were and start over as a flexible repair crew. They then regrow exactly the right tissue, in exactly the right place, without forming scar tissue. Compare that to humans, who patch wounds with scar tissue and call it a day.

To top it all off, axolotls practice neoteny ? they never fully mature into their adult land-dwelling form, staying in a permanent larval state for life. Eternally youthful, perpetually regenerating, and permanently smiling. Honestly, there is a lot to envy here.