The Mexican "water monster," a salamander native to Mexico, may have vanished from the only place it was ever known to have existed, the Associated Press reported.
Officially known as an axolotl, the Mexican salamander lives in the Xochimilco area of Mexico City, a series of lakes resembling "floating gardens" that were created by the Aztecs for farming, the AP reported.
The "water monster," also nicknamed the "Mexican walking fish" is already "in serious risk of disappearing," Armando Tovar Garza, a biologist from Mexico's National Autonomous University, told the AP.
But a recent trip to the Xochimilco lakes to find the axolotl was completely unsuccessful. Researchers tried to catch axolotls by netting them in the lake's shallow waters in 2013, the AP reported. The researchers returned empty handed.
"Four months of sampling- zero axolotls," Tovar Garza told the AP.
Axolotls, described as a hideous animal with short legs and gills that look like feathers, uses its thick, slippery tail to swim. But the "water monster's" natural habitat is shrinking from a growing number of unlawful makeshift homes in the area, the AP reported.
There were 6,000 axolotls per square kilometer in 1998, according to the Mexican Academy of Sciences. By 2003 there were 1,000 axolotls. By 2008 that number drastically decreased to 100, the AP reported.
Though no axolotls were found last year, Tovar Garza told the AP it's too soon to tell if the animals are extinct in the wild. Axolotls can be found in aquariums and research labs, however the salamanders cannot thrive in those conditions, the AP reported.
Tovar Garza said biologists will take another trip to search for the "water monster" in February.
They will repeat the search "because now we are in the cold season, with lower temperatures, and that is when we ought to have more success with the axolotls, because it is when they breed," Tovar Garza told the AP.
