Taking Inventory: Bucket of Axolotl

Okay Duncan, pull yourself together. Let’s talk facts. Axolotl became a part of Minecraft in the first part of the Caves & Cliffs update in June 2021, and buckets of axolotl were added at the same time.  Axolotls spawn in lush cave biomes, around clay blocks underwater, and come in five different colors – blue, cyan, gold, wild (brown), and leucistic (pink).

Wait, leu-what? Leucism is a rare condition where real-world animals lose the natural pigmentation in their skin, hair, features, or scales, causing them to appear pale or even white. Leucistic axolotls are very rare in the wild (because they’re easy for predators to spot and eat) but they’re quite common in captivity.

Axolotls can leave the water and wander around on land for a while, but they need to return to it or they’ll eventually die. That’s why it’s important to keep them in a bucket when traveling over long distances. You can also use a bucket to name an axolotl – placing it into an anvil, the same way that you’d rename any other item.

Axolotls live in damp places in the real world too, but they’re now critically endangered – living in one small area of canals in Mexico. They were once found in several lakes around the country, but due to urbanization and water pollution, as well as invasive fish species, there are probably only about 50-1000 individuals left in the wild.

Nonetheless, axolotls are popular both as pets and for scientific research, due to their ability to regenerate parts of their body – including legs, the tail, and even bits of the brain, over just a few months. The axolotl genome is also about ten times larger than the human genome, which perhaps means that they’re much more advanced than we are and we just don’t understand it yet.

Either way, look after your axolotls – and they’ll look after you!