Axel the Axolotl Grows It Back
Axel loses a little piece of his frilly gill in a scuffle. Luckily, axolotls have a superpower.
At the bottom of a cool, quiet lake lived Axel, a pink axolotl with a big smile and six feathery frills on the sides of his head.
Those frills are his gills. Axolotls use them to breathe underwater, the way fish do.
One day, a grumpy crayfish snapped at Axel with its claw. Snip! A tiny piece of one of his frills was gone.
Axel swam home, upset. "Now I only have five and a half frills," he said sadly to his friend Tilly the turtle.
Tilly blinked her slow, wise eyes. "Axel, don't you know? Axolotls have a superpower."
"We do?"
"You can regrow parts of your body," said Tilly. "Gills, legs, even your tail. It's called regeneration."
Axel didn't believe her. But every day, he looked at his frill. And little by little, it grew back — soft, pink and feathery, just like before.
"It's true!" he laughed, doing a happy wiggle.
Scientists study axolotls to learn how they heal so well. Maybe one day, what they learn could help people heal too.
Axel swam over to the grumpy crayfish, who was hiding in a shell. "I'm not mad anymore," he said. "Want to be friends?"
The crayfish peeked out. "You're not scared of me?" Axel smiled his big axolotl smile. "Nope. I always grow back — even my good mood."
⭐ The End ⭐
💬 Talk about it
- What are the frills on an axolotl's head?
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Gills, which it uses to breathe underwater. - What is regeneration?
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Growing back a part of the body. - Why do scientists study axolotls?
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To learn how they heal so well.
