Think of the axolotl as our greatest hope for regeneration.
Salamanders are considered to be supernatural by many cultures. The name salamander is believed to come from an ancient Persian word meaning \”fire within\”. For at least 2,000 year, people thought that they could extinguish flames on contact. Leonardo da Vinci and Aristotle both noted this remarkable characteristic. According to the Talmud, smearing blood of salamanders on your skin can cause you to become inflammable. It’s not true. The intuition that salamanders have magical powers is not unfounded.
Salamanders can regenerate, just like earthbound immortals. Salamanders regenerate. If you cut their tail, arm, leg or any part of it, they will replace that appendage, a complex intricacy made of muscle, bone, nerve and more. It will grow like a sapling. Scientists have been cutting up salamanders since more than 200 year to understand their mechanics and, more recently, in order to replicate those marvels one day. Could salamanders hold the key to regenerative medicine’s future?
Axolotl is a salamander that is surprisingly unattractive and odd. The axolotl can regrow not only its limbs and limbs but also its lower jaw and retinae. It has been known to regrow kidneys, ovaries and rudimentary lungs. It can heal all kinds of wounds, without leaving scars. This peculiar trait allows the axolotl to integrate the body parts from its companions without the normal immune response. It has also allowed for some of the most grotesque disfigurements that it has endured, all in the name science. East German scientists used axolotls to graft small animals crosswise onto the backs larger axolotls in experiments conducted after World War II. Researchers linked the circulatory systems of the animals, hailing the mutants as triumphs for collectivism.
Source:
https://aeon.co/ideas/consider-the-axolotl-our-great-hope-of-regeneration
