{"id":49335,"date":"2022-10-14T12:38:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T03:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/oct\/14\/new-zealand-pet-shelters-are-being-swamped-with-axolotls-are-minecraft-and-tiktok-to-blame"},"modified":"2022-10-14T12:38:00","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T03:38:00","slug":"new-zealand-pet-shelters-are-being-swamped-with-axolotls-are-minecraft-and-tiktok-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=49335","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand pet shelters are being swamped with axolotls. Are Minecraft and TikTok to blame?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thousands of the smiling amphibians have been handed in, as some owners of the hot new pet are overwhelmed by unexpected arrivals<\/p>\n<p>An axolotl boom is seeing thousands of the smiling amphibians accumulating at New Zealand\u2019s pet shelters, with some blaming their newfound popularity on Minecraft, TikTok and other online games.<\/p>\n<p>Emma Neale, who runs an amphibian, reptile and animal rescue in Dunedin, said she now had 2,000 axolotls in her care, after 600 of the creatures had arrived last week. \u201cSo if anyone is looking for an axolotl, feel free to send them my way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/oct\/14\/new-zealand-pet-shelters-are-being-swamped-with-axolotls-are-minecraft-and-tiktok-to-blame\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thousands of the smiling amphibians have been handed in, as some owners of the hot new pet are overwhelmed by unexpected arrivalsAn axolotl boom is seeing thousands of the smiling amphibians accumulating at New Zealand\u2019s pet shelters, with some blaming&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2034,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,1684,56,284,1496],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-games","category-new-zealand","category-pets","category-tiktok"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49335"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49372,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49335\/revisions\/49372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}