Signs Of Metamorphosis

Your axolotl will hold its legs out to the sides and become quite stiff looking. Their leg bones are changing shape, thickening, and becoming stronger so that it can bear its own weight outside of the water.

Color Changes - Many axolotls will start to change color or even take on a more uniform appearance with their spots. Whereas the spots on an aquatic axolotl are muddled and random, the spots on the morphing one will often start to look more "crisp" and formed.

In a sick axolotl, the gills might wither, but they don't get tucked into the slits on the sides of the head like a morphing axolotl. The gills actually shrink into little nubs and start looking like they're being pulled into the head.
 

The eyes on a "normal" axolotl are typically very flat looking. In a morphed axolotl, the eyes begin to pop and the eyelids form around the eye and give it a sleepy, hooded appearance.

The morphed axolotl does not need its slime coat anymore, and you will likely notice large, dark sheets of dark skin peeling off into the water, sometimes with entire "gloves" intact!

The dorsal and caudal fins (the thin ones on your axolotl's back and tail) will completely disappear, leaving a thick, lizard-like tail behind. On some axolotls, they might even leave a "scar" of color along the spine that looks like a zipper!

Aquatic axolotls do not possess a free-moving tongue. They have a broad, flat pad fixated to the bottom half of their mouth. During metamorphosis, the axolotl grows a tongue that will pop out and try to grab prey!

While an aquatic axolotl can sometimes look like it's blinking when it swallows food, (it's actually pressing its skull down to push food down the throat!) the morphed axolotl actually blinks by shutting its eyelids

Now that you are sure that your axolotl is morphing, it's time to contact the breeder that he came from. This is a very important step that will prevent future owners from ending up with an unexpected surprise like you just got! The breeder will need to retire the parents responsible for passing on the genetic morphing trait.

Your morphed axolotl might be cute, but this is a bad trait to pass on. The person who buys them expects a fully aquatic pet, and ends up with a fully terrestrial salamander instead about 3-4 months down the road. They are not easy to care for. They are delicate, high stress, and often very difficult to feed. Many die because their new owner can't find a care guide for them, or the person just wasn't prepared at all for this animal that they most certainly did not buy.
 

It's bad for the breeder because they are selling the animals with the promise that they will be fully aquatic, and then they have to offer refunds or even take the animals back. There have been some reported cases of breeders experiencing a near 100 percent morphing rate in their clutches - 80 + morphed axolotls all at once! Talk about overwhelming!

A solution would be to keep them until they morph, but then they have to raise them for up to a year to make sure that they do or don't, and axolotls can have hundreds of babies at a time, so that isn't very practical or affordable for anyone.

All in all, it puts the breeder, the salamander, and the buyer in a bad situation that no one was prepared for.

That being said, if you are aware that a breeder is knowingly breeding axolotls with morphing genes, or even selling hybrid animals to people without full disclosure of what's going on, it is imperative that you share this information with the public. It is an extremely unethical practice that should never be supported.