‘Mexican caviar’ is a threatened, traditional delicacy

A dead axayacatl, a type of water bug, floats on the waters of Lake Texcoco. The insect eggs are consumed as ahuautle. — Photos: AP

In a shallow lake on the outskirts of Mexico City, a handful of farmers still harvest the eggs of an evasive, fingertip-size water bug in a bid to keep alive a culinary tradition dating at least to the Aztec empire.

Caviar is typically associated with sturgeons swimming in the Caspian Sea, but the Mexican version is made from the tiny eggs of an aquatic insect of the corixidae family, also known as the “bird fly”, because birds like to eat it. Similar bugs are often known as “water boatmen” in English, because of the way they seem to row in ponds and streams.