Posts Tagged ‘river dolphins’
South Asian river dolphin
See all species Although they now live in separate Asian river systems, the Ganges and Indus River dolphins look identical because they share a common ancestor. They are currently categorised as subspecies and scientists are considering the evidence that they have evolved into two species. Sadly, both are endangered; there are only one to two…
Read More
Baiji
See all species The Chinese river dolphin, or baiji, holds the unenviable record of being the first dolphin species driven to extinction by human beings. The mighty Yangtze River in China was the baiji’s home for 20 million years. It took less than 50 years for humans to wipe them out. Baiji numbers crashed dramatically…
Read MoreLast chance to see pink river dolphins?
I was lucky enough to go on the trip of a lifetime recently, to the rainforest of Peru. I’d been planning for this trip for a long time, scraping together any spare cash over the years and finally, I got my chance. Working in the fundraising team at WDC we often talk about all the…
Read More
Amazon River dolphin
See all species Amazon River dolphins, popularly called ‘botos,’ are freshwater dolphins living in the rainforest rivers of South America Quite the charmers, male botos sometimes try and win over females by pulling some particularly alluring techniques out of the bag. Wooing their ladies with clever tricks, male botos pick up floating plants or pieces…
Read MoreEndangered dolphins disappearing from river in Bangladesh
A population of one of the world’s most endangered dolphins is under serious threat in the Halda River, Bangladesh. In the four month period up to February, 17 South Asian river dolphins (also known as the Ganges River dolphin) died in the river and experts are now calling for their home to be declared a sanctuary…
Read MoreTo save river dolphins, we need to protect their freshwater homes
Further progress has been recently made in reaching the goal of identifying and protecting important habitat for river dolphins. Experts have agreed that a method currently used to identify areas of ocean that are important habitats for whales and oceanic dolphins can also be used to identify important habitats for aquatic mammals such as river…
Read More