"Extinct" Dolphin Caught on Camera
Written on 1:02 PM by Unknown
A sighting of a rare Dolphin, thought to be extinct, has been caught on camera in China
A Chinese man has videotaped a large white animal swimming in the Yangtze river, which experts say is a dolphin species unique to China and feared extinct, the official Xinhua agency reported on Wednesday.
The last confirmed sighting of the long-beaked, nearly blind baiji was in 2004. After an international team failed to find a single dolphin on a six-week expedition last year the species was classified as critically endangered and possibly extinct.
But the video from central Anhui province may renew slender hopes for the survival of the creatures also known as white-flag dolphins and traditionally considered a deity by local people.
"I never saw such a big thing in the water before, so I filmed it," dolphin-spotter Zeng Yujiang told Xinhua. "It was about 1,000 meters (yards) away and jumped out of water several times."
Wang Kexiong, of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said experts at the institute had confirmed the footage was of a baiji.
Source: Reuters
Posted in
hot news
|
Posts
