Word: dolphine
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Children in Taiji often wolf down tasty school lunches of short-finned pilot whale. Deep-fried dolphin and sweet-and-sour minke whale are also occasional cafeteria offerings in this small fishing town, where sea mammals have long been considered a reliable source of protein. Taiji (pop. 3,600) is proudly regarded as the birthplace of Japan's 400-year-old whaling industry. But Hisato Ryono, a local assemblyman whose uncle used to work as a commercial whaler, is having second thoughts about schools serving his sons flippered fare. Not because he is finally bowing to international opposition...
Motala had her foot blown off by a land mine; Fuji lost most of her tail to a mysterious disease; Stumpy crippled her leg in an unknown injury in the wild. Only a few years ago, a wounded elephant, dolphin and kangaroo like these would not have had much hope. Under the rough rules of the wild, they would have quickly died of predation, infection or starvation. Compassionate humans who intervened might have been able to make the animals more comfortable but never could have made them whole...
What about an animal that isn't supposed to have any legs at all and yet still needs to get around? Fuji, the dolphin that lost 75% of her tail, had just enough left that researchers at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan could affix a rubber tail, designed by sculptor Kazuhiko Yakushiji, onto her mangled tailfin with reinforced plastic and metal screws. Winter, a dolphin that lives at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida and is completely tailless as a result of an injury from a crab trap, presents a much bigger challenge. Hanger Orthopedic Group in Bethesda...
...that the animal is functionally extinct," says August Pfluger, head of the Zurich-based Baiji.org Foundation, which in December co-sponsored a six-week, 2,000-mile (3,500-km) survey of the Yangtze without finding a single remaining member of the critically endangered species. The dolphin, one of only four exclusively freshwater species in the world, may have the unhappy distinction of being the first aquatic mammal to go extinct in more than half a century - and the first large mammal driven into oblivion by environmental degradation...
...Nicknamed the "goddess of the Yangtze," and long considered auspicious by fishermen, the pale-colored, human-sized dolphins have always been rare: a 1997 survey recorded only 14 left in the river. (A captive dolphin died of old age in a Chinese zoo in 2002). But Pfluger says human pressure pushed the baiji past the tipping point. "The main reason is overfishing. The Chinese still use unsustainable fishing methods like dynamite. There's still a lot of illegal fishing, so the dolphins were competing with humans for food...