New River Dolphin Species
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 1st, 2008
A rare river dolphin has been officially classified as a new species.
The Bolivian river dolphin has been acknowledged as a separate species to the more widely-known Amazon River dolphin.
The formal announcement was made at a conservation workshop in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia.
The Bolivian dolphin (Inia boliviensis) was immediately adopted by the Bolivian government as a symbol of the country’s conservation efforts.
The Bolivian species is smaller and a lighter grey in color than the other species and has more teeth. It lives only in the Bolivian Amazon and is isolated from the other Amazon River dolphins, separated by a series of 18 rapids between Bolivia and Brazil.
The boto or Amazon pink river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis) lives exclusively in the freshwater river systems of the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers. The largest of all river dolphins, botos vary from grey to pink and can even change colour, becoming pinker if very active.
Unusually for a dolphin, they have flexible necks and can turn their heads from side to side, weaving between the branches of flooded forests during the wet season.
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Wow another mammal species discovered. Great news. Thanks for the post Loren. There are so many new species being discovered in the Amazon basin. I hope deforestation is not the culprit.
Let’s hope that these newly classified Bolivian dolphins, as well as the standard Amazon river dolphins, get the protection they deserve. I would hate to see another episode of what happened to the “Baiji” Yangtze river dolphins.
You have to keep in mind that this dolphin was not really new-discovered, but already known, but it was not known that it belonged to a different species.
This is nice to hear, especially since the Yangtze River Dolphin was officially declared “extinct” last year. It is by no means compensation for that, but still a bit of positive news regarding Cetaceans.
There’s still hope Point Radix, that the Yangtze dolphin is still not completely extinct. Maybe wishful thinking, but, well… you know.
Beautiful animals, aren’t they. I wish we could communicate with them.
I hope that Bolivia truely enforces any conservation laws(if they have any)against any actions that could harm this intelligent animal and not that their actions are ONLY in the newspapers and paper. I am sure that this NEW species was known before and that the DNA analysis was finally conducted. I have always been interested in the many river dolphin species. And hope this one does not go like the chinese one. I know that I will never be able to see one of these in the wild, but just knowing that they are free to live in their own home river makes the world just a little bit better. At least there are not any stories on the locals killing and eating them (I HOPE).