According to the BBC, the world’s tallest man, Bao Xishun, saved a dolphin by extracting a piece of plastic that it had ingested. Officials at the aquarium in Fushun, Liaoning Province, China said that the plastic in the dolphin’s stomach was causing it to lose appetite and suffer from depression. Bao, with his long arm, spanning over a meter, was able to extract most of the plastic and according to officials, the dolphin is in good condition now.
In another dolphin news out of China today, it appears that the world has lost another threatened specie, the Yangtze River dolphin has been declared “functionally extinct” after a six week search for the freshwater mammal turned up no sightings. For more information on the Yangtze River dolphin, baiji, take a look at the Wikipedia article.
Finally, did you know that unlike most mammals, dolphins do not undergo REM sleep? As it turns out, dolphins actually need to consciously breathe, unlike others such as humans which breath involuntarily. As it turns out, dolphins will actually put one hemisphere of their brain to sleep while the other hemisphere continues to “stay awake,” possibly to continue vital functions such as breathing.