We are at a time where people don’t live for their happiness anymore. A lot of people do everything they do to impress their viewers and followers on social media.
In 2016, at the Santa Teresita beach resort in the capital city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, a baby Franciscan dolphin was killed by tourists who were “making memories” . A lot of people at the scene didn’t exactly know how wrong and awful what they were doing was. A crowd gathered around a tiny baby dolphin who had been carried too close to the shores by a tide. They yanked it out of the water and proceeded to pass it around for selfies. There were so many of them trying to get their hands on it and get a good picture. When everyone got their selfies, they tossed the dying animal onto the sand and left it there.
As expected, the youngling died shortly afterward.
The viral video shows a hoard of people who still wouldn’t leave the lifeless animal alone. They tossed it around it in the sand to get more pictures of it. The dolphin hadn’t just been killed by being out of the water for too long. It was fragile and yet was squeezed and manhandled until the life was snuffed out of it.
“They let him die,” a witness said to C5N . “He was young and came to the shore. They could have returned him to the water—in fact, he was breathing. But everyone started taking photos and touching him. They said he was already dead.”
The Franciscana or La Plata dolphin, native to Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay is one of the species of saltwater dolphins that cannot survive for long above water . Fundación Vida Silvestre, an environmental civil association in Argentina, says there are less than 30,000 of the unique creatures alive in the world . Highly vulnerable to extinction, 500 to 800 of them get caught every year by fishermen in Buenos Aires.
“The Franciscan, like other dolphins, cannot remain above water for long,” an FVS contributor wrote. “It has a very thick and greasy skin that provides warmth, so the weather quickly causes dehydration and death.”
People should learn to care about animals
A representative of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says their hearts have gone out not only to the poor animal who was tossed about but to its mother as well.
A spokesperson for Peta added : “In their efforts to get a novelty ‘selfie,’ these holidaymakers showed a naïve – and ultimately fatal – disregard for life by hauling this baby dolphin out of the sea, where he or she belonged. ‘One can only imagine the trauma suffered not only by this baby, who was passed around like a toy by marauding tourists but also his or her grieving mother.”
Animal cruelty is wrong and unfair. A person doesn’t have to be a vegetarian or a vegan before they’ll be considerate to the safety and protection of wildlife. Poaching isn’t the only way to commit crimes against animals. Hauling a fragile youngling out of the water to take pictures is a purely wicked act. They didn’t imagine that it wouldn’t survive for long outside of its natural habitat. The inhumanity continued even after they took pictures with the animal. Why didn’t they put it back into the water? Why leave out on the sand to die like that?
Humans are the ones endangering the earth and its natural ecosystems.
References:
- Baby Dolphin Dies after Tourists Yank It Out Of Ocean for Selfies. Ashitha Nagesh. Metro UK. February 18, 2016.
- Another Baby Dolphin Killed By Selfie-Seeking Tourists. Rachael Bale. Women Working. January 26, 2017.
- Franciscana dolphin. Contributor. International Whaling Commission.
- Delfines franciscanas, cada uno cuenta. Contributor. Fundación Vida Silvestre. February 16, 2016.
- Tourists Drag an Endangered Baby Dolphin Out of Water for Selfies and Leave It to Die on the Beach. Amsita S. Women Working. April 12, 2019.