Video of a Yangtze River finless porpoise spitting huge columns of water has gone viral in the last 24 hours, putting a bit of a dent in the carefully-branded image that has in recent years seen it become better known as a smiling porpoise.
It was actually 13:00 on 26 February when the odd sighting took place, in the Sanjiangying area in the Yangzhou section of the Yangtze River.
There, Ma Jianjun, Assistant President of the Yangzhou Finless Porpoise Conservation Association, was together with volunteers, undertaking porpoise observations using a drone.
The viral video, which can be seen via this link, reveals the feisty finless porpoise in action. Swimming on its back and accompanied by another, the porpoise repeated spits column of water from its mouth which are up to half the length of its entire body.
Two possible explanations were offered by an expert from the Institute of Aquatics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as the Yangtze Evening News reports.
The porpoises may just be enjoying themselves, playing in the water after foraging for food, for example. Or, they are spitting the water column in the direction of small fish jumping out of the water, driving them as prey.
So are they spitting or smiling?
“Yangtze River Culture · Smiling Finless Porpoise” was in fact the name of an exhibition staged 1 year ago, in part a homage to the finless porpoise that occupies the waters in our stretch of the Yangtze, and in part a call for greater environmental protection efforts.
The Yangtze River Finless Porpoise is the only freshwater subspecies of the finless-porpoise family. The species, only found in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, has been with us for 25 million years, give or take.
Brought to the verge of extinction earlier in the 2010s, most sightings take place in the waters around the Nanjing Dashengguan Yangtze River Bridge (formerly the Number 3 Bridge).
