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  • 2015-06-19 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a Couple Kill a Dolphin by Urinating on It? (en)
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  • On 6 June 2015, a Facebook user published a set of photographs showing an unidentified man and woman posing with a juvenile dolphin. According to the caption accompanying those images, the creature died shortly after the photograpgs were taken because (among other things) the woman had urinated in its blowhole: The image set was not new to the Internet (although the claim of death-by-blowhole-urination was a recently added element): social media users first learned of these photographs as early as 7 March 2014, when they were uploaded to Reddit's WTF subreddit. At that time, the dolphin's death was attributed solely to the couple's playing with the marine creature on shore rather than returning it to the water, and none of the discussion claimed that the dolphin's purported death was a result of the woman shown in the photographs (or anyone else) having urinated on it: The Reddit thread in question received hundreds of comments when it was active, but contributors provided little hard information about the origin of the pictures. A few users shared links to news stories, one of which was published by a Peruvian website on 5 March 2014, but that report provided little background and was largely speculative in tone: The photograph reemerged on Facebook on 16 May 2015, followed several days later by a news article that identified the individuals depicted as tourists but provided no new information about the story behind the images. Though the photographs (and their attendant appeal to identify the youths involved) have proved cyclically popular on social media cites, what came to be called the Lima dolphin incident was largely resolved by 8 March 2014, when a news site in Peru located and spoke to the individuals depicted (identified as Judith Uriol Maribel Silva and Jonathan Ramos Torres) about the incident. According to Uriol Silva and Ramos Torres, the dolphin was already dead at the time the photographs were taken: That statement is consistent with documented incidence of dolphin deaths in Peru that took place in early 2014. Immediately prior to the first online appearance of these photographs, the BBC had reported upon a rash of dolphin deaths in Chiclayo: precisely where the images were said to have originated: Additional reports of dolphin deaths in Peru were published in January and February of 2014, the time period during which Uriol Silva said the controversial photographs were taken. On 16 February 2016, news reports from Argentina showed a group of people on a Buenos Aires beach handling a baby dolphin and passing it around for photographs: Argentina news outlet La Nación (and other news outlets) cited a report from Vida Silvestre, a conservation group, stating that the animal (a rare Franciscana, also known as a La Plata dolphin) died of dehydration not long afterward. (en)
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