“They are extremely intelligent and can display a complex set of behaviors, even like humans.” These skilled, sharp-toothed hunters, often reaching more than eight feet in length, are well adapted to shifting river levels. “They are very special creatures,” says Natanael dos Santos, a guide working at the Mamirauá Institute. Moments later the duo reappear on the other side of the Japurá River, playfully dovetailing, and skirting the edge of the várzea rainforest - a seasonal floodplain where, in this part of Amazonia, river levels can rise and fall by up to 12 meters (39 feet) a year, at times opening up vast swathes of rainforest to these graceful swimmers. Powerful jets of water spray out of their blowholes as these freshwater mammals take in air before submerging. TEFÉ, Amazonas state, Brazil - A pair of pink Amazon river dolphins emerges for just a moment, arcing above the chocolate brown waters inside the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, a research facility at the tropical heart of the Brazilian Amazon. Two pink Amazon river dolphins swim side-by-side. UPDATE: Within days of this Mongabay story being published, Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture announced that the piracatinga moratorium will be extended for one year starting 1 July. Early in 2020 that moratorium lapsed and scientists urged its quick renewal to prevent the Amazon river dolphin from going extinct.In 2015, the government of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff tried to curb this chronic criminal behavior and protect the dolphins by introducing a five-year moratorium on catching piracatinga.For years, the dolphin’s populations, though protected in Brazil, trended downward, halving every decade there, as poachers hunted the animals, using their fatty blubber as bait to catch a carnivorous catfish known as the piracatinga, which is drawn to the scent of rotting flesh.It lives in the Amazon and Orinoco river systems. The Amazon river dolphin (also known as the pink river dolphin, or boto) is the largest of the world’s freshwater dolphins.
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