14 DAY TRIAL // People who come across a dying dolphin should try to help it rather than hoist it out of the water and start taking pictures of themselves with it, nobody seems to have told a group of tourists in China.
Pictures showing a group of men abusing an already injured dolphin made it online only a few days back, and animal rights activists were shocked to see how the marine mammal was treated by those who chanced to find it stranded on a beach.
Sources report that the dolphin passed away because of losing too much blood shortly after it had washed ashore on a beach in China's province of Hainan.
The incident happened on Sunday, yet state media only broke the news on Tuesday.
By the looks of it, the dolphin was already bleeding when it became stranded. Specialists suspect that its injuries had been caused by a run-in with a boat.
The people who found it pulled it out of the water, lifted it above their heads, flexed their muscles and took as many pictures as possible.
One can only assume that they did so as they thought that their friends and family would be green with envy upon seeing how much fun they had while vacationing in that part of the country.
The online community did not take lightly to this piece of news.
“Chinese style tourism is not about relaxation, but for showing off where one has been...Only by posting the pictures and getting praise and compliments, can the tourist feel he didn't spend the money in vain,” one user wrote on a social network in an attempt to explain these men's behavior.
“Dolphins, as highly evolved mammals, have an IQ only a little lower than humans. But those people in the pictures are worse than pigs,” another one commented on the tourists' behavior.
Presently, animals that are not listed as endangered species do not benefit from any legal protection in China. Therefore, strictly legally speaking, the men did absolutely nothing wrong.