Bye-Bye, Baiji.

One of my favorite weird animals appears to have checked out, after 30 million years of rocking freshwater rivers in China, which means they watched us stand up and walk 3 million years ago. There were 7 spotted in 1998, but this year, the Yangtze river dolphin appears to be extinct. I am sorry to see us lose our first whale species to human pollution, fishing, and sonic interference.
Douglas Adams, who unfortunately is also extinct, wrote extensively about about this dolphin in his book on endangered species, Last Chance To See, and imagines a happy ending for them in the fourth book in the Hitchhiker series, "So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish!"

Here is the bottlecap of Baiji dolphin beer, where our friend is immortalized as a delicious light lager.

Every time I have been in China, I try to pour a bottle of molasses or maple syrup into the murky Yangtze as a special dolphin treat, and as a tribute to my fallen homies. It may not have been as helpful as I thought.

He's called Baiji when he's at home. The Chinese believe the Yangtze river dolphin to be an incarnation of a drowned princess. Although she did not drown, I think they look a lot like Princess Diana.

Sure, they're frequently albino. Sure, they have small, strange-looking eyes, and are mostly blind from knocking around in the murky, polluted river for the last thousand years. Sure, they think that dead aliens are in our blood, screwing up our life and relationships. Are they really so different from Edgar Winter? And yet, he survives.