Tião was a solitary male

bottlenose dolphin Bottlenose dolphins are aquatic mammals in the genus ''Tursiops.'' They are common, cosmopolitan members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphins. Molecular studies show the genus definitively contains two species: the co ...

that was first spotted in the town of São Sebastião in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

around 1994 and frequently allowed humans to interact with him, having a particular preference to interacting with female humans. The dolphin later killed a swimmer and injured many others, which later earned him the nickname ''killer dolphin''. The dolphin first started to receive public attention in March 1994, when he started to visit the ferry

pier Seaside pleasure pier in England.html" ;"title="Brighton, England">Brighton, England. The first seaside piers were built in England in the early 19th century. A pier is a raised structure that rises above a body of water and usually juts out ...

almost daily, frequently following boats. The locals named him Tião, which is a common nickname for the Portuguese male given name Sebastião. The name was a reference to the town in which he was first spotted. After several months, the animal moved north to a local beach, where he frequently got close to bathers and interacted with them. Tião quickly became popular and on occasion over thirty people would be in the water with the dolphin at the same time, sometimes trying to grab hold of his pectoral and dorsal fins to have him drag them through the water. Harassment of the dolphin started to take ever more serious forms, from people attempting to restrain the dolphin to have their picture taken with him, to trying to stick an ice cream cone in his

blowhole Blowhole may refer to: * Blowhole (anatomy), the hole at the top of a whale's or other cetacean's head *Blowhole (geology), a hole at the inland end of a sea cave **Kiama Blowhole in Kiama, Australia **The Blow Hole, a marine passage between Minst ...

and attempting to pour

beer Beer is one of the oldest and the most widely consumed type of alcoholic drink in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cer ...

into his mouth. Tião started to resist the harassment and by November 1994, 28 people had been taken to hospital. When in December 1994 two male swimmers, Wilson Reis Pedroso and João Paulo Moreira, were harassing and possibly attempting to restrain Tião, in a beach of

Caraguatatuba Caraguatatuba, widely known by its abbreviation ''Caraguá'', is a city in the eastern part of the southern state of São Paulo in Brazil. It is part of the Metropolitan Region of Vale do Paraíba e Litoral Norte. The population is 123,389 (2020 ...

, the dolphin broke the

rib In vertebrate anatomy, ribs ( la, costae) are the long curved bones which form the rib cage, part of the axial skeleton. In most tetrapods, ribs surround the chest, enabling the lungs to expand and thus facilitate breathing by expanding the ch ...

s of Pedroso and killed Moreira, who was later found to be drunk. After this incident, the dolphin briefly left but returned to the beach in January 1995. In order to prevent retaliation, a public education campaign was set up. Tião remained at the town for a few more months but finally left for good during the summer of that year, most likely having rejoined a pod, though some still speculate he may have been killed out of revenge.

References

*Marcos Santos (1998)
Learning to live with a sociable dolphin
article retrieved October 26, 2006. {{DEFAULTSORT:Tiao Individual dolphins Solitary dolphins Individual wild animals Individual animals in Brazil

See also

References