Endangered
Ganges river dolphin
Platanista gangetica
The Ganges river dolphin is a freshwater dolphin in the family Platanistidae.
Appearance
The Ganges river dolphin has a rectangular, ridgelike dorsal fin and females tend to be larger than males. Ganges river dolphins usually are tan, chocolate brown, dark grey or light blue. The river dolphin has a rounded belly, that, combined with its rectangular dorsal fin, makes it look particularly stocky in build compared to other dolphins.
The oldest recorded animal was a 28-year-old male, 199 cm in length, although they are estimated to live up to 30 years old.
Range and habitat
The Ganges river dolphin lives along the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna and Karnaphuli-Sangu river systems of Bangladesh and India, and the Sapta Koshi and Karnali Rivers in Nepal. The Ganges river dolphin favours deep pools, eddy countercurrents located downstream of the convergence of rivers and of sharp meanders, and upstream and downstream of midchannel islands. A 2025 survey revealed 6,324 Ganges river dolphins in India, with 3,275 individuals in the mainstream of the Ganges and 2,414 in its tributaries.
An immediate danger in National Chambal Sanctuary is the decrease in river depth and appearance of sand bars dividing the river course into smaller segments. Bangladesh has established six sanctuaries in the Sundarbans.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
The Ganges river dolphin has been recognized by the Government of India as its National Aquatic Animal and is the official animal of the Indian city of Guwahati.
In crisis
The Ganges river dolphin has been listed as an Endangered species on the IUCN Red List since 1996. It is threatened by habitat fragmentation due to reduced dry-season river flows, entanglement in fishing gear and by-catch mortality, targeted hunting, pollution of rivers in proximity to urban areas and intensive agricultural landscapes. It is disturbed by inland navigation and potentially threatened by seismic surveys, oil well blowouts, and the effects of climate change on hydrological dynamics. Human activity has played a large role in the reduction of its native range and population size due to stressors such as noise pollution, ship traffic and fishery bycatch, construction of dams and hydroelectric power plants.
It is also endangered due to pollution and overfishing for oil. Entanglement in fishing nets as bycatch can cause significant damage to local populations, and individuals are taken each year by hunters. Their oil and meat are used as a liniment, as an aphrodisiac, and as bait for catfish.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Ganges river dolphin is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Ganges river dolphin, Wikidata item Q210872. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
