A horrifying picture has emerged on Facebook revealing that a stranded baby dolphin has died after being swamped for selfies by a group of tourists.
Wildlife action group Equinac shared the photo of the tiny dolphin being taken out of the water, held, and touched by at least three people in a beach in Mojacar, Spain.
‘Humans are the most irrational animal there is. Many people are unable to feel empathy for a living being which is frightened, starving hungry, without its mother and terrified,’ the group wrote about the hundreds of tourists who swarmed toward the dolphin.
‘The photographs showed children touching the animal, unintentionally covering the spiracle. It’s not an animal for children or adults to caress.
‘Cetaceans are very susceptible to stress, and crowding round it to take photos and to touch it causes them a big shock which greatly accelerates a cardiorespiratory failure, which is what happened.
‘We’re not saying that the bathers were responsible for it becoming stranded.
‘It became stranded because it was sick or because it lost its mother, without whom it cannot survive.
‘But crowding round to photograph and touch it of course causes these animals to become extremely stressed.’
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