Ancient Poems Uncovered Details Surrounding The Downfall Of An Endangered Porpoise Native To The Yangtze River
In China, populations of the Yangtze finless porpoise have declined over the past 1,400 years. Detailed surveys of its range only go back the last couple of decades, so scientists are missing a lot of information on the species. A new study has used historical poetry to learn more about the animal’s population.
The finless porpoises used to live across the entire Yangtze River, which stretches from the Tibetan Plateau to the East China Sea.
Now, there are fewer than 1,800 individuals left in the wild. They are also the only known freshwater porpoise in the world.
The research team examined databases of Chinese poetry to find references to the porpoise and map out its past distribution.
They uncovered 724 poems that mentioned the porpoise, and about half of them noted where the creatures were observed.
“Having access to past data allows us to detect when declines began and correlate those changes with potential threats like habitat destruction, climate change, overhunting, disease, or the introduction of invasive species,” said Yaoyao Zhang, the lead author of the study and an ecologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The poems indicate that the range of the porpoise has decreased by 65 percent since the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907 C.E.).
The porpoises mostly disappeared in the river’s tributaries and lakes, where their range has decreased by 91 percent.
The reduction in their population happened gradually for the most part, but the sharpest decline occurred over the past 100 years.
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It coincides with human activities on the river, particularly dam construction in the 1950s, that prevented the porpoises from moving to and from the river’s main channel.
The research highlights the connection between art, culture, and science. Many Chinese poets were highly educated and often held official positions in society, so they could describe animals accurately and would document their locations.
“Poems are actually ancient citizen science,” said Jiajia Liu, a co-author of the study and an ecologist at Fudan University in China.
“These data are not perfect…but they do have a lot of information if you use them correctly.”
This methodology can possibly help investigate the pasts of other endangered species as well. Previously, scholars have utilized medieval and ancient texts to better understand events like auroras, volcanic eruptions, and the appearance of strange whales.
Moving forward, the team plans to use poems as a way to determine how the Yangtze River once looked, how ancient porpoises behaved at their peak, and how big their groups were.
The researchers hope that their work will inspire other scientists to use poetry and other forms of art as part of their studies.
The details of the new findings were published in the journal Current Biology.
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