How to Use river dolphin in a Sentence

river dolphin

noun
  • When waters are low, river dolphins stick to the main rivers and only move when fish flow through the floodplains.
    — Elizabeth Gamillo, Discover Magazine, 4 Aug. 2023
  • Amazon river dolphins may send messages with aerial streams of urine.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 3 Feb. 2025
  • The Gangetic river dolphins are effectively blind, and see with sound.
    — Shreya Dasgupta, Quartz India, 21 Nov. 2019
  • One of them, the rare Indus river dolphin, has seen its numbers grow tenfold over the past half-century.
    — National Geographic, 25 June 2020
  • All around the skiff, pink river dolphins pop up for air, their taut blush bodies arcing briefly before vanishing with barely a splash.
    — Arati Menon, Condé Nast Traveler, 10 Mar. 2026
  • As the nation has modernized, the threats confronting the river dolphins have multiplied.
    — Doug Clark, New York Times, 31 Aug. 2017
  • The Amazon murmurs with ancient breath—its vast canopy alive with chattering macaws, shimmering tree frogs, and pink river dolphins.
    — Lewis Nunn, Forbes.com, 14 Aug. 2025
  • The drought is also the likely cause of dozens of river dolphin deaths in Tefe Lake, near the Amazon River.
    — Fabiano Maisonnave, The Christian Science Monitor, 18 Oct. 2023
  • Tapirs, the Amazon river dolphin and the golden lion tamarin exclusively call Brazil home.
    — Irene Wright, Miami Herald, 3 Oct. 2025
  • Ecotourism Stars Less famous than their ocean-dwelling cousins, river dolphins are among the most endangered creatures on Earth.
    — Stefan Lovgren, National Geographic, 5 Apr. 2019
  • During an expedition in the Sundarbans, Deen sees river dolphins washing up dead on the shore.
    — Abhrajyoti Chakraborty, The New Republic, 8 Oct. 2019
  • The Amazon river dolphin is one of two freshwater dolphin species living in the Amazon and Orinoco basins.
    — Cecilia Rodriguez, Forbes, 9 Oct. 2024
  • Each year dozens of new species are discovered hiding within their collections, from extinct river dolphins to new dinosaurs to sacred crocodiles.
    — Jack Ashby, Smithsonian, 20 Dec. 2017
  • Female koalas sometimes mount other females, while male Amazon river dolphins have been known to penetrate each other’s blowholes.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 5 June 2023
  • The sounds of the Chinese river dolphin, the dusty seaside sparrow, the golden toad, and untold numbers of other animals have left the planet.
    — Jill Neimark, Discover Magazine, 8 Aug. 2012
  • The baiji started separating in its evolution from other river dolphins about 20 million years ago.
    — Sofia Quaglia, Discover Magazine, 3 June 2023
  • The Amazon river dolphin’s relationship with humans is complex.
    — Cecilia Rodriguez, Forbes, 9 Oct. 2024
  • The creature was not destroyed by settlers, like the hapless dodo bird was, or by rampant human development, like the Chinese river dolphin was.
    — Erik Vance, Scientific American, 1 Aug. 2017
  • Amazon river dolphins, also known as pink river dolphins, can grow up to nine feet long and weigh more than 350 pounds, per the World Wildlife Fund.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Oct. 2023
  • Small cetaceans such as the vaquita and various river dolphins successfully lived alongside human fishers for thousands of years in coastal waters, estuaries, and rivers.
    — Virginia Morell, Science | AAAS, 11 Dec. 2019
  • The study noted that it has previously been observed in a number of marine mammals, including walruses, Amazon river dolphins and gray seals.
    — Matt Lavietes, NBC News, 29 Feb. 2024
  • Pink river dolphins, which some Indigenous communities consider sacred, are emblems and mascots of the region.
    — Diana Durán, Washington Post, 4 Oct. 2023
  • Within a week, more than 150 endangered river dolphins — including both pink dolphins and tucuxis — were found dead in Lake Tefé.
    — Moná Thomas, PEOPLE, 12 Nov. 2025
  • The rivers of the Amazon also support two of the world’s six species of river dolphin and more than 3,000 species of fish, the highest number of any river system in the world, by far.
    — Jeff Opperman, Forbes.com, 18 Sep. 2025
  • Scientists are trying to learn more about the diverse and unique environment, where jaguars and margays roam the savannah and jungles, and river dolphins swim in the Guayabero River.
    — Murray Carpenter, New York Times, 26 Feb. 2018
  • In fact, all extant river dolphin species are endangered or critically endangered, the IUCN says.
    — Mindy Weisberger, CNN, 26 Mar. 2024
  • Currently, all river dolphin species are threatened with extinction due to commercial fisheries, dam destruction and river changes due to pressures from agricultural and cattle farms.
    — Elizabeth Gamillo, Discover Magazine, 4 Aug. 2023
  • Like agriculture, echolocation, and the river dolphin, the practice that would become effective altruism emerged independently in different places at around the same time.
    — Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 8 Aug. 2022
  • This May, the team of astronomers and ecologists will look for orangutans in Malaysia and spider monkeys in Mexico before heading to Brazil to search for river dolphins.
    — Sarah Gibbens, National Geographic, 6 Apr. 2018
  • At least 125 river dolphins have died in a Brazilian lake in recent weeks, likely due to a combination of drought and unusually high water temperatures.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Oct. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'river dolphin.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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