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Animal Weight

How much does a Baiji weight?

It is hard to guess what a Baiji weights. But we have the answer:

An adult Baiji (Lipotes vexillifer) on average weights 112.07 kg (247.07 lbs).

The Baiji is from the family Platanistidae (genus: Lipotes). When reaching adult age, they grow up to 1.7 meter (5′ 8″). Usually, Baijis have 1 babies per litter.

As a reference: An average human weights in at 62 kg (137 lbs) and reaches an average size of 1.65m (5′ 5″). Humans spend 280 days (40 weeks) in the womb of their mother and reach around 75 years of age.

The average adult weight of a Baiji is 112.07 kg (247.07 lbs)

The baiji (Chinese: 白鱀豚; pinyin: báijìtún , Lipotes vexillifer, Lipotes meaning “left behind”, vexillifer “flag bearer”) is a possibly extinct species of freshwater dolphin, and is thought to be the first dolphin species driven to extinction due to the impact of humans. Since Baiji means ‘white fin’ in Chinese, it means ‘white-finned dolphin’. In China, the species is also called the Chinese river dolphin, Yangtze river dolphin, Yangtze dolphin and whitefin dolphin. Nicknamed the “Goddess of the Yangtze” (simplified Chinese: 长江女神; traditional Chinese: 長江女神; pinyin: Cháng Jiāng nǚshén), it was regarded as the goddess of protection by local fishermen and boatmen. It is not to be confused with the Chinese white dolphin or the finless porpoise.The baiji population declined drastically in decades as China industrialized and made heavy use of the river for fishing, transportation, and hydroelectricity. It has been credibly claimed, after surveys in the Yangtze River during the 1980s, that baiji could be the first dolphin species in history that humans have driven to extinction. A Conservation Action Plan for Cetaceans of the Yangtze River was approved by the Chinese Government in 2001. Efforts were made to conserve the species, but a late 2006 expedition failed to find any baiji in the river. Organizers declared the baiji functionally extinct. The baiji represents the first documented global extinction of a “megafaunal” vertebrate for over 50 years since the demise of the Japanese sea lion and the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s. It also signified the disappearance of an entire mammal family of river dolphins (Lipotidae). The baiji’s extinction would be the first recorded extinction of a well-studied cetacean species (it is unclear if some previously extinct varieties were species or subspecies) to be directly attributable to human influence.Swiss economist and CEO of the baiji.org Foundation August Pfluger funded an expedition in which an international team, taken in part from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Fisheries Research Agency in Japan, searched for six weeks for signs of the dolphin. The search took place almost a decade after the last exploration in 1997, which turned up only 13 of the cetaceans.In August 2007, a Chinese man reportedly videotaped a large white animal swimming in the Yangtze. Although the animal was tentatively identified as a baiji, the presence of only one or a few animals, particularly of advanced age, is not enough to save a functionally extinct species from true extinction. The last known living baiji was Qiqi (淇淇), which died in 2002. The World Wildlife Fund is calling for the preservation of any possible baiji habitat, in case the species is located and can be revived.A related creature from the Neogene period is Parapontoporia.

Animals of the same family as a Baiji

We found other animals of the Platanistidae family:

Animals with the same weight as a Baiji

As a comparison, here are some other animals that weight as much as the Lipotes vexillifer:

Animals with the same size as a Baiji

Not that size really matters, but it makes things comparable. So here are a couple of animals that are as big as Baiji:

Animals with the same litter size as a Baiji

Here is a list of animals that have the same number of babies per litter (1) as a Baiji: