On the morning of July 14, 2002, Qiqi, the "treasure of the Yangtze River" who lived with us in the Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, died suddenly and peacefully. Qiqi has lived in Wuhan for nearly 23 years. In the past 23 years, the cetacean research in China has attracted worldwide attention from small to large, from point to surface. In the past 23 years, two generations of cetacean research experts in China have also grown up one after another. In the past 23 years, the world has paid more and more attention to the environment of Baiji dolphin and the Yangtze River, and the awareness of environmental protection has gradually increased. These developments and changes are inseparable from Qiqi's great contribution.
The arrival of Qiqi
1980 65438+1October 1 1, fishermen in Jiayu County, Hubei Province, found a baiji that had strayed into the shallow water when they were working near the mouth of Dongting Lake, so they blocked the exit of the shallow water with a fishing boat, then hooked it from the water with an iron hook and immediately reported it to the local fishery department. After receiving the report from the local fisheries department, researchers from the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences rushed there overnight and transported the dolphins back to the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan the next day. According to the measurement, the dolphin is 1.47 meters long and weighs 36.5 kilograms, and its estimated age is about 2 years old.
Treat Qiqi's injury
The fisherman's iron hook hooks the back of the dolphin's neck into two holes with a diameter of 4 cm and a depth of 8 cm, and the holes are connected. A week later, the wound was seriously infected and the dolphin was dying. After the treatment of integrated traditional Chinese and western medicine, especially the special "vest" and Yunnan Baiyao, after more than four months of treatment, the wound gradually healed and the injury gradually recovered.
Name Qiqi
After the dolphin recovered from injury, Professor Wu Xianwen, then director of the Institute of Aquatic Biology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, a famous ichthyologist and academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Professor Hubert Wu, then deputy director, named the baiji "Qiqi". Its significance has three aspects. One is that "odd" is homophonic with "odd" and "odd", which means strange; Second, "Qi" contains three parts of water, which means animals in water; Thirdly, "Qi" is homophonic with the word "fin" that called Baiji dolphin "Baiji dolphin" at that time.
Qiqi adapts to life in Wuhan.
After Qiqi came to the artificial environment, in addition to treating injuries, he should adapt to the artificial feeding environment as soon as possible and get used to eating artificially fed food. So first, cut off the tail of the palatable fish to reduce the swimming ability of the fish and facilitate the odd bite. Then, we insist on eating more meals a day, and regularly throw the fish in front of Qiqi, so that it will gradually understand that it is feeding and will not hurt it. In the artificial environment, Qiqi's food becomes single, leading to malnutrition. To this end, she tried to feed fruits, vegetables, pork, beef and fish steamed bread, but Qiqi ate nothing but freshwater fish. To this end, various nutritional drugs such as vitamins C and E, vitamin B complex, folic acid, etc. It was also put into the belly of the fish and later fed to Shi erkang.
Proper food intake is an important factor to ensure animal health. When Qiqi first arrived in the artificial environment, we put a lot of live fish in the culture pond for him to eat. After the food starts, feed it quantitatively. In order to explore the standard of food intake, the daily food intake is obtained from each meal, and then half of the average daily food intake is taken as the daily food intake standard. Through calculation, Qiqi's daily food intake is 10%- 1 1% of body weight. There are slight changes in different seasons, more in winter and less in summer. Because baiji relies on the thickness of subcutaneous fat to regulate its body temperature and keep it constant (about 36℃), it is necessary to feed the bottom fish with high nutritional value from September every year to increase its food intake. After beginning of spring, silver carp and bighead carp were used instead of being ashamed to reduce food intake.
Clean Qiqi's room regularly.
Baiji dolphins live in the Yangtze River, which is flowing water with relatively clean water quality. In the artificial environment, a large amount of excrement is discharged every day, and some pollutants on the ground will lead to the rapid deterioration of the water quality of aquaculture ponds. At first, Qiqi lived in a pool without water filtering equipment, so she had to change the water frequently and clean it regularly to keep the water relatively clean. Later, the new Baiji Dolphin Museum introduced advanced water treatment equipment, thus ensuring the good water quality of the Baiji Dolphin breeding pond. Nevertheless, in the past 23 years, it has become a firm job to clean Qiqi's room regularly, remove algae from the pool, and give Qiqi a regular physical examination. In Qiqi's health care work, it is not only effective to prevent diseases, but also provides a reliable basis for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases by insisting on prevention first, cleaning the dolphin pool regularly every month and conducting physical examination, preventing diseases in time and establishing complete files on water quality, meteorology, hydrology and feeding.
Qiqi spent the summer in Wuhan.
Wuhan is known as a stove, and the temperature can reach 40 degrees in summer. At first, Qiqi lived in an open-air cement pool with a depth of 3.5 meters, and there was no sunshade. The water temperature in the pool can reach more than 30 degrees. In order to make Qiqi spend the summer safely, a series of cooling measures have been explored. At first, it was not ideal, economical and safe to drag ice cubes into the pool by truck. Later, the outdoor swimming pool set up a parasol, combined with Chinese patent medicine for heatstroke prevention and cooling in summer, and gave Kiki a bath at the same time, so that Kiki could safely spend the summer heat. After Kiki moved into a new house on 1992, circulating water that can cool down was used in the swimming pool to spend the summer with more peace of mind.
Find a date for Qiqi
Almost at the same time that Sophia Kao entered the marriageable age, the job of finding a spouse for Sophia Kao had already begun. 1March, 986, she successfully found a beautiful woman for Qiqi-an immature female dolphin, Pearl Krabs. Pearl Krabs and Qiqi have been together for two and a half years. When I was about to get married, I left Qiqi in September 1988 due to pneumonia. At the end of 1995, another female adult baiji was captured from the Yangtze River and put into the Baiji Dolphin National Nature Reserve in Swan Island, Shishou City, Hubei Province. Six months later, the female baiji died after hitting the net. Since then, due to the shortage of funds, the conditions and technology for catching the baiji alive have not been improved, and the number of baiji in the wild has become less and less, so the dolphin catching work has to be suspended, and Qi Qi has been unable to find a partner.
Qiqi moved to a new house.
1992165438+10, an advanced white dolphin museum was completed with the care of Fang Yi, then president of China Academy of Sciences, and the strong support of China Academy of Sciences, Japan International Cooperation Agency and Japan Jiangzhidao Aquarium. The museum includes the main feeding hall, feeding hall, water treatment system and experimental building. The main culture hall and the culture hall are provided with a kidney-shaped main culture pond, an annular auxiliary culture pond, a small medicine pond and an annular culture pond, with a total water volume of 1500 tons. At first, Qiqi was moved to the kidney-shaped main pond, but Qiqi, who was used to the round pond, was uncomfortable and refused to eat. Later, it had to be moved to a circular aquaculture pond. Qiqi spent his last ten years in the breeding pond.
Qiqi will get sick, too.
Although Qiqi lives a single life, under the arrangement of the breeder, Qiqi's life has always been very regular. Qiqi eats about 10 kg of live fish three times a day. Qiqi also receives training tasks assigned by trainers every day to complete various scientific experiments. Give Kiki a routine health check-up every month. Take blood samples, take temperature, check whether there is water mold on the skin, do electrocardiogram and so on. Sometimes gastric juice is taken for testing according to the situation. If abnormal conditions are found, the fish eaten by Qiqi will be added with vitamins, antibiotics or trace elements and nutritional drugs. Nevertheless, Qiqi was seriously ill in the spring of 1996.
1996 1 ~ 5 months, Qiqi suffered from severe liver injury complicated with hyperlipidemia and hyperglycemia, and the GPT index was as high as 1500 unit (0/50 times of the normal value! ), the triglyceride index is as high as 1 1000 unit (which is1000 times the normal value! ), the blood sugar index is as high as 900 units (9 times the usual value! ), the situation is critical and life is dying. The Baiji Dolphin Research Laboratory urgently mobilized to rescue it. Organized large-scale consultation with experts from the United States, Hongkong and Taiwan Province in time, and received direct guidance from relevant experts from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University. After a series of difficult operations, such as intravenous drip and gastric perfusion, and careful nursing for nearly a hundred days, Qiqi Fang turned the corner and recovered his health.
Qiqi became a star.
1, the "goodwill ambassador" to protect the baiji.
Qiqi is the world's first baiji that has been successfully reared artificially, and it has also been kept in captivity for the longest time. People from all walks of life and all over the world have come to visit Qiqi to learn about the present situation of the whole baiji and explore the countermeasures to protect it. Through Qiqi, people directly feel the beauty and cuteness of white dolphins. Anyone who has seen Qiqi will be moved by its beautiful figure, gorgeous colors and chic posture. Anyone who knows the endangered situation of the white dolphin is worried about it. Kiki's name and figure have spread all over the world, and she has become a well-deserved movie star and TV star. It has also become the focus of people's concern about the fate of baiji and even the protection of rare and endangered animals in China.
2. Understand and study the best target of baiji.
The 23-year history of raising Qiqi is also the history of continuous deepening and development of Baiji dolphin research. Focusing on Qiqi's breeding, in-depth research has been carried out in the aspects of feeding, behavior, hematology, bio-acoustics, reproductive biology, disease diagnosis and prevention. , and has obtained a lot of valuable information, experience accumulation and scientific research results. This makes China's cetacean research in the field of freshwater dolphins at the leading level in the world.
3. Children's friends
Over the past 23 years, Qiqi has become the friend of countless children who care about nature. They visit Qiqi regularly, collect all kinds of information and reports about Qiqi, and monitor Qiqi's every move. For example, Nanwangshan Primary School in Wuhan has established Qiqi Escort in recent years and trained a group of small environmental protection guards who love environmental protection and care about Baiji dolphin. For another example, Pan Jing, a student of Wuhan Yucai Primary School, won the first prize of the national essay "Animal World in Children's Heart". The article "Let the Yangtze River reappear the figure of Baiji Dolphin" tells the children's childlike innocence, which is touching after reading it.
Qiqi's departure
Since 2000, Kiki has gradually entered the old age, showing signs of aging in terms of physical appearance, behavior, food intake and physiological indicators. Especially since the second half of 200 1, Qiqi's activity ability has obviously decreased, and it is difficult to locate the target when feeding, and almost no live fish can be caught. The food intake is also greatly reduced, from 9~ 10 kg per day to 5~ 6 kg. The frequency of physical decline, indigestion and respiratory tract infection increased. The skin on the body surface, especially the neck, is slack and wrinkles increase. Lose weight. In view of Qiqi's aging, researchers have taken various measures to increase Qiqi's resistance and metabolic ability and delay Qiqi's aging. After the above efforts, Qiqi once got better and had a normal diet. Especially in early July, there was no obvious slow eating and indigestion. 14 At 6: 30 on July, the breeder did not find anything unusual during the inspection. At 8: 25, when the breeder brought Qiqi breakfast, he found Qiqi had "fallen asleep" at the bottom of the pool and suddenly left peacefully.
From July, 65438 to the afternoon of June, 2002, researchers from our institute and medical experts from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University who had participated in the diagnosis and treatment of Qiqi disease for many times analyzed the cause of Qiqi's death. According to the general anatomy, behavior and blood biochemical indexes, the following conclusions are drawn: 1) There is no congestion, swelling and erosion around esophagus and trachea, and there is no obstruction in respiratory tract. 2) According to the recent ECG examination results and the anatomical results of coronary artery without ischemic necrosis changes, the possibility of death from myocardial infarction is ruled out; 3) The heart, brain, kidney, liver, lung, pancreas and stomach have no diffuse hemorrhagic necrotic lesions, and diffuse intravascular bleeding is not supported; 4) There is no obvious bleeding and inflammation in the lungs, and the possibility of acute respiratory failure is ruled out; 5) No tumor lesions were found in all organs. Conclusion: In recent years, Qiqi's food intake has obviously decreased, his activity ability has weakened, his behavior has been abnormal, his weight has gradually decreased, and some biochemical indexes have changed, which shows that Qiqi's old age and declining metabolic ability have led to disorder of neurohumoral regulation, disorder of internal environment and activity law, and decreased adaptability to the outside world, and he belongs to a long-lived natural death.
People's memory of Qiqi
Qiqi's death is an important event in the research and protection of Baiji dolphin, which has aroused widespread concern from all walks of life and at home and abroad.
1, all circles pay attention to Qiqi's death.
After the news of Qi Qi's death came out, many domestic and foreign units and people concerned about the fate of the baiji expressed their concerns. There are more than 70 emails, faxes, phone calls and text messages on mobile phones. I regret the death of Qi Qi, and express my condolences to the researchers who have been engaged in the protection and research of Baiji dolphin for a long time, and continue to do a good job in the protection of Baiji dolphin. Units include the State Administration of Fishery and Fishing Port Supervision, the Aquatic Wildlife Protection Office of the Ministry of Agriculture, the the State Council Three Gorges Construction Committee, the Yangtze River Fishery Resources Management Committee Office, the china wildlife conservation association, the Yangtze River Basin Water Resources Protection Bureau, the Hubei Provincial Fisheries Management Office and the Hubei Provincial Fisheries Research Institute. Personally, Chen, vice president of Chinese Academy of Sciences, director of Japan's Jiangzhidao Aquarium (who is also honorary director of Baiji Dolphin Museum), Japanese whale experts Kato Hidehiro, Kamiya Minlang, Akamatsu Youcheng, American whale experts Tom Jefferson and henry king, as well as many journalists who have reported on Baiji Dolphin in central and local media such as china national radio and CCTV.
The media reported the news of Qi Qi's death.
At 23: 10 on June 4th, Xinhua News Agency was the first to announce the death of Qi Qi, a baiji dolphin. Subsequently, CCTV, Xinhua News Agency, Guangming Daily, Science Daily, Science Times, and many newspapers and TV stations in Hubei and Wuhan all carried out dynamic reports for several days. CCTV Oriental Time and Space columns, Time and Space Connection, Chronicle, Narrator, Approaching Science and Science Fair, came to interview and shoot respectively for in-depth coverage. In the two months since Qiqi's death, in addition to news reports from major media, CCTV has launched five special programs, Hubei TV has launched a special program called Lucky Global Village, Wuhan TV has launched a special program called Light of Science and Technology, and China Film Group and Japan's Fuji TV have launched a special program called 1. According to incomplete statistics, the cumulative number of reports has exceeded 100. Many websites also reprinted related words and pictures. For a while, Kiki left and bid farewell to Kiki, and Kiki will be visible forever.
3. After Qi Qi's death, Baibo Dolphin Protection Foundation received the first donation.
On July 15, the Baiji Dolphin Conservation Foundation in the Fisheries Institute received a fax from Mr. Kang Jun, an information consulting company in Shenzhen: "Let's turn our love for Qiqi into strength, make the Yangtze River clearer, make the Yangtze River truly the mother river, and let human beings and Qiqi people live in harmony forever." Mr. Kang Jun also made a special donation of 1000 yuan, indicating that he would do his part to protect the Yangtze River and the baiji. This is also the first donation received by Qiqi after his death.
4. Environmental protection guards visit the strange specimens of Baibo dolphins.
On the morning of July 18, 35 campers of Wuhan Little Guardian Summer Camp came to Baibo Dolphin Museum with flower baskets to visit Qiqi, who had just made a specimen. On the ribbon of the flower basket are written "Qiqi, our forever friend" and "our favorite, we will always remember you".
The children first confirmed this activity in early July. When the news of Qi Qi's death came out on July 14, the children said that although Qi Qi had left, they still wanted to say goodbye to show their concern for environmental protection and the baiji. They were also the first students to visit after Qiqi died.
In front of Kiki's specimen, Ma Jie, a sixth-grade student of Yucai Primary School in Wuhan, who won the title of "Little Guardian of Environmental Protection in Hubei Province", read a letter to Kiki on behalf of all the campers: ... What we saw today is not your vigorous heroic spirit. At this time, our hearts are not only sad, but also full of regrets. Although you left peacefully with people's love for you, your companions still live in the harsh environment of the Yangtze River. Your departure has given us more enlightenment: Baiji dolphin is a national treasure, but it is on the verge of extinction ... As long as people all over the world unite to protect the environment, protect animals and save endangered animals, all mankind will be saved. Don't worry! Qiqi, we will care about your companions as much as we care about you, and let them all have a happy and beautiful home.
5. Vice President Chen and Vice President He instructed the Aquatic Institute to continue to do a good job in the protection of baiji and Yangtze finless porpoise.
On July 16, Chen, Vice President of China Academy of Sciences, expressed condolences to all the comrades who made efforts for Qiqi artificial breeding. At the same time, it is pointed out that Qiqi has survived under artificial breeding for nearly 23 years and has become one of the freshwater whales with the longest feeding time in the world, which is an amazing achievement in itself. Over the past 23 years, researchers have obtained rich scientific data through the breeding and research of Kiki, which has made contributions to the protection of rare aquatic mammals such as baiji, which are unique to China, and made the research on freshwater whales in China unique and occupy an important position in the world.
Vice President Chen stressed that although Qiqi left, the work of protecting Baiji dolphin could not stop. He asked the researchers of the Fisheries Research Institute to continue their efforts, pay close attention to the protection of the baiji, and strengthen the research and protection of the Yangtze finless porpoise, so as to make new contributions to the protection of aquatic wildlife.
On July 19, the Fisheries Institute received a telephone instruction from Zhu Chen, vice president, asking the Fisheries Institute to seriously study and summarize Qiqi's feeding experience and the cause of death, and form a report. This paper studies the future protection work and ideas of white dolphins.
6. The Fisheries Institute indicated that it would continue to do a good job in the protection of baiji.
On July 16, Dr. Wang Ding, deputy director of the Institute of Fisheries Science and an expert on cetaceans, told the community through the news media that although Qiqi left us, it did not mean the end of the protection of Baiji dolphin. Qiqi warned us to speed up the protection work in its unique way, because there are Qiqi's companions and close relatives of the Yangtze finless porpoise in the Yangtze River, which are on the verge of extinction. As a unit engaged in the research of baiji and Yangtze finless porpoise for a long time, the Fisheries Institute knows that there is a long way to go. At the same time, I hope that all sectors of society will continue to support and care about the protection of baiji and Yangtze finless porpoise.
On July 23rd, the Institute of Aquatic Sciences submitted a special report to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and put forward ideas for the future research and protection of the baiji: 1. Continue to actively cooperate with the Ministry of Agriculture and other relevant departments to unswervingly promote the implementation of the Action Plan for the Ex-situ Protection of Baiji Dolphin; 2. With the implementation of the ex-situ conservation action plan, the baiji will be introduced into the Baiji Museum for breeding research when conditions are suitable; 3. Continue to strengthen local protection; 4. Seize the opportunity to study and protect the reproductive biology of Yangtze finless porpoise; 5, using the existing experience and conditions, appropriate to carry out research on other rare whales and other rare aquatic animals; 6. Further carry out science popularization and environmental education related to Baiji dolphin.