An endangered grey dolphin twitches its flippers weakly as it lies in a truck speeding towards a sanctuary in Pakistan, while rescuers sprinkle water on the animal to keep its skin moist and save it from dying.
The blind Indus River dolphin strayed from its freshwater home into a busy waterway, and had to be lifted out by rescue staff in the southeastern province of Sindh after they trapped it in nets.
Now they must keep it alive as they race to the sanctuary 82 km away where they can free it.
"We have to try and get it to the river as soon as possible," said Mir Akhtar Hussain Talpur, an official of the provincial wildlife department, which has rescued 10 of the animals this year, eight of them in just the last month.
It was a delicate task to keep the skin wet and foster the animal's impression of being still in the water, while ensuring no fluid entered the blowhole by which it breathes, he told Reuters.
The dolphins are being squeezed out of their habitat after human activity, from dams for irrigation projects to pollution, penned them into a 1,200-km stretch of Pakistan's Indus River, or just half their original range.
Living for millions of years in the turbid waters, the mammals, just one of four surviving freshwater species, eventually went blind and use echolocation, or a form of sonar, for navigation.
They can grow to a length of more than two meters and exceed 100 kg in weight, but need waters at least a meter deep to keep alive.
