Tião

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Tião was a well known solitary male Bottlenose Dolphin that resided in the town of São Sebastião in Brazil around 1994 and frequently allowed humans to interact with him. The dolphin became infamous for killing a swimmer and injuring many others, which later earned him the nickname killer dolphin.^[1]

The dolphin first started to receive public attention in March of 1994, when he started to visit the ferry pier almost daily, frequently following boats. The locals named him Tião, after the last four letters in the town's name. After several months, the animal moved north to a local beach, where he frequently got close to bathers and interacted with them. Tião quickly became very popular and on occasion over thirty people would be in the water with the dolphin at the same time, sometimes trying to grab hold of his pectoral and dorsal fins to have him drag them through the water. Harassment of the dolphin started to take ever more serious forms, from people attempting to restrain the dolphin to have their picture taken with him to trying to stick an icecream cone in his blowhole and attempting to pour beer into his mouth.

Tião started to resist the harassment and by November 1994, 28 people had been taken to hospital. When in December 1994 two male swimmers, Wilson Reis Pedroso and João Paulo Moreira, were harassing and possibly attempting to restrain Tião, the dolphin broke the ribs of Wilson and killed João, who was later found to be drunk.^[2] After this incident, the dolphin briefly left but returned to the beach in January of 1995. In order to prevent retaliation, a public education campaign was set up. Tião remained at the town for a few more months but finally left for good during the summer of that year, most likely having returned to his own kind, though some still speculate he may have been killed out of revenge.^[3]

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