--- title: China's great rivers: the finless porpoise, the lost baiji, Chinese alligators and sturgeon — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «China's great rivers: the finless porpoise, the lost baiji, Chinese alligators and sturgeon», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: The Yangtze is the longest river in Asia, about 6,300 kilometres, with hundred --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / China's great rivers: the finless porp… # China's great rivers: the finless porpoise, the lost baiji, Chinese alligators and sturgeon Lesson 379 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 21 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/0/) — The Yangtze is the longest river in Asia, about 6,300 kilometres, with hundreds of millions of people along it and huge ships going up and down. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/1/) — For the animals living in the water it is busy, noisy and crowded. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/2/) — A grey porpoise with a smiling face and no back fin still lives there. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/3/) — Its cousin the baiji, a pale river dolphin with a long thin beak, was searched for in 2006 and none were found: it is probably the first dolphin people drove to extinction. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/4/) — The baiji found fish by sending clicks and listening for echoes, and ship engines may have drowned them out. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/5/) — Nets, electric fishing and dams did the rest, and the giant Chinese paddlefish was lost too. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/6/) — Now China has banned fishing on the main Yangtze for ten years, and the small Chinese alligator, which may have helped inspire dragon legends, is being bred and released. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/7/) — Saving a river means looking after the whole river, not one animal. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/8/) — The Yangtze is about 6,300 kilometres long, the longest river in Asia and the third longest in the world, and hundreds of millions of people live along it. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/9/) — The Yangtze finless porpoise has a low ridge with tiny bumps instead of a back fin and is the only porpoise that lives in fresh water. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/10/) — A 2022 survey counted about 1,250 finless porpoises, slightly more than five years before. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/11/) — Every few years teams sail the whole Yangtze and count porpoises by sight and with underwater microphones that hear their clicks, counting the same way each time to show if numbers go up or down. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/12/) — The baiji, the Yangtze river dolphin, was called the goddess of the Yangtze in legends; a big search in 2006 found none, and scientists said it was probably extinct. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/13/) — It may be the first dolphin driven extinct by people, through boats, nets, electric fishing and dams. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/14/) — The baiji had tiny eyes and was almost blind in the muddy river; it found fish by sending clicks and listening for echoes, and ship engine noise may have drowned these out. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/15/) — In 2021 China banned fishing on the main Yangtze and many lakes for ten years, to let fish recover, which also feeds porpoises; scientists report more fish and porpoises in some places since. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/16/) — There are only two kinds of alligator in the world, the American and the Chinese. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/18/) — Some people think the Chinese alligator helped inspire dragon legends, but nobody knows for sure; Chinese dragons bring rain and live in rivers, and old books describe a river dragon called tuo. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/19/) — The Chinese paddlefish could grow several metres long and was declared extinct in 2020, after dams blocked it from the places where it laid eggs. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/20/) — The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze is the biggest power station in the world by power. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/379-china-s-great-rivers-the-finless-porpoise-the-lost-baiji-chinese-alligators-and-sturgeon/21/) — Chinese sturgeon live in the sea and swim up the Yangtze to lay eggs, but dams now block their old places; in some recent years no wild breeding was seen, and people breed and release them. - ← previous: [China's mountains: golden snub-nosed monkeys, takins, red-crowned cranes and giant salamanders](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/378-china-s-mountains-golden-snub-nosed-monkeys-takins-red-crowned-cranes-and-giant-salamanders/) - next →: [China's plants: bamboo, ginkgo, lotus, tea and rice paddies](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/380-china-s-plants-bamboo-ginkgo-lotus-tea-and-rice-paddies/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)