Cuddly equivalent? Dolphins are one of the most intelligent species on our planet, and judging by the first two comments, I wouldn't be surprised if they outstrip quite a few humans.

And "adapt or die" is a bit stretched to the limit when unregulated fishing and the pollution of about 600 million people are factored into the equation. I'd like to see humans put up against those odds... At the rate we're going it doesn't look like we'll take all that long.

Calling this a failure of evolution is just copping out. It's humanity's fault that the species died, and if we'd taken measures a few years ago, when we knew there were only a dozen left, we might have been able to preserve the species.

Quite aside from the distaste I feel for yet another creature being wiped out by our lack of caring, it's a huge loss for the scientific world. The Yangtze River dolphin was an example of a creature that had been cut off from the rest of its kind (ie. cephalopods) for millions of years, and as such it was a living specimen of how evolution works in closed environments as opposed to open ones.