Pink Dolphins
I've read two posts with absolutely atrocious information about pink dolphins and rather than succumbing to the evil urge to correct people who are WRONG ON THE INTERNET (woe) I'm going to make my own post.
first of all "that's a bottlenose dolphin that's been photoshopped pink/generated by an art bot" yes that's pretty likely but ALSO, real albino dolphins can be VERY PINK INDEED, more than you'd ever think! but only some of the time... when an albino dolphin is exerted or excited their pale skin flushes with blood, making them look very pink (please look up dolphin skin biology sometime I won't get into it here but it's all kinds of wonderfully fucked up)
As an example, this is Spica (スピカ), an albino common bottlenose housed at the Taiji Whale Museum in Japan. As you can see she's nearly white when calm, but a shining rosy pink when excited and swimming about (source) (https://www.kujirakan.jp/pdf/201503_spica.pdf original source removed :c )
There are also dolphin species that are naturally pink! The one everyone always hastens to mention is the classic "pink dolphin": the amazon river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis) of Boto myth:
These guys start grey and get more pink as the grey scuffs off, with the adult males generally ending up pinker due to being larger and rowdier. Amazon river dolphins have a keel along their back, large flappy pectoral fins, dark teeth, and a very unique beak and general bone structure: Their neck vertebrae allow their heads to turn much more than other dolphins, which gives them big creases on either side of their necks, almost looking like gills. there's maybe several subspecies or even distinct species and they all look very slightly different, but those are the important traits they have in common.
These traits set them apart from the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis), which are another commonly grey-to-pink dolphin that are VERY OFTEN mislabeled as amazon river dolphins. imo it's pretty easy to tell the difference because 1.) their photos are taken in wave-chopped open ocean waters not brown/green amazon waters, and 2.) they look so much more... dolphin-like (apologies to the boto) (source)
Most "pink dolphin" photos you see online are either of these guys or of "Pinky", an albino bottlenose living in a brackish lake system in Louisiana in the USA (and her calf), but there's one more I know of that can be slightly pink:
The tucuxi (Sotalia fluviatilis) looks like a smaller cuter bottlenose and also inhabits the amazon. The closely related costero or guiana dolphin (S. guianensis) is its estuary/coastal cousin, and both of them can not only flush strongly pink but also a lovely soft purple! (the costero was also the first type of dolphin confirmed to have electrosense, but we won't get into that here) (source)
And finally, another thing that is important to note is that some oceanic dolphins with pale markings or patches, especially on their bellies, can flush pink, for pretty much all the same reasons this might happen to a pale-skinned human!
(Tursiops sp.) (source)
(Steno bredanensis) (source)
