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The world's tallest man rescued two dolphins in northeast China by using his long arms to retrieve pieces of plastic from their stomachs, state press reported.
The 2.36m-tall Bao Xishun stuck his meter-long arm down the throats of the two dolphins at an aquarium in Liaoning province and retracted the plastic that was killing the animals.
The two mammals had ingested the plastic after chewing on the plastic sides of their pool at the Royal Jidi Ocean World aquarium in Fushun city.
"Dolphins usually put on a show for us visitors so when I was told they were ill, I felt I should give them a hand - literally," he said.
"I never thought my long arm could be used this way."
The two dolphins, Hai Hai and Le Le, now appear to be on the road to recovery after the bizarre operation that took place Wednesday, the report from Xinhua news agency said.
Vets at the aquarium had been unable to get the plastic out of the dolphins' stomachs.
"The unidentified objects were hard to handle and the stomachs of the dolphins shrank drastically every time we tried to take them out," Zhu Xiaoling, a local doctor, told Xinhua.
Zhu then suggested trying to extract the pieces by hand, but soon found that the arm of an ordinary person was not long enough to reach the dolphins' stomachs.
Bao, a 54-year-old herdsman from neighbouring Inner Mongolia who is well known in China, had a day of training before performing the bizarre operation.
Bao was confirmed last year by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's tallest living man.
- AFP
