It lives in the Ganges and related rivers of South Asia, namely in the countries of India, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

[8] The Ganges river dolphin has a rectangular, ridgelike dorsal fin and females tend to be larger than males.

[12] The Ganges river dolphin was formally classified as Delphinus gangeticus two separate times in 1801, by Heinrich Julius Lebeck[13] and William Roxburgh.

It may have been destroyed during World War II, but castings were previously made of the rostrum and parts of the lower jaw, which survive at the Natural History Museum.

[18][19] The Ganges river dolphins usually swim alone or in pairs, they are known to breach rarely and are shy around boats and therefore difficult to observe.

[21] Produced pulse trains are similar in wave form and frequency to the echolocation patterns of the Amazon river dolphin.

[22] Given the dolphin's blindness, it produces an ultrasonic sound that is echoed off other fish and water species, allowing it to identify prey.

It is threatened by habitat fragmentation due to reduced dry-season river flows, entanglement in fishing gear and by-catch mortality, targeted hunting, pollution of rivers in proximity to urban areas and intensive agricultural landscapes; it is disturbed by inland navigation and potentially threatened by seismic surveys, oil well blowouts, and the effects of climate change on hydrological dynamics.

[2] Human activity has played a large role in the reduction of its native range and population size due to stressors such as noise pollution, ship traffic and fishery bycatch, construction of dams and hydroelectric power plants.

[3][2] Entanglement in fishing nets as bycatch can cause significant damage to local populations, and individuals are taken each year by hunters; their oil and meat are used as a liniment, as an aphrodisiac, and as bait for catfish.

[citation needed] The Ministry of Environment and Forest declared the Gangetic dolphin the national aquatic animal of India.

[citation needed] The Uttar Pradesh government in India is propagating ancient Hindu texts in hopes of raising the community support to save the dolphins from disappearing.

[29] Similarly, there is another news story in which a few fishermen caught one Gangetic dolphin and feasted upon it, leading to their arrest by Kaushambhi police in Uttar Pradesh.