Villagers have guarded a stranded dolphin by watering it all night and even shading it when the sun rose the next day in case its skin dried out at a bay in Wanning city, South China's Hainan province.

The villagers who were digging on the beach to look for crabs found the stranded dolphin at 11 on the night of Oct 6. They tried to push the dolphin back to the sea, but they later found that the dolphin was washed back to the beach again and again.

Instead of going home, the villagers used buckets to get seawater to pour over the dolphin incessantly to keep it from drying out all night.

To keep the dolphin from being exposed to the sunshine for a long time, the villagers even held umbrellas to shade the animal when the sun rose the next morning before the rescue workers came.

After an investigation at an aquatic wildlife rescue and conservation center in Hainan province, the dolphin was diagnosed to have a disordered biological navigation system, which made it lose its way over and over again.

The poor dolphin is said to be a bottlenose dolphin listed to be a national second-class protected animal.

What the villagers did has won praise from Internet users. "Thanks for the villagers' acts of kindness, and hope the dolphin can return to the sea. Nature will repay us good things when we are friendly to the other creatures," said an Internet user named Maisui.