Ya think?
Great googly moogly are some folks dense.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/02/killer-whale-name.htmlOf all the explanations put forward in the wake of the death of a trainer at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, perhaps the most bizarre is that the killer whale was enacting a mating behaviour.
"He was used a lot [by SeaWorld] for mating, and could have even been enacting a mating behavior during the incident," said Nancy Black, who runs California's Monterey Bay Whale Watch. Black also told Discovery News that the orca, Tilikum, could have "lashed out" from stress or boredom.
Isn't it strange that the killer whale is being characterised as aggressive? Killer whales are top predators. You wouldn't be surprised if a tiger lashed out at someone. Is it because we are so fond of cetaceans and their intelligence that we forget what they are? Or are we embarrassed at keeping them captive and so make excuses for them?
In the British newspaper The Times, a marine mammal biologist, Naomi Rose of the Humane Society of the United States, is reported as saying that the orca's "lack of concern about killing humans could be because Tilikum was unused to having a human being in the water with him".
Rose goes on to say:
"Orca are certainly capable of aggression, as whales at SeaWorld and other parks have shown with plenty of attacks."
They wouldn't be very good predators if they weren't capable of aggression. But Rose here is referring to two previous attacks involving Tilikum. He was blamed for killing a trainer in 1991 at Sealand of the Pacific near Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and was also involved in the death of a man in 1999.
Steve Huxter, who was head of Sealand's animal care and training department in 1991, was reported in the UK's The Guardian as saying he was "surprised" the orca had killed again. He said Tilikum was a well-behaved, balanced animal.
And the excuses for Tilikum continue. Back at Discovery News, Richard Ellis, a marine conservationist at the American Museum of Natural History, says that the whale "was not trying to eat the trainer", but believes his actions were "premeditated" and intentional. (It reminds me that dolphins have been suspected of carrying out "serial" attacks on other cetaceans.)
"[Tilikum] decided to do this as opposed to keep swimming around in circles," Ellis said. He would not speculate, though, on what the whale actually intended.
Do we really need to explain why a top predator would attack a potential prey item? Sure, orcas don't attack humans much, even in the wild. But this, says Matt Walker at the BBC, is probably because they live in cold water and don't overlap with humans much.
Last week we heard Lori Marino, a biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, tell the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference that captive cetaceans are suffering psychological problems:
"Dolphins are sophisticated, self-aware, highly intelligent beings with individual personalities, autonomy and an inner life. They are vulnerable to tremendous suffering and psychological trauma," Marino said in a press release.
We're in a bit of a bind. If we want to keep orca in tiny pools, we might have to expect them to attack us from time to time. If we release Tilikum and long-term captive orca, like we did with Willy of Free Willy fame, we might be condemning them to loneliness and an early death.
So we'll probably continue to keep them in captivity. As the New York Times reports, "that's a big money-making animal."
