So... only animals we deem less intelligent should be consumed?
View on keeping cetaceans in captivity?
- Thread starter S U N N Y
- Start date
And here we go again...
I feel to lazy to repeat again why you are wrong about lifespan, but I´d love to have more info about those amazing marine sanctuaries. I must be uninformed since the only cetacean sanctuaries I know are the one for Beluga in Iceland, and O´Barry´s center in Bali. I wouldn´t considerer a big success to keep two whales in a totally indoor pool half of the year, and in the entrance of a harbour the other half. Not to mention no intention of reintroduction for those animals. About the one in Indonesia, I don´t know how they work, but the enclosures seems smaller than some dolphinariums...
I feel to lazy to repeat again why you are wrong about lifespan, but I´d love to have more info about those amazing marine sanctuaries. I must be uninformed since the only cetacean sanctuaries I know are the one for Beluga in Iceland, and O´Barry´s center in Bali. I wouldn´t considerer a big success to keep two whales in a totally indoor pool half of the year, and in the entrance of a harbour the other half. Not to mention no intention of reintroduction for those animals. About the one in Indonesia, I don´t know how they work, but the enclosures seems smaller than some dolphinariums...
That wasn't the point I was trying to make, though, was it? Of course I know what "average age" means, just as much as you do.
The style of argumentation @S U N N Y and yourself are demonstrating here is akin to that of the AR groups attempting to ban elephants and apes and all animals general from being kept in humane care. It is also the same argument style that has become worryingly prevalent within my country over the past 5-6 years; ie I'm right because this is what I want to believe and what I want to believe is right because I am right, and I don't need any evidence or sources to back that up. Anyone or anything that states otherwise is faked. I am right, PERIOD.
It's an unhealthy and outright dangerous practice and, while easy to do, it is not going to lead to anything good and it's definitely not going to get you very far on this forum. Trust me.
~Thylo
So what was your point, then? ^^
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
This isn't a debate which I find very interesting and as others have already said it seems to come up every couple of months on zoochat like a record stuck on repeat which I find boring and uninspired.
But I have to say you always need a source when trying to make a credible argument in favour of something otherwise you are merely practicing "I thinkism" and that is bull ****.
Bib claimed animals in captivity don't live as long as they would in the wild, including pets. I countered with my own point disproving that. That's all.
Very low opinion. They need a lot of space and money, while being usless for protecting tgeir wild populations. And draining money need for both conservation projects and increasing the care of animals allready in captivity. And most instutions have way to small exhibits, and don't thrive in captivity like most commen species in captivity.
Bib was baiting you, and you fell for it. Your argument, based on very limited anecdotic evidence, does not bring your point across. Nor does it disprove anything.
I thought Bib was posting that reply satirically to mock the initial post.
Those animals do a lot better in captivity than large cetaceans. Orcas in captivity live to be 30 years old at the oldest. In the wild, they can live to be 100. They also have been known to become violent and kill their trainers. Tilikum killed three of his trainers. Where as in the wild, there is no recorded case of an orca killing a human.
So yeah, I don’t think a hedgehog and an orca is a very fair comparison
There's a lot wrong with this. Let's start with the obvious. "Orcas in captivity live to be 30 years old at the oldest". Fascinating! Someone ought to tell Corky (age 56), Lolita (age 54), Ulisses (age 43), Katina (age 45), Kiska (38), and several others, including Tilikum who died at 35.
"In the wild, they can live to be 100" No. In the wild, one individual allegedly lived to 100 based on extremely disputed evidence. However, even if it were true, which later studies say it's not, the oldest possible individual is not a worthy metric to measure lifespan. The oldest cat ever lived to 38, but the vast majority of cats won't even make it to 20 (average is 16). That doesn't mean most cat owners are abusive, that means that particular cat was extraordinary in some way. As for the average lifespan of killer whales? Let's take the NOAA fisheries numbers: "The average lifespan for male killer whales is about 30 years, but they can live up to at least 60 years. Females typically live about 50 years, but can live up to at least 90 years in the wild." Even that's disputable because the alleged oldest known orca, Granny, has a listed date of birth as "1911-1951", which also means that she may have been as young as 65.
"Tilikum killed three of his trainers" Well, no not exactly. The first death he was involved in was Keltie Byrne. In the "documentary" Blackfish, witnesses claim "the big one" grabbed Keltie and viciously drowned her. The problem with that is Tilikum was 10 at the time, so he wasn't "the big one", and both Haida IV and Nootka II, older females who lived with him, were dominant over him. Any involvement he had would have been minimal, and eyewitness testimony confirms he wasn't the primary instigator. The second death was Daniel P. Dukes. He was not a trainer. In fact news reports at the time call him a "drifter off a string of arrests". He got naked and entered the pool with Tilikum, at which point Tilikum eventually killed him. It's hard to really blame captivity for this death, since A: trainers were not supposed to enter the water with Tilikum as he'd never undergone water desensitization training and B: a strange erratic man entered the enclosure of an animal, an apex predator no less. Pretty much any animal would attack in this scenario. Finally, the third death, Dawn Brancheau lied down on a slideout, and Tilikum grabbed her ponytail and drowned her. This was a tragic incident, and the trainer made a mistake by misjudging the situation, but again, it was known to trainers they weren't supposed to enter the water with Tilikum since the beginning of his tenure at SeaWorld.
"Where as in the wild, there is no recorded case of an orca killing a human". I don't think you've considered that there is, in fact, a pretty obvious reason for why this is because it's the same reason cattle kill more people yearly than sharks. People work and spend hours per day with captive orcas every single day, 365 days a year, since 1961. Contrast that with wild orcas, who pretty much never swim with people. Not to mention the fact that Wikipedia does, in fact, have a list of wild killer whale attacks on humans, and that, in 2020, there were over 40 reports of wild orcas attacking boats off the coasts of Spain and Portugal, source below.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/buqvasp1rr/orcas-spain-portugal
Claiming they're useless for protecting wild populations is absurd. Scientists are constantly learning from captive cetaceans, which can then be applied to protecting their wild counterparts.
I thought theirs was a really perplexing point for someone on ZooChat to make. Especially when they said the animals drain money for "the care of animals already in captivity". I don't think there's a single species where that isn't true. The vast majority of animals in zoos will live out their lives in human care, but that doesn't mean they're somehow detrimental to conservation efforts. SeaWorld's orcas have been used for a great number of studies on wild orcas, for example, to the point that when they ended their breeding program several scientists complained, as it was the only accessible way for them to conduct studies involving pregnancy and calves.
On top of that, the animals still function as "ambassadors". Before orcas were kept in captivity they were considered a pest species, and the military used them for strafing runs. It wasn't until marine parks came along that people actually appreciated orcas, or really most cetacean species, as even other dolphins were considered a pest species to fishermen. Not to mention the obvious fact that some of the money people pay to visit these facilities to see cetaceans goes back to the facility's conservation or rescue programs.
EXACTLY. These animals weren't the beloved species they are now before they started being kept in marine parks, theme parks, and aquariums. That alone has generated much more for conservation than if they had never been kept.
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
Not strictly true as that is a US centric view which ignores the cultures of the rest of the world and thousands of years of history.
It seems that dolphins have always been symbolic animals imbued with all kinds of cultural significance throughout human history and across many cultures.
Marine dolphins were viewed positively by both the Minoan civilization and the later cultures of Ancient Greece and Rome and I'm sure in many other cultures both Ancient and Modern besides.
Dolphins and fishing communities have not and are not always in a state of human wildlife conflict and in many cases (where traditional fishing is practiced) there can even be interspecific cooperative hunting of fish resources by both species.
I think human wildlife conflict between humans and dolphins largely arises from industrialization and modernization of fisheries like in the US and Japan.
River dolphins are viewed positively and in supernatural /liminal terms wherever they occur (or occurred in the case of the Baiji) from the Amazon basin to the Indian Ganges or the Chinese Yangtze.
Even orcas are culturally significant and you only have to look North of the border at the Native American cultures of British Columbia and their totem poles to see how the orca is culturally significant even to this day.
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As a father of a daughter, I might not be all too positive about the "encantado" aspect of the Amazonian River Dolphin...
Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
As a father of a daughter, I might not be all too positive about the "encantado" aspect of the Amazonian River Dolphin...
Yes it's definitely true what you suggest that it's not wholely positive and that there is nuance that surrounds the myths of the dolphin in the Amazon.
If I remember correctly the Baiji too had some kind of dark supernatural belief attached to it that it was the lost wandering soul of a drowned Han princess or something like that.
It wouldn't surprise me either if similarly there is nuance in cultural beliefs about the river dolphin in India in the Ganges.
But what I was getting at was more a rebuttal of Shell hearts suggestion that there was no cultural salience towards dolphins and orcas until these arrived at SeaWorld which is just a ridiculously myopic and USA centric statement.
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I'll be honest, this post is not particularly relevant and doesn't really affect my overall point that cetaceans in captivity change people's views and perceptions. I will say that I think it's funny that you claim my comment is US-centric and go on to mention British Columbia/Canada as having different attitudes towards orcas because Canada is literally the country I was thinking of when I wrote the pest species portion (though plenty of other countries have viewed cetaceans as pests). The Canadian government went as far as to build a machine gun overlooking the Seymour Narrows in B.C. for the express purpose of culling orcas, as the general public perception of them was that they were pests and dangerous to humans. That didn't change till orcas began being exhibited in marine parks in America, which popularized them and led to several Canadian marine parks exhibiting orcas, as they saw orcas were a crowd draw. It's strange, as I am a so-called "myopic" person, I'd have expected you to know about that bit of history. I also enjoyed your mention of the ancient Minoans quite a bit. My hope was that it would be understood that my comment was mostly referring to cultures that actually held cetaceans in captivity but it appears that expectation was too high.
Furthermore, my point that marine parks instilled an appreciation for cetaceans is hardly a US-centric view, because soon after the American marine park industry boomed, marine parks exhibiting captive cetaceans started popping up in Europe, Asia, and South and Central America. Even if some of those countries didn't previously have an outright negative perception of cetaceans, the marine park industry clearly popularized them in many countries around the world.
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Onychorhynchus coronatus
Well-Known Member
I wasn't actually arguing in favour or against the argument I was merely calling out your US centric view and cultural ignorance.
I'm not actually invested in this debate at all as cetaceans are not an interest of mine at all.
What a shame that you are aware of Canada's modern culling of orca but not of the complex views towards this species held by the indigenous people of much of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.
I do think marine parks were popularized in the USA and that this trend then spread around the world and I actually wasn't arguing against that.
Rather my point was against the assertion that this was the pivotal moment that homo sapiens began to appreciate the intelligence of dolphins and orcas and attributed cultural significance to them.
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What a shame that, after specifically mentioning the number of ways that cetacean captivity changed people's opinions and had a global effect, you still insist on parroting the idea that it's a "US-centric" phenomenon. And again, I'm well aware of the indigenous peoples' views of orcas, however, I specified, multiple times over, that my comment applied to the general public, versus the subset of the population that hold orcas in significant cultural esteem.
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