Biggest Orca pool

@tigertiger: So the locomotion the orcas are trained to show in their performance are the reason not to keep them? Does that mean that if a zoo trained their coatis or meerkats to perform on cue daily, do jumps on signal and (well, that would require several of them...) carry their keepers, it would also become morally suspicious to keep them in zoos? Brno Zoo, to name an example, offers lunch and (occasionally) dinner with a tiger sitting (behind glass in its enclosure) next to your dinner table. Zoos like Hagenbeck offer special events for their visitors that involve their animals, including elephants. Hannover and others even build huge buildings on zoo grounds just for that purpose.
Commercialism is all too frequent in zoos with a lot of animals-as no public wild animal husbandry can exist without anyone paying for it. Why orcas should be an exception, is beyond me.

In quite a lot of species kept in zoos (including several invertebrate species, like tarantulas) or sold by the millions as pets, we don't know the average (!) life span in the wild. That would be worth more than study. Given the continous animal loss observed in various zoos and private households in regard to these animals, their presence with us might also be a comparabily shorter one; yet I hardly ever hear anyone complain about that...

"Gut" feeling is not the most reliable source of information-especially after the consumption of chilli or White Castle burgers...:D

Thanks for that interesting link; one of the Japanese facilitioes (the whaling musuem) appears to be especially interesting. Wouldn't that be an interesting (yet nevertheless rather expensive) alternative to disprove the assumption that no enclosure can be big enough for orcas-fencing in a fjord?
 
Sun Wukong said:
@tigertiger: So the locomotion the orcas are trained to show in their performance are the reason not to keep them? Does that mean that if a zoo trained their coatis or meerkats to perform on cue daily, do jumps on signal and (well, that would require several of them...) carry their keepers, it would also become morally suspicious to keep them in zoos? Brno Zoo, to name an example, offers lunch and (occasionally) dinner with a tiger sitting (behind glass in its enclosure) next to your dinner table. Zoos like Hagenbeck offer special events for their visitors that involve their animals, including elephants. Hannover and others even build huge buildings on zoo grounds just for that purpose.
Commercialism is all too frequent in zoos with a lot of animals-as no public wild animal husbandry can exist without anyone paying for it. Why orcas should be an exception, is beyond me.
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Why does everyone on this site like to put words into my mouth? Honestly, when did I say that orcas are the exception to the rule and shouldn't be kept ever? When was it I mentioned morality? This is the second time in less than a weekend someone has jumped on my opinion as if I said we should kill every animal in a zoo and it's unnecessary.

Just because commercialism is frequent doesn't mean it's okay. I don't think it's appropriate to force a water animal out of the water so that someone can eat a meal next to them. I don't think that's conservation or even beneficial to an animal. A tiger behind a glass is different, you're just trying to get it to spend time in a certain portion of an exhibit.

Are you seriously trying to say you'd enjoy and see nothing at all out of the element if zoos started to train meerkats to carry their keepers around for scheduled performances? This is something that would be absolutely okay and enjoyable to see? Sorry, I'd rather see an amazing animal living it's life.

I think there's a big difference between forcing an animal out of it's element and teaching it a trick. If we suddenly started sticking desert reptiles in the snow, I'm sure someone would go "hey, this doesn't seem awesome." There's a difference in my mind between having an animal be present and having an animal perform tricks. I don't personally think animals should ever be the absolute focal point of any performance. The animals themselves should be enough--they shouldn't have to jump through hoops and perform flips and bounce balls to please.
 
okapikpr said:
You'd be surprised with the number that are expected to do so.
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Really? I have wondered this, as part of me thinks. When a multimillion dollar exhibit opens. There is a expectation on a return from the animal.

Can you give some general examples ?
 
Basic operant conditioning and animal husbandry....anytime a keeper/trainer gives a cue, the animal is expected to behave or "perform" a certain way. Whether it be shifting, lining up, stationing, etc. It may not be in front of a large audience, but the concept is still the same.
 
I haven't been to a marine park in years, but when I did I noticed something peculiar (troubling?). The captive killer whales often had a top dorsal fin that flopped over instead of sticking straight up. As far as I know this never happens in the wild. When captive animals show a visible deformity their wild counterparts don't, isn't that cause for concern?

As for the comparison of habitat size to captive elephants, most of the new elephant exhibits being built (2-3 acres) are much bigger than orca pools. Also, it's not just the width or number of gallons, but also the shallowness of the pools that is troubling.
 
okapikpr said:
Basic operant conditioning and animal husbandry....anytime a keeper/trainer gives a cue, the animal is expected to behave or "perform" a certain way. Whether it be shifting, lining up, stationing, etc. It may not be in front of a large audience, but the concept is still the same.
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And just to expand on this... an animal is "expected" to perform these behaviors, but that doesn't mean that there is punishment for not performing them, just rewards for performing the behavior. The word "force" has been used in this thread and that disturbs me. Using positive reinforcement, which Sea World uses, no animals is "forced" to do anything. I've been to whale shows at Sea World where practically nothing happens. None of the whales felt like "performing".
 
Thanks Ituri...I did forget to mention that in positive reinforcement, animals are only rewarded for desired behaviors and are ignored (no reinforcement) when animals provide undesired behaviors or none at all. (ie refusing to shift).
 
I think there's a big difference between forcing an animal out of it's element and teaching it a trick.

Yes, like all domestic dogs, they were put out of their packs and have to do tricks. Or most of birds in the zoos, they were taken out of their element,the air, their wings were cut and some of them, like paarots, have to do tricks also.

Strange, the orcas haven't any problem to get out of the water for a short time, but some humans do...

So you like zoos,tigertiger ? And what you ever thought about the tragic with white tigers and white lions ? This is tormention of animals, not keeping orcas in good conditions. And you haven'ta nsered the question, why no orca ppol is big enough for orcas, but why you are like to wtach the huge elephants in zoos, no exhibit can be big enough for elephants, tehy are to big for to be kept in captivity, and they are walking to big disctances in the nature all day to get food, so no zoo enclosure is big enough for elephants.
 
@tigertiger.Or i've forgot, do you know, Tigertiger,what the orcas do at the cost of argentina ? They leaving the water and "beaching"to catch sealions....And they are longer out of the water than the orcas at Seaworld....
 
@tigertiger: Maybe you should start to ask yourself WHY people seem put words into your mouth in the first place...;)
Commercialism might not be nice-but thinking about it, a zoo is nothing else than the commercial public display of wild animals for the amusement of humans. That the animal welfare aspect of all(!) animals kept in the zoo should nevertheless be most important, is probably unchallenged by anyone here.
If training the meerkats to carry their keeper around would result in making it easier for the staff (and especially the zoo veterinarians) to deal on a daily basis with the animals, and decrease the likeliness of both staff and animal being injured/stressed etc., then I'm all in for it.
About the "being out of the element"-see Zebraduiker's hint

@Arizona Docent: Reg. Orca fins:
Why does a killer whales fin bend over in captivity? - Yahoo! Answers
 
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Zebraduiker said:
@tigertiger.Or i've forgot, do you know, Tigertiger,what the orcas do at the cost of argentina ? They leaving the water and "beaching"to catch sealions....And they are longer out of the water than the orcas at Seaworld....
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I thought that when the orcas in argentina beach themselves, they caught the sea-lion - or not, as the case may be - before returning to the water, rather than remaining on the beach for a long time.
 
No one at Seachworld force the orcas to go out of the water, they do it on command, but they do it voluntary, if they don't want to do it, they don't have to do it. And its absolutly okay for an orca, to be out of the water for two minutes, so they are much longer out of their element, if they were transported to another facillity.....
 
when i went to seaworld, the mother and aunty were fighting over the baby orcas, they didnt want to do the show, so seaworld didn't make them

they said that the orcas get very upset when they are not chosen for the show, so get shirty with the keepers in the back pools
 
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