It's strange to me how Nakai is 13 and still has a perfectly straight dorsal fin,while Ikaika,who's only about a year younger, has a dorsal this floppy. I wonder if that's a result of his time at Marineland.
@birdsandbats Source? I haven't seen anything that conclusively explains it but most of the causes discussed in dozens of papers have been environmental.
@birdsandbats Right - would be interested to hear what gave them this impression. I think hereditary cause has been pretty summarily dismissed mostly because of such striking prevalence in mostly unrelated captive orcas and such comparative rarity in wild ones? Of course not completely inconceivable that there is prevalence of genes (by chance) in the captive population that predispose them to such traits, but the (pretty tiny) chance of this happening combined with the number of wild cases that are attributed to stress/injury does make that very questionable. On top of that, if I remember, there are cases of captive animals whose fins have ameliorated with improved care? Either way, not something we fully know, but would be interested in anything indicating heredity if you do come across it!
