About most captive males not being introduced to calves until they’re a year old because they’re too rough, that is…absolutely not true. In a healthy and well established pod with socially competent whales, bulls should be able to be introduced to the calves from a very young age, if not directly after birth. For instance, with the last two seaworld calves, Kyara was introduced to her sire at less than three months of age, and Amaya’s 15 year old brother was present for her birth (as well as grouped with her regularly from a young age). Bingo at Nagoya was present for the births of a number of his daughters, and Oscar was present for the birth of and housed with his son until the mature cows of the pod started to ostracize him from the social grouping.
The majority of issues with males being rough/sexually inappropriate with young calves is unfortunately an artifact of being in captivity (and more specifically how they are usually brought into captivity as well). Considering the majority of founder animals were brought in between the ages of three and six years old, they did not have time to learn fully appropriate social skills from their pods in the wild. Some animals pick them up better with time, experience, and maturity, but others did not. Plus as a fundamental aspect of being in a confined space, males simply cannot separate from the calves and cows as much as if they were in the wild, which can allow harassment from either the females to the male, or from the male to the calf if the females are not suitably protective over the baby.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully support work is being underhuman care, but there are fundamentally several aspects to the manager that I believe are still not being fully and properly addressed. Realistically, the future for them in captivity is in China and Japan, where unfortunately the emphasis seems to be placed on merely maintaining the animals for performance/display and not modernizing their husband treat beyond what is already existing. While what’s currently happening is working, it’s sad to see that further emphasis isn’t being placed on expanding habitats and really focussing strongly on building strong socially competent, matriarchal pods of animals.
