To play the devil's advocate...
View on keeping cetaceans in captivity?
- Thread starter S U N N Y
- Start date
Sphenisciologist
Well-Known Member
There is no source needed, no aquarium home to cetaceans has had natural requirements.
Sphenisciologist
Well-Known Member
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.For instance, the Western European Hedgehog generally has a home range of up to 4km diameter which it traverses each night when feeding.... but no one ever suggests that zoos need to have multiple acres for their hedgehog exhibits!
So yeah, I don’t think a hedgehog and an orca is a very fair comparison
Well, quite apart from the fact that the latter claim is extremely shaky and has not been demonstrated to any reasonable level - biopsy results suggested that the female who was widely claimed by ARA to have lived beyond a century was actually around 65-75, and the claims of her age were more or less entirely based on the later-disproved assumption that an adult male seen with her was her son - the former claim is verifiably false given the fact there are currently 7 captive orcas which are older than 30, with the oldest living animal being 57!
Sounds awfully like the time one person on this site, when asked to substantiate some fairly wild claims, merely replied "MY LOGIC AND KNOWLEDGE" and refused to elaborate
@Sunny
they are CAPTIVE, and CAPTIVITY can never be positive.. No matter how golden the cage is in which they are forced to spend their lives, because animals do not have the choice whether they want to be locked up. The human being presumes to do that. And it doesn't matter at all whether the animal was born in captivity or not, how a living creature being feels has nothing to do with where it was born. NEVER, for absolut NO animal is captivity OK. They live in prisons, just so people like you can gawk at them.
Y'see, what you're doing is assuming, thinking you know better than the animals. How do you know the animals are unhappy? Have you tried asking them? You shouldn't blindly assume you know what is going on in an animal's head.
Also, by your logic, a pet cat can't live as long as a wild one would? OK....the average age of a domestic cat is 15. Mine is 19. Theory destroyed.
Bib Fortuna
Well-Known Member
To play the devil's advocate...
No, that's not me....
But I find it simply always again on the new great, if in a Pro-Zooforum - from zoo geeks for zoo geeks - such threads emerge...like I love these questions, because they seemed so pointless and out of place here in this forum. I should look around in the forums of Peta and Co. - if they discuss there that zoos are not so bad after all, and that their efforts to preserve animals threatened with extinction are exemplary ? I dare to doubt that I will find such threads there - but the thread titles mentioned here would fit much better than here...You know, I don't have to tell you how long elephants, apes or cetaceans have been kept and bred in captivity, and that, especially in the past 25 years, significant and meaningful changes and improvements have occurred in the keeping and care of these animal groups. Zoo animal husbandry is indeed evolving - and that, since, behind bars animals are locked up...Now one should expect, especially in this forum, which by and large already has a certain claim to be high quality, that such questions and threads should not occur, and yet they do with nice regularity.
On the other hand, no one here wonders if it is okay to keep in Central Europe musk oxen and snow leopards, around two prominent animal species from cold regions, which in nature will never be confronted with the temperatures of our modern, Central European dry season - and they not only visibly suffer from this monkey heat, and nothing can be done about it. I know, these two species are my absolute favorite examples of this. Why does no one wonder where all the cute muskox calves are that are born every year ? Well, most of them are in heaven with the dear God, and even the old animals are not up to this monkey heat and die all the time. They don't die, they die in the heat, but that's okay, isn't it ? Just don't lock up the sacred dolphins.
Well, so that you can keep the cute panda bears in Malaysia, you lock them up in air-conditioned halls - wouldn't that be a great solution for snow leopards and musk oxen?
I'm curious to see what comes next - asking again and again if dolphins should be kept in captivity gets boring in the long run.
How about this :
"Is it okay to eat pigs ?
Pigs are known to be incredibly intelligent animals, and yet people eat them-but don't lock up the poor dolphins. It's a pity that the intelligence of the pigs eaten is not transferred to the consumer-because people would have a good reason to eat only pork. But that is supposed to be unhealthy.
Sphenisciologist
Well-Known Member
It also depends on how old the orcas were when they were brought in from the wild and how long they lived to be in captivity. But that’s a whole nother topicWell, quite apart from the fact that the latter claim is extremely shaky and has not been demonstrated to any reasonable level - biopsy results suggested that the female who was widely claimed by ARA to have lived beyond a century was actually around 65-75, and the claims of her age were more or less entirely based on the later-disproved assumption that an adult male seen with her was her son - the former claim is verifiably false given the fact there are currently 7 captive orcas which are older than 30, with the oldest living animal being 57!
Sounds awfully like the time one person on this site, when asked to substantiate some fairly wild claims, merely replied "MY LOGIC AND KNOWLEDGE" and refused to elaborate
.@Bib Fortuna With all due respect, nobody takes Peta seriously. They kill far more animals than they rescue and they spend much of their time complaining about things that don't need to be complained about, like Super Mario skinning tanukis to get the tanuki suit when he clearly gets it from a leaf, so looking on their forums is a waste of everyone's time.
Bib Fortuna
Well-Known Member
So why you ? Have you ever thought about discussing your thraed question with peta supporters ?
I find it's okay to keep cetaceans in HUMAN CARE ( its not the same as to keep them in CAPTIVITY. That's a very big diffrence). But I don't think it's okay that Russia still keeps catching orcas and belguas to sell them to China. THAT is critical - but not the keeping of cetaceans per se.
Bib Fortuna
Well-Known Member
I am aware of that.
It also depends on how old the orcas were when they were brought in from the wild and how long they lived to be in captivity. But that’s a whole nother topic
Lolita - 57 years old (52 years in captivity)
Corky II - 56 years old (52 years in captivity)
Ulises - 44 years old (41 years in captivity)
Katina - 46 years old (43 years in captivity)
Kiska - 44 years old (42 years in captivity)
Kshamanek - 34 years old (29 years in captivity)
Stella - 34 years old (30 years in captivity)
Orkid - 32 years old (born in captivity)
So all but one of the animals in question have lived in captivity longer than the 30-year hard barrier you claim to exist
incidentally, there's a bunch of 29-year old captive born ones which will soon cross that barrier too.
Sphenisciologist
Well-Known Member
That’s true, I admit I was wrong with that part. But even so they still live more than 30 years longer than that in the wild. The oldest orca in the wild was 105.Lolita - 57 years old (52 years in captivity)
Corky II - 56 years old (52 years in captivity)
Ulises - 44 years old (41 years in captivity)
Katina - 46 years old (43 years in captivity)
Kiska - 44 years old (42 years in captivity)
Kshamanek - 34 years old (29 years in captivity)
Stella - 34 years old (30 years in captivity)
Orkid - 32 years old (born in captivity)
So all but one of the animals in question have lived in captivity longer than the 30-year hard barrier you claim to exist
You didn't pay attention to the first half of my initial post did you?
to repeat, so as to save you the effort of scrolling upthread:
Quick everyone!! We need to pressure legislators to ban the ownership of hamsters as "pets".
No, that's not how this works.
You are repeatedly making factual claims that must be based on something. If you say "Cetaceans need to travel long distances in order to be properly healthy", that is a factual claim. When you make these and someone asks you for a source or some kind of evidence that the fact you claim is actually a fact, you have an obligation to either show the evidence it's based on or admit that your claim is based on something other than facts.
As for the statement I quoted, I don't understand what it means. You seem to be implying that an aquarium needs to perfectly replicate the natural environment of cetaceans in order for them to be properly cared; if this is your stance, then you should cite sources supporting your stance. This discussion isn't productive or necessary if you simply pull facts and statistics out of nowhere and force other people to fact-check you.
Not to be rude, but are you going to respond to my initial reply? I know it hasn't been that long and maybe you just haven't had the time yet, but the fact that you replied to someone else hours ago and haven't acknowledged my earlier request for either sources or clarifications makes me unsure whether you intend to do so or not.
You don't have to draft a long reply immediately or anything, just a yes or no will suffice so I know whether I should be waiting for one at all.
Come with me to the science deniers club, it's fun to ignore the evidence. Trust me I do it all the time, and I definitely am not an ignoramus for doing so. : P
This post brought to you by PETA
.
Apparently, you don't understand what "average age" means.^^
Apparently, enough people to allow them to employ hundreds of people all over the world and finance all of their antics...
I believe that we can and should be able to keep cetaceans in captivity; but at the same time I don't think we've done it "right" just yet with most (other than bottlenose dolphins, which do surprisingly well). I do think that lifespan isn't necessarily an indicator of welfare (the oldest goldfish lived over forty years in a bowl, somehow), and that these creatures' intelligence should be more respected than they currently are; and that exhibits should therefore typically be more than just a normal bare tank. Perhaps controversially; these creatures are smart enough that I think we should really consider their minds and feelings as well as their physical biology.
In short, I think we need to strengthen the rules and restrictions for them so that we have bigger, more humane tanks instead of pretty small-looking pools, but I don't want to ban them outright.
In short, I think we need to strengthen the rules and restrictions for them so that we have bigger, more humane tanks instead of pretty small-looking pools, but I don't want to ban them outright.