SeaWorld has announced that Tilikum the killer whale has died. He lived to be 35 years old (wild orcas often live to be 70, btw). Tilikum was linked to the deaths of three people and was the main subject of the anti-SeaWorld documentary Blackfish.
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/science/tilikum-dead-seaworld-whale-blackfish.html?_r=0
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-whale-linked-to-three-human-deaths-has-died/
http://wfla.com/2017/01/06/seaworld-announces-death-of-orca-whale-tilikum/
Honestly, this comes a relief to me. Yeah, Blackfish is biased as hell, but it does contain actual facts. Tilikum was captured and separated from his mother at a very young age- if you didn't know, orcas (especially male orcas) usually spend their entire lives with their mothers and orcas have one of the strongest familial bonds in the animal kingdom (along with humans and elephants). After he was separated from his mother, he was placed in a small marine exhibit (Sealand of the Pacific) with two older female orcas who relentlessly bullied him. The small size of the exhibit made it so he couldn't escape from them and so had to endure their abuse. By the time SeaWorld got him the poor thing was damaged for life.
It's not really surprising that Tilikum snapped. I remember some commentator saying "If you were stuck in a bathtub for 20 years, you'd probably go crazy, too." Orcas travel as much as 120km a day in the wild, making it impossible to provide them a good quality of life in captivity. I'm actually okay with most animal species being kept in captivity for conservation purposes, but orcas are too damn smart and big to keep contained.
Tl;dr- Dicks out for Tilikum.
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/science/tilikum-dead-seaworld-whale-blackfish.html?_r=0
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-whale-linked-to-three-human-deaths-has-died/
http://wfla.com/2017/01/06/seaworld-announces-death-of-orca-whale-tilikum/
Honestly, this comes a relief to me. Yeah, Blackfish is biased as hell, but it does contain actual facts. Tilikum was captured and separated from his mother at a very young age- if you didn't know, orcas (especially male orcas) usually spend their entire lives with their mothers and orcas have one of the strongest familial bonds in the animal kingdom (along with humans and elephants). After he was separated from his mother, he was placed in a small marine exhibit (Sealand of the Pacific) with two older female orcas who relentlessly bullied him. The small size of the exhibit made it so he couldn't escape from them and so had to endure their abuse. By the time SeaWorld got him the poor thing was damaged for life.
It's not really surprising that Tilikum snapped. I remember some commentator saying "If you were stuck in a bathtub for 20 years, you'd probably go crazy, too." Orcas travel as much as 120km a day in the wild, making it impossible to provide them a good quality of life in captivity. I'm actually okay with most animal species being kept in captivity for conservation purposes, but orcas are too damn smart and big to keep contained.
Tl;dr- Dicks out for Tilikum.
