surprise - large predators kill things

[rivendellrose]

Newsflash: Orcas are wild animals, not cute pets, no matter how much we would like to think otherwise. I feel dreadfully that this woman, with 16 years of experience, was killed by the animal she trained, but I'm very worried about how the park (and the public) will react toward the orca in question. We're talking about a 12,300-pound predator, not a goldfish, being kept in a small tank and fed dead food when all his instincts are to hunt and kill prey over a large territory. It's no wonder he's got a history of attacking trainers.

Don't get me wrong - I adore orcas, and I hate the bad reputation they've had in the past as vicious animals. But they are still predators. Furthermore, I'm going to go ahead and say that while I appreciate the wonders that live acts such as the one at SeaWorld have done for the public perception of the species, I do abhor what it's done to the individual animals involved - from what I've read, most of them are neither happy nor healthy in captivity, and it pains me to think of them like that.

That said, our local wild populations aren't doing very well, either, with boat traffic and pollution and other factors we don't yet understand. I really do worry for orcas - they're among the most noble and amazing animals in the world, I think, and they're having a very hard time of it in this modern world.

Comments

[websandwhiskers.livejournal.com]

This is really interesting/disturbing to me in that I'm lately having behavioral issues with my cat. He weighs 15lbs. Far cry from an orca. But he has claws and can do a lot of damage just because he's bored and I'm there to pounce on. We're making some progress with training and behavioral management strategies (mostly involving lots of treats) and Prozac, and the eventual plan is to get him to a state where we can get him a feline playmate without worrying that he'd kill the new cat - and hopefully with someone appropriate to pounce on, he'll be happier. But all that's possible because he wasn't large and strong enough to inadvertently kill me the first time he was feeling bored and a bit pissed off at me for not alleviating his boredom. I feel a truly horrible degree of empathy for the woman who died, here, but I also feel badly for the orca, who I doubt meant to kill her, and is probably now missing her and wondering what happened.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

You have a 15lb cat, too? Awesome!

And yet, as you point out, sometimes harrowing. Mine is a big cream puff for the most part - I can pick him up whenever I wish without worry of being so much as nicked, and my old housemates used to hold him in all sorts of undignified positions without the slightest injury, but, as you point out, even housecats can still be dangerous. It gives me feelings of immense horror to think of the sheer arrogance of people who keep, say, a puma (cougar) as a pet, let alone a tiger. :P I mean, for god's sake, my friendly cream-puff of a cat did once bite the back of my neck while we were roughhousing. He's gentle, and it didn't even hurt, but it gave me a good shock because it made me remember that the instinct is still there. Now picture that with 100+ lbs of cat instead of 14.

I'm glad to hear you're making progress with prozac and training. It's tough to break those kinds of habits, depending on the temperament of the animal, because they just plain and simple ingrained. Nature doesn't want them to forget those instincts - they're wired in precisely because they're the instincts that would keep the animal alive in the wild, and evolution doesn't work fast enough that those sorts of instincts can be lost in the amount of time we've been domesticating cats. In my personal experience, The Boy's cat (who weighs almost as much as yours and mine) is used to being able to rough-house - The Boy plays with him like he's a puppy (and has scars on his arms to show for it). Random (the cat) tries this on me every now and then, and gets a swift (but controlled) whap on the nose for his efforts, at which point he seems to remember that I'm not to be played with that way. But that's keeping in mind that he's otherwise a very friendly and loving cat who only means to play.

It is terribly sad to think of the orca - you're right that he probably doesn't understand precisely what happened. That said, what I've read of what happened in the attack - grabbing the trainer around the waist and shaking her so hard that she lost a shoe - he was dealing with her exactly the way orcas do with seals. They grab them, shake them, and break their backs that way so that they can be eaten. That's instinct. I don't know if that means that something about her just triggered a reaction he couldn't control (a person in a wetsuit and flippers does look an awful lot like a seal, when you think about it), or if it means that he never fully absorbed that humans =/= prey item (the whale in question does seem to have a history of attacking humans) or perhaps even if, by the same evidence noted before, he might be an animal not born in captivity who might have made the connection between humans and his loss of freedom. I doubt the last, but whales are smart animals, so I suppose it's possible.

In whatever case, it's not his fault. An animal can't help what his/her instincts tell him to do. But it does worry me, because it's people who are going to decide his fate, and the fate of his species, and this kind of attack plays into a lot of very out-dated and almost superstitious fears that people have of orcas. A large part of the population seems not to have a middle ground between demonizing animals and assuming that they're fluffy stuffed animals who couldn't possibly hurt a fly, and that kind of attitude is intensely dangerous to the predators that we keep around us.

Rant finished. I'd love to hear about your progress with kitty, if you're up to documenting it - I always try to keep up on training and other such info whenever possible. :)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

If you don't mind a bit of showing off... icons don't really do Theoden justice, IMHO.

Pictures of the fuzz-monster in all his glory. (http://pics.livejournal.com/rivendellrose/gallery/0000d58y)

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

I was pretty much thinking the same thing when I saw this on the news last night. I really feel for this woman and her family. It's not her fault and I'm sure she cared about the animals she was training. However, I think we as humans, really have a lot to answer for regarding the way we treat animals in our culture. Lets face it - that Orca was there for no other reason than human amusement.

[gaslightgallows]

This, 100%. Orcas are popularly known as 'killer whales' for a reason, the same reason they were once known as sea wolves: they are, as you said, predators, and highly effective ones.

Free Willy was dangerous propaganda.

[leianora.livejournal.com]

Good gods! This just pisses me off. I mean, the human race... we suck, we do, precious! Less than a hundred years ago, we thought it'd be fun to watch insane people do their thing behind bars and laugh from the safety of the other side. Now we do that very same thing to animals? And we wonder why they react in a perfectly natural way? Free willy was a very dangerous bit of propaganda indeed. So were the dalmation movies.

[gaslightgallows]

And those damn chihuaha movies.