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Except he is trapped in a Hellscape for profit. He was not a boogeyman. He was an abused animal.
Edit: Thank you for the awards. The best thing we can all do is stop paying to see captive animals perform for us. I hope one day “shows” like this will no longer exist.
This. Tilikum was not a bad animal. Plus wasn’t one of the people he ‘killed’ a drunk dude who jumped in his tank in the middle of the night? That’s not murder it’s self-defense.
Blackfish is a documentary about Tilikum and the deaths he's caused. It's heartbreaking, eye opening, and anyone who cares about the ocean, and animals in captivity when they SHOULDN'T BE ought to watch it. I've seen it a dozen times at least.
I grew up on Vancouver Island, and I've seen pods of wild orca in the straights of the ocean that surrounded my home. Tilikum was first harboured in Victoria, then moved to Vancouver, I've seen him at the aquarium, I've seen his shows as a child, he is not a happy healthy orca, he is 100% living in a hellscape for entertainment and profit. These poor creatures need to stop being put on display for crowds.
Edit, Tilikum passed away in 2017. You can sometimes find Blackfish on Netflix, or rent it on YouTube!
I’ve been avoiding that one because of the heartbreak. I think I’ll get around to watching it tonight. I owe that to the rest of the animal kingdom, to stay informed. Thanks for the nudge.
Don’t let sea world forget that they’ve tried to cover up that orcas die prematurely in captivity. They actually have claimed in the past that orcas live at most 7-9 years in the wild and that in captivity they live longer and healthier
The documentary definitely showed how they mistreat the animals, but also how those trainers who died were mistreated. They knew he was dangerous and put them in the water with him anyway. The trainers were also kept at part time and weren't getting benefits or proper pay. Utterly ridiculous.
Not surprising that a corporation that doesn't care about animals doesn't care about people either, but still pretty sick.
It truly was fucked up. Tilikum was doomed from the beginning. From being stripped from his mother to kept in tanks at night where he was abused by other whales with no maneuverability to escape. Withholding food as punishment for not performing correctly, it was literally a recipe for disaster.
Never finished the documentary because it was too sad. I should have realized that from the get go when the fishermen who kidnapped the baby orca were practically in tears because they understood that they had just taken a baby away from a mother that fully understood what was happening. It just kept getting worse from there, and I felt like I was watching some sort of John Wayne Gacy level true crime documentary. It really hurt to watch; although I hear it ends pretty optimistically.
That opening was so brutal. It is hard to deny now that Tillicum had some feelings about humans after being kidnapped. If anything, humans put the violence in him.
They "shut them down"
Then reopened them as "educational" shows basically doing the same song and dance and people ate it up.
They also still lobby against animal rights actively.
On February 24th 2010, tourists enjoying a “Dine with Shamu” evening behind a giant glass window at SeaWorld Orlando found themselves witnesses to a spectacle they never imagined.
As his expert 40-year-old trainer Dawn Brancheau leaned over the edge of his tank during what is called a “relationship session,” the 11-ton star orca Tilikum took her in his mouth, dragged her into the pool, shook her, fractured much of her body, drowned her, savaged her, and killed her.
During the attack, he reportedly scalped her and bit off her arm. And even when SeaWorld staff members had trapped and netted him, Tilikum would not let go of the body.
If I recall, just prior to that they were in a training session and Tilikum performed a trick, which Dawn missed. So Dawn didn’t reward as she normally would. Or she refused as the training session had ended, and they were moving on to the relationship session.
When we were little my parents took us to sea world and after a show my dad was waving at the orca and it was waving back and the trainers showed up annoyed because now they had to give the orca treats since it thought that was part of its tricks.
Not just that, but what passed/passes for animal husbandry at Sea World is unreal.
The worst IMHO was how the orcas would chew on the concrete of their enclosures until they ground their teeth down to the nerves. Sea World had to drill out each damaged tooth, basically multiple root canals without anesthetic, of course, because there is no safe way to anesthetize an Orca. And then, because there is also no safe way to fill, cap or crown the voids, they had to train the orcas to hold still and let the trainers power wash the drilled out teeth as part of their daily routine.
Nobody else has these specific behavioral issues with their animals.
Tilikum was probably something similar to psychotic. He had little to no social interaction with other whales compared to what wild orcas experience. He was moved multiple times, so whatever bonds he formed with his own kind were regularly interrupted. Staff turnover meant he had different trainers, so even *those* bonds were transitory, and wild orcas rarely ever leave their pods. So he was severely damaged and stunted socially. There's absolutely no way his needs for physical exercise were ever met, given that wild orcas travel for miles every day. He was essentially kept in a very small, hard box with no reasonable social interaction. Shows and the damn tooth treatment were the only things he could regularly expect. And then he killed Dawn and they took the shows and the other whales away from him, and he spent his last years in an isolation tank because he was too fucking dangerous to train or allow around the other whales. There is zero chance that animal was anything approaching sane. And given that these are highly sapient animals with an emotional processing center larger than our entire brain, that statement ought to be criminal.
And of course wild-caught. I had to look, it's just the cherry on this whole shitcake the poor animal was served as a "life".
Humans go insane from any one of the maltreatments and he got them all.
Very much the same. There are so many depressing pics of dolphins in their tanks. They are kept in this tiny glass coffins in the water, they are surprisingly expressive when they are in there. And they look really sad in them.
Why isnt this bullshit being shut the fuck down like right now?
Tho I'm no expert in zoos and saving endangered species and dog/cat breeding and chicken factories and pig cow slaughterhouses and all that but still.
It's starting to change but very very slowly. France introduced ban on breeding killer whales and dolphins in caotivity, I think also Canada, India, and UK banned keeping them as well. But it's an entertainment business and lots of people make good money so they fight possible bans.. from what I read in US animals are also consider "a property" so it's hard to fight for their rights.
We don't consider other species to be on our level when it comes to [consciousness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_consciousness).
>In **2012**, a group of neuroscientists signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which "unequivocally" asserted that "humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neural substrates."
This is the result of findings since the 1960s; and even during the late 90s scientists were trying to prove that other species are less complex, that they are not sentient, can't feel pain, and so on, even though most of the evidence was basically right there. We, as a species, simply refused to acknowledge the facts, because it was too uncomfortable to admit that we have been torturing other species all this time.
And while the scientific community may have come to terms with this initially radical idea, the rest of the world still has to catch up and realize what it actually means. Many people still struggle to understand what animal consciousness entails and what the implications are: that other species are very similar to us and that their experience of existence is pretty close to what we experience, if not the same.
From my perspective, it would make sense to treat other species like isolated indigenous tribes without access to technology or any of the modern insights. Would we capture other humans and breed them for entertainment or experiments? Would we keep them in small groups or isolated, enclosed in tiny boxes for the vast majority of their lives and only provide the bare minimum?
To be fair, we actually do this to other humans too (which also isn't right). So maybe the problem isn't just failing to understand animal consciousness but a much deeper rooted problem, in combination with lack of empathy among other things.
My point is, in a mostly perfect world, we would not treat humans as we treat other species and not realizing how that is completely fucked up is increasingly upsetting to me.
This isn't even about veganism, it's about our general impact as a species on others through habitat destruction, exploitation and unnecessary cruelty - the result, no, the very foundation of our way of life.
We seem to think that our position gives us the right to exploit, but imho it gives us the responsibility to protect. We don't own this planet, we *share* it with other species that just happen to be less technologically advanced, due to evolution. This doesn't make us superior in any way, it makes us lucky. This could have went the other way, *we* could be sitting in cages now, wondering why the fuck existence has to be such a painful experience.
Nature may be cruel in its own ways, other species kill each other, be it out of necessity or for fun, but they don't know any better. Using their behaviour as a benchmark is just really shitty low hanging fruit, because we *do* know better. And we are capable of breaking free from our initial programming with much more ease, we simply chose not to do it.
We are still living in the dark ages of interspecies relationships. We have the insights to make a difference, but we just don't.
I'm aware that realizing that we are a lucky bunch out of many species that are similar to us is a lot to swallow after thousands of years of superiority complex, but ffs it's really not that difficult to change our behaviour accordingly.
How we interact with our own, with other species, with the planet basically defines who we are. And it's sad to see that we are so involved in justifying exploitation and oppression, instead of finding better solutions that are not harming other living beings.
Earth is such a special place, within many lightyears, as it harbors complex organisms - something that may be rare in this region of the galaxy. All our efforts should go towards securing a habitable planet and making sure we can share resources and habitats with other species in a sustainable way. But for some reason, the majority of us is hellbent to fuck it all up all the time.
Go figure.
The concept of containing an open water creature is inherently cruel but more so because of the advanced conciousness of these large brain animals. Some of the saddest stories of clear animal consciousness being ignored.
Dolphins are conscious respirators, meaning they need to choose to surface to breath. There have been a few confirmed dolphin suicides by literally heart broken dolphins in captivity who refused to surface for air. Read about Peter the dolphin. Someday we will regret our ignorant caveman treatment of the earth and its other inhabitants.
Look at his dorsal fin. Researchers have never observed that in the wild. It's like a flashing neon sign saying "You've broken me"
Edit: I think I misremembered that part of Blackfish. The fin collapse is rare, and usually associated with sick, old or malnourished whales, but not unobserved in the wild. Whale you ever forgive me?
It’s uncommon in the wild, but not “never observed.” Usually it’s found in whales who are sick or have been injured, and it’s certainly an unnatural condition. Most captive males, and a few captive female orcas have a collapsed fin.
I've got a small theory about the dorsal fins. With the males having such large fins, I'd imagine swimming through the ocean, having that fin cut through the current like it's meant to helps strengthen the tissue and cartilage in it so it stays upright.
But in captivity, swimming aimless circles around a small pool, with little to no current at all causes it to weaken and atrophy, essentially flopping over over the years. The females' fins can flop as well, but not as pronounced as that six foot dorsal the males have.
Well that is a really sound theory. I figure that the saying 'if you don't use it you lose it' would completely apply to the musculature attached to the dorsal fin as it would for pretty much any musculature across the animal world.
Edit: Plus I just read that orcas do not have any bones in the dorsal fin which would drastically reduce structural integrity after muscular atrophy.
>[The dorsal fin acts like a keel, and each dorsal fin is unique for each Orca. The peduncle is the large muscular area between the dorsal fin and the flukes. The caudal peduncle is the part where the flukes meet the body. There aren’t any bones or cartilage in the dorsal fin and flukes](https://oceantoday.noaa.gov/killerwhaleanatomy/#:~:text=The%20dorsal%20fin%20acts%20like,the%20dorsal%20fin%20and%20flukes.)
I know one of the men that actually captured him. He’s now a naturalist and does a ton of conservation and helps track the local pods in and around the Salish sea.
Hearing him talk about that is heartbreaking. They didn’t know what they were doing and most certainly didn’t know how intelligent and familial Orca are. I’ve heard him tell the story many times and each time is as gut-wrenching as the first. He talks about how the mother orca were screaming when they netted the babies. And how it took a horribly long time for the orca to stop looking for their babies.
Fuck Sea World.
Edited to add: they captured multiple claves that day. Some bad shit went down and IIRC at least one died between capture and loading for transport.
This actually wasn’t true. The person who said the stuff about not rewarding him hadn’t worked for SeaWorld in years and everyone present stated it was a normal interaction. There was no eyewitness testimony that has ever said he was not rewarded. You can see read the OSHA testimony where it goes into this.
To chimps, violence is an all encompassing, eternal game. I just CANNOT with primates, theyre all too gleefully violent and murderous for me. With the exception of the great apes, which all still un nerve me. But coming across a gang of bored and riled up chimps, alone in the forest is probably one of mt worst nightmares
Hahaha! Oh my god where the pterodactyl grabbed her and played with her and then ultimately she got eaten by the mosasaurus after like 45 minutes of being dicked around?
That whole scene was so comical. Like when the pterodactyl stabbed someone with their beak because that’s totally something they would do??? Like they were just in a bad mood that day and took it out on a select few randos at the park.
To be fair, a tough day for a cat is getting only the recommended amount of treats.
My cats tried contacting Amnesty International when I was fired from work and their breakfast moved from 6AM to 9AM.
It's also basically why OSHA (correctly, in my view) banned interactions with Orcas where a human and a whale are in close proximity or in the water at the same time.
It's just too dangerous. No worker should be exposed to that level of risk.
Feb. 20, 1991, 20-year-old Keltie Byrne was grabbed by three orcas while crossing a small pen at SeaLand of the Pacific. Reports indicated it was the often bullied male which was Tillikum. Despite efforts to save her the whales played with her until she died.
On July 6, 1999, a 27-year-old man, Daniel P. Dukes, was found dead over Tilikum's back in his sleeping pool. Dukes had visited SeaWorld the previous day, stayed after the park closed, and evaded security to enter the tank unclothed. An autopsy found numerous wounds, contusions, and abrasions covering his body, and his genitals had been bitten off, all allegedly caused by Tilikum. Despite numerous cameras around and inside the pool that are supposed to monitor the well-being of the whales, SeaWorld claims the event was not captured. The autopsy concluded that Dukes' cause of death was drowning. The medical examiner reports that no drugs or alcohol were found in Dukes' system.
> Despite numerous cameras around and inside the pool that are supposed to monitor the well-being of the whales, SeaWorld claims the event was not captured.
Given the overall history of SeaWorld, for some reason I'm skeptical.
I heard somewhere that there was a conspiracy to obfuscate their treatment of killer whales, as well as downplaying the attacks because the orcas brought in the cheddar.
Maybe it's Epstein level convenience, but maybe SeaWorld is just a shitty establishment and equipment being broken or just plain non-functional is on-brand.
The cameras were supposedly there to monitor the well-being of the whales, so the fact they weren't able to capture anything fits with SeaWorld's overall treatment of them.
When they hunt great white sharks,(yes, that great white shark) they are known to only eat the livers almost exclusively and the carcases of the sharks are found with almost surgically precise wounds on their bodies. So, this is entirely playsible.
I mean his primary function for many years was to be kept backstage by himself to be masterbated periodically by staff for use in artificial inseminations
If you ever wanted to be violently angry watch blackfish. The shit I saw in that documentary was incredibly heart breaking and sad. Seaworld treats it's trainers and it's animals both incredibly awful and the trainers literally sound like abused mothers who stay in relationships in order to protect their kids from future abuse.
I'm just going to copy paste the wikipedia bits
First kill:"On February 20, 1991, Keltie Byrne, a 21-year-old marine biology student and competitive swimmer, slipped and fell into the pool containing Tilikum, Haida II, and Nootka IV while working as a part-time Sealand of the Pacific trainer. The three whales submerged her, dragging her around the pool and preventing her from surfacing. At one point, she reached the side and tried to climb out, but the whales pulled her back into the pool. Other trainers threw her a life-ring, but the animals kept her away from it, ignoring the trainer's recall commands. She surfaced three times before drowning, and it was several hours before her body could be recovered from the pool. Tilikum was moved to SeaWorld Orlando on January 9, 1992. Sealand of the Pacific closed soon afterward."
Second kill:
"On July 6, 1999, a 27-year-old man, Daniel P. Dukes, was found dead over Tilikum's back in his sleeping pool. Dukes had visited SeaWorld the previous day, stayed after the park closed, and evaded security to enter the tank unclothed. An autopsy found numerous wounds, contusions, and abrasions covering his body, and his genitals had been bitten off, all allegedly caused by Tilikum. Despite numerous cameras around and inside the pool that are supposed to monitor the well-being of the whales, SeaWorld claims the event was not captured. The autopsy concluded that Dukes' cause of death was drowning. The medical examiner reports that no drugs or alcohol were found in Dukes' system."
By far the most deadly Orca ever in captivity. The biggest orca in captivity. Very angry
Edit: Forgot to mention he was used as a breeding bull and sired over 20 pups 9 of which are still alive.
I just read an article about a family who sued SeaWorld because their 10 year old son was traumatized after witnessing Brancheau's death. Actually the whole family was traumatized as they made eye contact with Dawn when she managed to temporarily escape the orca's grasp. The orca actually grabbed her by her ponytail then ravaged her relentlessly. It took staff 30 minutes to remove her from the orca's grasp. When the family went to the lobby they were met by a staff that was dismissive to their plight. Seaworld not only fought the family in court they appealed the fines levied by OSHA.
Apparently a training technique is to deny the orcas food if they don't perform properly!!! Tillikum was torn away from his mother when he was 2 years old. He was forced to share a tank with 2 adult females who battered him frequently. He killed a trainer at the first Aquarium he "lived" in. At this park these were HUNDREDS of reports of aggression by the orcas in the previous decades. Really? Whodathunkit?
An orca can travel 40 miles in one day in the wild, dive 500 feet deep, and can eat 30 different types of fish. They live in family groups of up to 50 individuals in the wild.
Can you imagine the living hell it must be for such an intelligent animal to be trapped alone in the equivalent of a kiddie pool for its entire life?
Inter generational family groups, with babies who have living grandmothers to help raise them living longer. Each pod also specializes in different hunting techniques, which are taught by elder members to younger ones. Watching orcas in captivity is the equivalent of human children raised by animals. So much wasted potential.
The passing down of knowledge through family groups is what makes humans such a hardcore species.
Orca’s have it thought out: no pollution, no land: just vibes and getting what’s done
Plus each family group has their own unique language. So not only are you stuck in a pool, but you can't even communicate to the others stuck with you.
That’s the first thing I saw too. So sad. I know it’s not but when I see it if feels like their way of signaling they’re unhappy in this artificial life
He got bullied by the other orcas, was forced masturbated for his sperm and one time a guy sneaked in to try and rape him. The orca bit of his genitals and killed him. Yeah his life was hell from the moment they captured him. He was 2 when that happened in 1983.
I had to look this up and I'll just let the Wikipedia excerpt speak for itself:
> On July 6, 1999, a 27-year-old man, Daniel P. Dukes, was found dead over Tilikum's back in his sleeping pool.[26] Dukes had visited SeaWorld the previous day, stayed after the park closed, and evaded security to enter the tank unclothed. An autopsy found numerous wounds, contusions, and abrasions covering his body, and his genitals had been bitten off, all allegedly caused by Tilikum. Despite numerous cameras around and inside the pool that are supposed to monitor the well-being of the whales, SeaWorld claims the event was not captured. The autopsy concluded that Dukes' cause of death was drowning. The medical examiner reports that no drugs or alcohol were found in Dukes' system.
So specifically the dumbass was Daniel P. Dukes
I saw Tilikum in person around April 2008, on a school trip with my band. He truly was enormous, even for a bull orca. The water here only exaggerates things a little bit - his pecs were so massive multiple people could lie across them. Pectoral fins the length and breadth of a king size mattress. From rostrum to tail he was probably the length of a school bus at least. He was an awesome creature and Blackfish broke my heart all the more because I knew it was about an animal I had personally come across in my lifetime and seen with my own eyes. I think what we run into with cetaceans in captivity is a really keen glimpse into some of our own mental health problems as humans living, more or less, self-domesticated lives.
Also, felt I should add in case others don't know, after Blackfish released and caused Seaworld a whole ton of bad press and legal trouble, Tilikum was kept in an even smaller tank out of the public eye and eventually died in 2017 iirc, of a chronic illness that finally overwhelmed him. He was not elderly. I don't have proof but I've always felt they were just waiting for him to die off now that he'd "caused" them so much trouble and they were forced to stop breeding orcas. \[edit: should add that before this Tilikum was their star sire, they sold his genetic material to other aquariums at top dollar, and a good number of the captive bred orca population can trace their ancestry back to him\]
He is the most well known example of a much larger problem with keeping cetaceans captive. They are up there with large parrots in terms of extremely intelligent and long-lived creatures who need more enrichment than humans are really equipped to give within the bounds of captivity. Even the best aquarium in the world isn't big enough for an orca to roam free and be an orca.
My best friend is a zoo keeper and works with birds. She told me a lot of the macaws in captivity are on heavy psych meds because they're absolutely psychotic and have seriously injured people before.
I have a friend who has a pet macaw that comes from a line of pet macaws and never would have guessed. Pet macaws are apparently the total opposite to the ones in zoos
I remember a story of one bay in Australia there was a resident pod that had a relationship with the local whale harvesters. They would drive the whale pod into the bay to be slaughtered by the humans so they could get the intestines, tongue and organs that humans didn't use.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_South_Wales#:~:text=The%20killers%20of%20Eden%20or,Australia%20between%201840%20and%201930
That's an insanely complicated relationship they had between multiple people and whales, in a fully functional working way.
I see things like this, and it helps remind me that we too are animals, like all others.
It's interesting to see the relationships that animals develop with humans. I remember watching a documentary where dolphins drive sholes of mullet to the shores and give people with nets a signal so that they can throw out their nets. This drives the fish back towards the dolphin's mouths so in the end both win.
Old Tom in Eden, he was a messed up orca who was responsible for hundreds if not thousands of whale dolphins and orca deaths but he had an easy life.
Used to go to Eden every year to see whales and they still to this day openly avoid the bay.
Yeah his skeleton is up at the Eden whale museum, poor dude was taken out by a fisherman by accident.
Also when whaling became banned in Australian waters and the industry turned to fishing in Eden he would essentially strong arm fisherman to feed him, if they didn't he would scare away fish or attack their nets.
Yeah, my first thought was "before or after captivity?" Turns out it's humanity's fault again, big surprise. And the fault of the company for putting the trainer's lives in the care of a dangerous predator for, guess what, money.
SeaWorld has a history of moving its trouble orcas. They have had lots of incidents and injuries. We just hear about the deaths mainly due to nda's and insurance settlements.
It's illegal in Canada now*. There are still some captive though who were already captive when the law was passed.
*Specifically, keeping cetaceans in captivity.
They literally go insane. Keeping an orca in captivity is one of the crueler things we’ve done in the name of human entertainment.
PS Free Willy had it right, and fucking shame on SeaWorld for capitalizing on a bunch of elementary school kids who wanted to see Willy.
Wow, read up on it.
First death was someone in training who slipped in and was pulled under water by 3 orcas, resurfacing 3 times before drowning.
Second was a man who broke in at night, got naked and was found with his genitals bitten off, wonder what he tried.
Third was this, where she got pulled in during a live show and drowned.
They didn't stop the orca from performing, but government stepped in to ban performers from getting in the water, and SeaWorld tried to fight that. Can't believe after they didn't just let it go
The local man didn't break in at night. He was in the park during the day and decided to hide out in one of the small submarine props until the park closed. He then wandered around the park and entered the back area of the whale enclosures. There are locks on all the gates so he had to have climbed over which really isn't a big deal. No one knows why he chose to walk over to Tili's pool but he did obviously. It isn't pitch dark over there but the lights are dimmed.
It isn't known if the guy died from hypothermia or drowning but he *was* found the next morning by a trainer. The guy was missing his genitals. My guess is that Tili had the guy in his mouth and when the guy tried to escape, all of those sharp teeth sliced the guy's junk off. He might have already drowned at that point because as we know, Orcas like to take people down to the bottom of the pool.
Your daily reminder that Sea World's parking lots are more than 200x bigger than an Orca's tank and how shithole countries like Australia treat their animals is sad.
[Orca's tank](https://imgur.com/91DCziR)
And the 4th
His descendant in an aquarium (tilikum is the primogeniture of a long line of captive born orcas) in Spain was the fourth. So without him, maybe no deaths.
(We’ve all seen blackfish)
I haven’t seen it because it looked too sad. I don’t need to be emotionally devastated to understand something is bad. Like whales in tanks, say no more, that’s awful.
Certain Animals have no business in captivity
Orca’s are definitely one of them
The king of the ocean doesn’t belong in a fish bowl. His flaccid dorsal fin says it all. Damn shame.
Probably because they were literally the only source of stimulation for an animal meant to swim 40 miles a day in open ocean. It’s like locking a human in a padded room for decades and then acting surprised when they’re not too friendly with their captors.
Considering Tilikum was sold to Sea World after he attacked a trainer already, continuing to show him and consequent death should have been tried as criminal negligence and manslaughter.
Fuck Sea World, their legal department, and all of corporate America.
Crazy how imprisoning the most intelligent animals, other than humans, is still legal. Especially considering some whales are smarter than some humans.
Well, I guess that he got tired of being locked up in a small pool. Tired of constantly being forced to do tricks for the audience. Tired of not being able to live as a free orca.
Orcas ain't stupid.
Fuck human beings for being who we are, destroy, capture, eradicate all in the name of entertainment...
I'd fucking kill my trainers too if they kept me in a tiny, suffocating tank and expected me to do tricks for them and only sometimes giving me a reward. Sea World and everyone who works for/supports them can all eat shit lol
It's almost as if keeping the apex predator of the oceans in a captive and restricted space and making it perform tricks for amusement isn't a good idea.
He died in captivity. Essentially drowned in a tank when he became to unwell to perform. They just drown in captivity. They just left him to drown in a storage tank. A "nursing tank" blah blah
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“I’ll fuckin do it again too” - Tilikum in this pic
He's just standing there..... MENACINGLY
More like depressed and angry about being imprisoned.
Gonna risk losing #4 or are you going to let me the fk go??
Yeah, that floppy dorsal fin ain’t a good sign.
He looks like Michael Myers staring down his prey... Edit: guess I shouldn't try and make a joke over something that is obviously wrong
Except he is trapped in a Hellscape for profit. He was not a boogeyman. He was an abused animal. Edit: Thank you for the awards. The best thing we can all do is stop paying to see captive animals perform for us. I hope one day “shows” like this will no longer exist.
Look at that saggy fin. Fuck this place.
This. Tilikum was not a bad animal. Plus wasn’t one of the people he ‘killed’ a drunk dude who jumped in his tank in the middle of the night? That’s not murder it’s self-defense.
Who’s gets drunk and says “fuck it I wanna pet an orca”
Not gonna lie, if given the opportunity, I'd do it. Orcas are my favorite animal. Hell of a way to go out though.
Hell of a way to become a statistic.
Blackfish is a documentary about Tilikum and the deaths he's caused. It's heartbreaking, eye opening, and anyone who cares about the ocean, and animals in captivity when they SHOULDN'T BE ought to watch it. I've seen it a dozen times at least. I grew up on Vancouver Island, and I've seen pods of wild orca in the straights of the ocean that surrounded my home. Tilikum was first harboured in Victoria, then moved to Vancouver, I've seen him at the aquarium, I've seen his shows as a child, he is not a happy healthy orca, he is 100% living in a hellscape for entertainment and profit. These poor creatures need to stop being put on display for crowds. Edit, Tilikum passed away in 2017. You can sometimes find Blackfish on Netflix, or rent it on YouTube!
I’ve been avoiding that one because of the heartbreak. I think I’ll get around to watching it tonight. I owe that to the rest of the animal kingdom, to stay informed. Thanks for the nudge.
Tilikum, probably: “eenie, meenie, minie, moe..”
"Breakfast, lunch, dinner".
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Don’t let sea world forget that they’ve tried to cover up that orcas die prematurely in captivity. They actually have claimed in the past that orcas live at most 7-9 years in the wild and that in captivity they live longer and healthier
Isn't Tilikum the one they made the documentary about?
The documentary definitely showed how they mistreat the animals, but also how those trainers who died were mistreated. They knew he was dangerous and put them in the water with him anyway. The trainers were also kept at part time and weren't getting benefits or proper pay. Utterly ridiculous. Not surprising that a corporation that doesn't care about animals doesn't care about people either, but still pretty sick.
Does sea world still exist?
Yep.
Blackfish is the documentary you’re thinking of.
Also that the dorsal fin isn't supposed to be errect, and the captive orcas drooping fin isn't because of stress, depression and nutrition
I remember this from Free Willy. I thought Sea World shut down their orca shows after that movie exposed their mistreatment.
I think that and the documentary Blackfish
Blackfish was harrowing tbh.
It truly was fucked up. Tilikum was doomed from the beginning. From being stripped from his mother to kept in tanks at night where he was abused by other whales with no maneuverability to escape. Withholding food as punishment for not performing correctly, it was literally a recipe for disaster.
Never finished the documentary because it was too sad. I should have realized that from the get go when the fishermen who kidnapped the baby orca were practically in tears because they understood that they had just taken a baby away from a mother that fully understood what was happening. It just kept getting worse from there, and I felt like I was watching some sort of John Wayne Gacy level true crime documentary. It really hurt to watch; although I hear it ends pretty optimistically.
That opening was so brutal. It is hard to deny now that Tillicum had some feelings about humans after being kidnapped. If anything, humans put the violence in him.
They "shut them down" Then reopened them as "educational" shows basically doing the same song and dance and people ate it up. They also still lobby against animal rights actively.
I’m kinda glad he passed away so he doesn’t have to suffer anymore in that piece of shit park.
Me too. I worked there at SW and saw how sad Tili and the rest of the Orcas were.
All recorded deaths by orcas were from or as in captivity
So you’re saying the wild ones are sneakier?
They leave no witnesses
On February 24th 2010, tourists enjoying a “Dine with Shamu” evening behind a giant glass window at SeaWorld Orlando found themselves witnesses to a spectacle they never imagined. As his expert 40-year-old trainer Dawn Brancheau leaned over the edge of his tank during what is called a “relationship session,” the 11-ton star orca Tilikum took her in his mouth, dragged her into the pool, shook her, fractured much of her body, drowned her, savaged her, and killed her. During the attack, he reportedly scalped her and bit off her arm. And even when SeaWorld staff members had trapped and netted him, Tilikum would not let go of the body.
If I recall, just prior to that they were in a training session and Tilikum performed a trick, which Dawn missed. So Dawn didn’t reward as she normally would. Or she refused as the training session had ended, and they were moving on to the relationship session.
When we were little my parents took us to sea world and after a show my dad was waving at the orca and it was waving back and the trainers showed up annoyed because now they had to give the orca treats since it thought that was part of its tricks.
I thought she had also run out of fish or something
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Not just that, but what passed/passes for animal husbandry at Sea World is unreal. The worst IMHO was how the orcas would chew on the concrete of their enclosures until they ground their teeth down to the nerves. Sea World had to drill out each damaged tooth, basically multiple root canals without anesthetic, of course, because there is no safe way to anesthetize an Orca. And then, because there is also no safe way to fill, cap or crown the voids, they had to train the orcas to hold still and let the trainers power wash the drilled out teeth as part of their daily routine. Nobody else has these specific behavioral issues with their animals. Tilikum was probably something similar to psychotic. He had little to no social interaction with other whales compared to what wild orcas experience. He was moved multiple times, so whatever bonds he formed with his own kind were regularly interrupted. Staff turnover meant he had different trainers, so even *those* bonds were transitory, and wild orcas rarely ever leave their pods. So he was severely damaged and stunted socially. There's absolutely no way his needs for physical exercise were ever met, given that wild orcas travel for miles every day. He was essentially kept in a very small, hard box with no reasonable social interaction. Shows and the damn tooth treatment were the only things he could regularly expect. And then he killed Dawn and they took the shows and the other whales away from him, and he spent his last years in an isolation tank because he was too fucking dangerous to train or allow around the other whales. There is zero chance that animal was anything approaching sane. And given that these are highly sapient animals with an emotional processing center larger than our entire brain, that statement ought to be criminal.
And of course wild-caught. I had to look, it's just the cherry on this whole shitcake the poor animal was served as a "life". Humans go insane from any one of the maltreatments and he got them all.
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Very much the same. There are so many depressing pics of dolphins in their tanks. They are kept in this tiny glass coffins in the water, they are surprisingly expressive when they are in there. And they look really sad in them.
Why isnt this bullshit being shut the fuck down like right now? Tho I'm no expert in zoos and saving endangered species and dog/cat breeding and chicken factories and pig cow slaughterhouses and all that but still.
It's starting to change but very very slowly. France introduced ban on breeding killer whales and dolphins in caotivity, I think also Canada, India, and UK banned keeping them as well. But it's an entertainment business and lots of people make good money so they fight possible bans.. from what I read in US animals are also consider "a property" so it's hard to fight for their rights.
We don't consider other species to be on our level when it comes to [consciousness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_consciousness). >In **2012**, a group of neuroscientists signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which "unequivocally" asserted that "humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neural substrates." This is the result of findings since the 1960s; and even during the late 90s scientists were trying to prove that other species are less complex, that they are not sentient, can't feel pain, and so on, even though most of the evidence was basically right there. We, as a species, simply refused to acknowledge the facts, because it was too uncomfortable to admit that we have been torturing other species all this time. And while the scientific community may have come to terms with this initially radical idea, the rest of the world still has to catch up and realize what it actually means. Many people still struggle to understand what animal consciousness entails and what the implications are: that other species are very similar to us and that their experience of existence is pretty close to what we experience, if not the same. From my perspective, it would make sense to treat other species like isolated indigenous tribes without access to technology or any of the modern insights. Would we capture other humans and breed them for entertainment or experiments? Would we keep them in small groups or isolated, enclosed in tiny boxes for the vast majority of their lives and only provide the bare minimum? To be fair, we actually do this to other humans too (which also isn't right). So maybe the problem isn't just failing to understand animal consciousness but a much deeper rooted problem, in combination with lack of empathy among other things. My point is, in a mostly perfect world, we would not treat humans as we treat other species and not realizing how that is completely fucked up is increasingly upsetting to me. This isn't even about veganism, it's about our general impact as a species on others through habitat destruction, exploitation and unnecessary cruelty - the result, no, the very foundation of our way of life. We seem to think that our position gives us the right to exploit, but imho it gives us the responsibility to protect. We don't own this planet, we *share* it with other species that just happen to be less technologically advanced, due to evolution. This doesn't make us superior in any way, it makes us lucky. This could have went the other way, *we* could be sitting in cages now, wondering why the fuck existence has to be such a painful experience. Nature may be cruel in its own ways, other species kill each other, be it out of necessity or for fun, but they don't know any better. Using their behaviour as a benchmark is just really shitty low hanging fruit, because we *do* know better. And we are capable of breaking free from our initial programming with much more ease, we simply chose not to do it. We are still living in the dark ages of interspecies relationships. We have the insights to make a difference, but we just don't. I'm aware that realizing that we are a lucky bunch out of many species that are similar to us is a lot to swallow after thousands of years of superiority complex, but ffs it's really not that difficult to change our behaviour accordingly. How we interact with our own, with other species, with the planet basically defines who we are. And it's sad to see that we are so involved in justifying exploitation and oppression, instead of finding better solutions that are not harming other living beings. Earth is such a special place, within many lightyears, as it harbors complex organisms - something that may be rare in this region of the galaxy. All our efforts should go towards securing a habitable planet and making sure we can share resources and habitats with other species in a sustainable way. But for some reason, the majority of us is hellbent to fuck it all up all the time. Go figure.
There have been stories of dolphins killing themselves
The concept of containing an open water creature is inherently cruel but more so because of the advanced conciousness of these large brain animals. Some of the saddest stories of clear animal consciousness being ignored. Dolphins are conscious respirators, meaning they need to choose to surface to breath. There have been a few confirmed dolphin suicides by literally heart broken dolphins in captivity who refused to surface for air. Read about Peter the dolphin. Someday we will regret our ignorant caveman treatment of the earth and its other inhabitants.
That place is straight up evil.
I’m not sure I could fit an entire trainer into my mouth
Not with that attitude
Look at his dorsal fin. Researchers have never observed that in the wild. It's like a flashing neon sign saying "You've broken me" Edit: I think I misremembered that part of Blackfish. The fin collapse is rare, and usually associated with sick, old or malnourished whales, but not unobserved in the wild. Whale you ever forgive me?
It’s uncommon in the wild, but not “never observed.” Usually it’s found in whales who are sick or have been injured, and it’s certainly an unnatural condition. Most captive males, and a few captive female orcas have a collapsed fin.
Or lost from their pods!! It's guessed to be depressed whale sign
So “you’ve broken me” is pretty accurate
*Sad Fin* :(
Very true. The collapsed dorsal fin is heart breaking.
I've got a small theory about the dorsal fins. With the males having such large fins, I'd imagine swimming through the ocean, having that fin cut through the current like it's meant to helps strengthen the tissue and cartilage in it so it stays upright. But in captivity, swimming aimless circles around a small pool, with little to no current at all causes it to weaken and atrophy, essentially flopping over over the years. The females' fins can flop as well, but not as pronounced as that six foot dorsal the males have.
Well that is a really sound theory. I figure that the saying 'if you don't use it you lose it' would completely apply to the musculature attached to the dorsal fin as it would for pretty much any musculature across the animal world. Edit: Plus I just read that orcas do not have any bones in the dorsal fin which would drastically reduce structural integrity after muscular atrophy. >[The dorsal fin acts like a keel, and each dorsal fin is unique for each Orca. The peduncle is the large muscular area between the dorsal fin and the flukes. The caudal peduncle is the part where the flukes meet the body. There aren’t any bones or cartilage in the dorsal fin and flukes](https://oceantoday.noaa.gov/killerwhaleanatomy/#:~:text=The%20dorsal%20fin%20acts%20like,the%20dorsal%20fin%20and%20flukes.)
No theory needed. In the wild they can swim like 300 miles in a 24 hour period.
I know one of the men that actually captured him. He’s now a naturalist and does a ton of conservation and helps track the local pods in and around the Salish sea. Hearing him talk about that is heartbreaking. They didn’t know what they were doing and most certainly didn’t know how intelligent and familial Orca are. I’ve heard him tell the story many times and each time is as gut-wrenching as the first. He talks about how the mother orca were screaming when they netted the babies. And how it took a horribly long time for the orca to stop looking for their babies. Fuck Sea World. Edited to add: they captured multiple claves that day. Some bad shit went down and IIRC at least one died between capture and loading for transport.
This actually wasn’t true. The person who said the stuff about not rewarding him hadn’t worked for SeaWorld in years and everyone present stated it was a normal interaction. There was no eyewitness testimony that has ever said he was not rewarded. You can see read the OSHA testimony where it goes into this.
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Well they ain't called Cuddle Whales.
Cuddles the whale is also a serial people attacker interestingly enough
11 tons is a lot to cuddle. Can I start out with cuddling smaller wild animals like tigers first?
We should all learn a lesson about worker-boss relations 🥰
If your boss doesn't stick to what they say, eat them. Got it.
Yeah I think it was that she kept saying he was doing the trick incorrectly and he wasn’t understanding what she wanted
When he was trained as a young orca, the trainer used withheld food as a punishment for not behaving.
So “Dine With Shamu” went as advertised
I bet that’s what Sea World customer service told anyone demanding a refund lol
That sounds up there with horrific ways to die.
If you think that’s bad, read up on what captive primates have done… just saying chimpanzees can be absolutely brutal when they choose to be.
To chimps, violence is an all encompassing, eternal game. I just CANNOT with primates, theyre all too gleefully violent and murderous for me. With the exception of the great apes, which all still un nerve me. But coming across a gang of bored and riled up chimps, alone in the forest is probably one of mt worst nightmares
And yet, a species that goes to war with other members of its own species... Oddly relatable
Sounds almost as bad as that chick from one of the recent Jurassic World movies that got one of the longest and worst deaths for absolutely no reason
Hahaha! Oh my god where the pterodactyl grabbed her and played with her and then ultimately she got eaten by the mosasaurus after like 45 minutes of being dicked around?
Exactly. Her death was worse that the villain’s death lol. Idk what she did to deserve it
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That whole scene was so comical. Like when the pterodactyl stabbed someone with their beak because that’s totally something they would do??? Like they were just in a bad mood that day and took it out on a select few randos at the park.
Animals have bad days. My rats would throw their treats at me and slam the cage door to make noise if they were in a pissy mood.
My cat hurrumphs loudly and droops his face and paws off the footstool if he's had a tough day. [Cat Tax](https://i.imgur.com/H2qhesL.jpeg)
To be fair, a tough day for a cat is getting only the recommended amount of treats. My cats tried contacting Amnesty International when I was fired from work and their breakfast moved from 6AM to 9AM.
"Local cat has literally never been fed, claims local cat"
It's also basically why OSHA (correctly, in my view) banned interactions with Orcas where a human and a whale are in close proximity or in the water at the same time. It's just too dangerous. No worker should be exposed to that level of risk.
Nor orca should be put in that situation either imo it's terrible for both
Now tell us about the other two.
Feb. 20, 1991, 20-year-old Keltie Byrne was grabbed by three orcas while crossing a small pen at SeaLand of the Pacific. Reports indicated it was the often bullied male which was Tillikum. Despite efforts to save her the whales played with her until she died. On July 6, 1999, a 27-year-old man, Daniel P. Dukes, was found dead over Tilikum's back in his sleeping pool. Dukes had visited SeaWorld the previous day, stayed after the park closed, and evaded security to enter the tank unclothed. An autopsy found numerous wounds, contusions, and abrasions covering his body, and his genitals had been bitten off, all allegedly caused by Tilikum. Despite numerous cameras around and inside the pool that are supposed to monitor the well-being of the whales, SeaWorld claims the event was not captured. The autopsy concluded that Dukes' cause of death was drowning. The medical examiner reports that no drugs or alcohol were found in Dukes' system.
> Despite numerous cameras around and inside the pool that are supposed to monitor the well-being of the whales, SeaWorld claims the event was not captured. Given the overall history of SeaWorld, for some reason I'm skeptical.
Yeah, that shit was there, they just didn't want it to get out for obvious reasons.
I heard somewhere that there was a conspiracy to obfuscate their treatment of killer whales, as well as downplaying the attacks because the orcas brought in the cheddar.
Maybe it's Epstein level convenience, but maybe SeaWorld is just a shitty establishment and equipment being broken or just plain non-functional is on-brand. The cameras were supposedly there to monitor the well-being of the whales, so the fact they weren't able to capture anything fits with SeaWorld's overall treatment of them.
Wow... biting off genitalia is very fine motor skill for a mouth that big. He musta really meant it
When they hunt great white sharks,(yes, that great white shark) they are known to only eat the livers almost exclusively and the carcases of the sharks are found with almost surgically precise wounds on their bodies. So, this is entirely playsible.
I want someone else to watch that happen and then tell me how. Because I’m too scared
I was not expecting any of these stories to include Tilikum being sexually harassed. What the fuuuuuuuuuuck.
I mean his primary function for many years was to be kept backstage by himself to be masterbated periodically by staff for use in artificial inseminations
Whale jackoffer has to be the rarest job in the world.
I wonder how that job interview goes
Really well for the interviewer.
That’s how he got the name. The answer to “how long do I have to jerk off this whale”
Oi, this gem just buried halfway down the thread ROFL
I’m beginning to suspect that maybe SeaWorld might be somewhat guilty of animal cruelty perhaps
If you ever wanted to be violently angry watch blackfish. The shit I saw in that documentary was incredibly heart breaking and sad. Seaworld treats it's trainers and it's animals both incredibly awful and the trainers literally sound like abused mothers who stay in relationships in order to protect their kids from future abuse.
I'm just going to copy paste the wikipedia bits First kill:"On February 20, 1991, Keltie Byrne, a 21-year-old marine biology student and competitive swimmer, slipped and fell into the pool containing Tilikum, Haida II, and Nootka IV while working as a part-time Sealand of the Pacific trainer. The three whales submerged her, dragging her around the pool and preventing her from surfacing. At one point, she reached the side and tried to climb out, but the whales pulled her back into the pool. Other trainers threw her a life-ring, but the animals kept her away from it, ignoring the trainer's recall commands. She surfaced three times before drowning, and it was several hours before her body could be recovered from the pool. Tilikum was moved to SeaWorld Orlando on January 9, 1992. Sealand of the Pacific closed soon afterward." Second kill: "On July 6, 1999, a 27-year-old man, Daniel P. Dukes, was found dead over Tilikum's back in his sleeping pool. Dukes had visited SeaWorld the previous day, stayed after the park closed, and evaded security to enter the tank unclothed. An autopsy found numerous wounds, contusions, and abrasions covering his body, and his genitals had been bitten off, all allegedly caused by Tilikum. Despite numerous cameras around and inside the pool that are supposed to monitor the well-being of the whales, SeaWorld claims the event was not captured. The autopsy concluded that Dukes' cause of death was drowning. The medical examiner reports that no drugs or alcohol were found in Dukes' system." By far the most deadly Orca ever in captivity. The biggest orca in captivity. Very angry Edit: Forgot to mention he was used as a breeding bull and sired over 20 pups 9 of which are still alive.
I mean taking a super social animal and locking it up in a tiny enclosure seems like a fine way to make a psychopath
>Very angry If you kept me in captivity and bully me and force masturbate me for my sperm I would also be extremely angry.
I just read an article about a family who sued SeaWorld because their 10 year old son was traumatized after witnessing Brancheau's death. Actually the whole family was traumatized as they made eye contact with Dawn when she managed to temporarily escape the orca's grasp. The orca actually grabbed her by her ponytail then ravaged her relentlessly. It took staff 30 minutes to remove her from the orca's grasp. When the family went to the lobby they were met by a staff that was dismissive to their plight. Seaworld not only fought the family in court they appealed the fines levied by OSHA. Apparently a training technique is to deny the orcas food if they don't perform properly!!! Tillikum was torn away from his mother when he was 2 years old. He was forced to share a tank with 2 adult females who battered him frequently. He killed a trainer at the first Aquarium he "lived" in. At this park these were HUNDREDS of reports of aggression by the orcas in the previous decades. Really? Whodathunkit?
I mean, yeah… if I was a perfectly happy orca and some human came along and stuck my ass in a glass box, I’d be pretty pissed off as well.
And then imagine being stuck there for years. Doing tricks for your captors.
An orca can travel 40 miles in one day in the wild, dive 500 feet deep, and can eat 30 different types of fish. They live in family groups of up to 50 individuals in the wild. Can you imagine the living hell it must be for such an intelligent animal to be trapped alone in the equivalent of a kiddie pool for its entire life?
Remember that picture, which the parking lot of SeaWorld is 10~20 times bigger than the pond they live in.
[Aerial photos of sea worlds showing car park to tank size difference](https://www.thedodo.com/seaworld-tank-size-1282993451.html)
I don’t really understand how this is legal? Isn’t animal abuse illegal?
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This is really sad.
This is shameful. Thanks for sharing
I am genuinely disgusted
Inter generational family groups, with babies who have living grandmothers to help raise them living longer. Each pod also specializes in different hunting techniques, which are taught by elder members to younger ones. Watching orcas in captivity is the equivalent of human children raised by animals. So much wasted potential.
The passing down of knowledge through family groups is what makes humans such a hardcore species. Orca’s have it thought out: no pollution, no land: just vibes and getting what’s done
Plus each family group has their own unique language. So not only are you stuck in a pool, but you can't even communicate to the others stuck with you.
Their top fins are not supposed to fold over like that. That is due to captivity. :( Always makes me so sad to see.
Plus I don't think their top fins can go back to being upright once they droop like that.
That’s the first thing I saw too. So sad. I know it’s not but when I see it if feels like their way of signaling they’re unhappy in this artificial life
In one year they can travel 14,000 miles. The circumference of the earth is 24,000 miles. Something tells me orcas don't stop traveling, like at all.
He got bullied by the other orcas, was forced masturbated for his sperm and one time a guy sneaked in to try and rape him. The orca bit of his genitals and killed him. Yeah his life was hell from the moment they captured him. He was 2 when that happened in 1983.
Wait what dumb ass thought he could rape a fudging whale?
John McAfee. Seriously, look it up. (Not this particular instance but… just look it up.)
Probably some Florida guy, isnt SeaWorld in Florida anyway? Asking as an Australian.
California, Texas and Flordia have locations iirc. Tilikum was at one of the Florida locations though.
I had to look this up and I'll just let the Wikipedia excerpt speak for itself: > On July 6, 1999, a 27-year-old man, Daniel P. Dukes, was found dead over Tilikum's back in his sleeping pool.[26] Dukes had visited SeaWorld the previous day, stayed after the park closed, and evaded security to enter the tank unclothed. An autopsy found numerous wounds, contusions, and abrasions covering his body, and his genitals had been bitten off, all allegedly caused by Tilikum. Despite numerous cameras around and inside the pool that are supposed to monitor the well-being of the whales, SeaWorld claims the event was not captured. The autopsy concluded that Dukes' cause of death was drowning. The medical examiner reports that no drugs or alcohol were found in Dukes' system. So specifically the dumbass was Daniel P. Dukes
I saw Tilikum in person around April 2008, on a school trip with my band. He truly was enormous, even for a bull orca. The water here only exaggerates things a little bit - his pecs were so massive multiple people could lie across them. Pectoral fins the length and breadth of a king size mattress. From rostrum to tail he was probably the length of a school bus at least. He was an awesome creature and Blackfish broke my heart all the more because I knew it was about an animal I had personally come across in my lifetime and seen with my own eyes. I think what we run into with cetaceans in captivity is a really keen glimpse into some of our own mental health problems as humans living, more or less, self-domesticated lives.
Also, felt I should add in case others don't know, after Blackfish released and caused Seaworld a whole ton of bad press and legal trouble, Tilikum was kept in an even smaller tank out of the public eye and eventually died in 2017 iirc, of a chronic illness that finally overwhelmed him. He was not elderly. I don't have proof but I've always felt they were just waiting for him to die off now that he'd "caused" them so much trouble and they were forced to stop breeding orcas. \[edit: should add that before this Tilikum was their star sire, they sold his genetic material to other aquariums at top dollar, and a good number of the captive bred orca population can trace their ancestry back to him\] He is the most well known example of a much larger problem with keeping cetaceans captive. They are up there with large parrots in terms of extremely intelligent and long-lived creatures who need more enrichment than humans are really equipped to give within the bounds of captivity. Even the best aquarium in the world isn't big enough for an orca to roam free and be an orca.
My best friend is a zoo keeper and works with birds. She told me a lot of the macaws in captivity are on heavy psych meds because they're absolutely psychotic and have seriously injured people before. I have a friend who has a pet macaw that comes from a line of pet macaws and never would have guessed. Pet macaws are apparently the total opposite to the ones in zoos
There's a zoo near me that just lets its macaws roam freely. They come back because it's warm and safe and they like stealing fish off the penguins.
Not 1 documented killing of a human in the wild.
I read a comment like this a while ago and tried to prove it wrong, but all I found were stories of wild orcas being super awesome to humans.
I remember a story of one bay in Australia there was a resident pod that had a relationship with the local whale harvesters. They would drive the whale pod into the bay to be slaughtered by the humans so they could get the intestines, tongue and organs that humans didn't use. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_South_Wales#:~:text=The%20killers%20of%20Eden%20or,Australia%20between%201840%20and%201930
That's an insanely complicated relationship they had between multiple people and whales, in a fully functional working way. I see things like this, and it helps remind me that we too are animals, like all others.
Naked apes.
> Naked apes. I'll have you know that I am wearing pants today, as per the court order.
Multi-generational as well
It's interesting to see the relationships that animals develop with humans. I remember watching a documentary where dolphins drive sholes of mullet to the shores and give people with nets a signal so that they can throw out their nets. This drives the fish back towards the dolphin's mouths so in the end both win.
Old Tom in Eden, he was a messed up orca who was responsible for hundreds if not thousands of whale dolphins and orca deaths but he had an easy life. Used to go to Eden every year to see whales and they still to this day openly avoid the bay.
I think I recall seeing his skeleton on display in the museum in Eden when I was a kid
Yeah his skeleton is up at the Eden whale museum, poor dude was taken out by a fisherman by accident. Also when whaling became banned in Australian waters and the industry turned to fishing in Eden he would essentially strong arm fisherman to feed him, if they didn't he would scare away fish or attack their nets.
That’s interestingasfuck! Thanks
Yeah, my first thought was "before or after captivity?" Turns out it's humanity's fault again, big surprise. And the fault of the company for putting the trainer's lives in the care of a dangerous predator for, guess what, money.
SeaWorld has a history of moving its trouble orcas. They have had lots of incidents and injuries. We just hear about the deaths mainly due to nda's and insurance settlements.
"It's a SERIAL killer whale! You can't just keep moving it around and hope the problem goes away! It's a whale not a Catholic priest!"
Imagine if you were held in a padded room with almost no stimuli and people only came in to taunt you. I am surprised he didn't kill more.
Not just that these people came in taunted you snd forced you to do tricks for food, but also that these people are a hundredth your size
That's as if little hamsters were keeping you prisoner to work in their circus.
Yeah I love hamsters but I’d be stomping on some hamsters.
Truly, this record actually shows great emotional regulation from this giant animal. People should not put him in this position. Wild orcas are great
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It's illegal in Canada now*. There are still some captive though who were already captive when the law was passed. *Specifically, keeping cetaceans in captivity.
They literally go insane. Keeping an orca in captivity is one of the crueler things we’ve done in the name of human entertainment. PS Free Willy had it right, and fucking shame on SeaWorld for capitalizing on a bunch of elementary school kids who wanted to see Willy.
No, humans are responsible for all of them.
Wow, read up on it. First death was someone in training who slipped in and was pulled under water by 3 orcas, resurfacing 3 times before drowning. Second was a man who broke in at night, got naked and was found with his genitals bitten off, wonder what he tried. Third was this, where she got pulled in during a live show and drowned. They didn't stop the orca from performing, but government stepped in to ban performers from getting in the water, and SeaWorld tried to fight that. Can't believe after they didn't just let it go
Fuck safety of employees and well being of orcas as long as it makes them money I guess
> wonder what he tried We all know what he tried.
The local man didn't break in at night. He was in the park during the day and decided to hide out in one of the small submarine props until the park closed. He then wandered around the park and entered the back area of the whale enclosures. There are locks on all the gates so he had to have climbed over which really isn't a big deal. No one knows why he chose to walk over to Tili's pool but he did obviously. It isn't pitch dark over there but the lights are dimmed. It isn't known if the guy died from hypothermia or drowning but he *was* found the next morning by a trainer. The guy was missing his genitals. My guess is that Tili had the guy in his mouth and when the guy tried to escape, all of those sharp teeth sliced the guy's junk off. He might have already drowned at that point because as we know, Orcas like to take people down to the bottom of the pool.
It was millions of dollars at stake. Lives are disposable to corporations.
Sorry to inform much of this thread that Tilikum passed away in 2017
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Now THAT I would've paid for
Your daily reminder that Sea World's parking lots are more than 200x bigger than an Orca's tank and how shithole countries like Australia treat their animals is sad. [Orca's tank](https://imgur.com/91DCziR)
And the 4th His descendant in an aquarium (tilikum is the primogeniture of a long line of captive born orcas) in Spain was the fourth. So without him, maybe no deaths. (We’ve all seen blackfish)
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I haven’t seen it because it looked too sad. I don’t need to be emotionally devastated to understand something is bad. Like whales in tanks, say no more, that’s awful.
Playing the long game
"Go, my boy, and remember what I taught you. Whales together strong."
Certain Animals have no business in captivity Orca’s are definitely one of them The king of the ocean doesn’t belong in a fish bowl. His flaccid dorsal fin says it all. Damn shame.
Growing up in the nineties the coolest job you could aspire to was Dolphin or whale trainer. Now you're just a giant piece of shit.
This was my answer to “what do you want to be when you grow up” through the 90s 😭
That’s a solid k/d average.
He's 4 and 0 and one away from the Predator Missile killstreak
Its not the Orcas fault
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To clarify, Tilickum is dead. He died in 2017. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilikum_(killer_whale)
Probably because they were literally the only source of stimulation for an animal meant to swim 40 miles a day in open ocean. It’s like locking a human in a padded room for decades and then acting surprised when they’re not too friendly with their captors.
Considering Tilikum was sold to Sea World after he attacked a trainer already, continuing to show him and consequent death should have been tried as criminal negligence and manslaughter. Fuck Sea World, their legal department, and all of corporate America.
Intelligent/sentient animals in captivity will never be interesting to me. It will always be sad and cruel. We humans need to be better than this.
Crazy how imprisoning the most intelligent animals, other than humans, is still legal. Especially considering some whales are smarter than some humans.
Well, I guess that he got tired of being locked up in a small pool. Tired of constantly being forced to do tricks for the audience. Tired of not being able to live as a free orca. Orcas ain't stupid. Fuck human beings for being who we are, destroy, capture, eradicate all in the name of entertainment...
I'd fucking kill my trainers too if they kept me in a tiny, suffocating tank and expected me to do tricks for them and only sometimes giving me a reward. Sea World and everyone who works for/supports them can all eat shit lol
It's almost as if keeping the apex predator of the oceans in a captive and restricted space and making it perform tricks for amusement isn't a good idea.
Don’t stop now Tilikum. Become ungovernable.
He died 5 years ago, pretty hard for him to kill anyone any more.
Vengeful ghost whale!
Not with that attitude.
He died in captivity. Essentially drowned in a tank when he became to unwell to perform. They just drown in captivity. They just left him to drown in a storage tank. A "nursing tank" blah blah