13 Reasons Why Orcas Should NOT Be Kept in Captivity!
1. Family Units Are Smashed
Although we might think that all Orcas are the same, they actually come from very intricate and specific family units. Orcas are matriarchal, meaning that the dominant female of the group influences each pod. These pods are extraordinarily clannish, developing their own communication methods and staying with each other through thick and thin.
When Orcas are snatched from the ocean and forced into captivity, these family units are pulverized, leading to serious trauma for the captured Orcas and the Orcas left behind.
Since many Orcas are stolen when they are young, this is incredibly stressful for their mothers and other members of the pod. Since male Orcas are notorious mama’s boys- not leaving their mothers’ side until they reach maturity, separating familial pods is a cruel practice. Orcas are the most social animals on Earth- even more so than humans.
2. Their Body Structure Suffers
Go look at Orcas in the wild. One of the first things that you will notice is that they have a strong, proud, dorsal fin that slices through the waves.
Now, check out Orcas in captivity. Unlike their wild counterparts, captive Orcas don’t have a straight dorsal fin. Instead, their fins are slumped over, lacking the necessary collagen required to stand up tall.
Dorsal fins aren’t made out of bone; instead, they’re fused from thick collagen, which is fortified by exercise and the movement of gliding through miles of ocean. Take away the exercise and the sea, and you have one depressed-looking dorsal.
Wild Orcas boast six-foot-tall dorsal fins, but sadly, a terrible diet, cramped living conditions, and overall stress can cause these lofty fins to flop in captivity.
3. Their Diet Suffers
Out in the wild, Orcas have their picks of the seas. As the largest dolphins in the water, Orcas can feast on small fish, big fish, or even sharks. They pick and choose what appeals to their palette most and dine on marine treasures from both chilly and tropical waters.
Not so much in captivity. The reigning lords of SeaWorld or MarineLand don’t care too much about giving their Orcas a varied diet or even allowing them to experience the thrill of the hunt. Instead, Orcas are fed dead fish. This bland diet of dead prey is not what Orcas are accustomed to, nor does it give them any kind of stimulation.
4. They Can’t Exercise In the wild
Orcas get as much exercise as they want. Since they routinely swim up to one hundred miles per day in the open ocean, wild Orcas are fit and muscular.
Unfortunately, in captivity, it’s a very different story. Captive Orcas are limited to swimming in circles around their tanks or performing dull tricks for the public.
They don’t get the level of stimulation or exercise that they get in the great, vast, open seas, and it leads to a deterioration in their mental and physical health. Some proponents of keeping these creatures captive say that Orcas don’t need to cover hundreds of miles of ocean to be healthy.
Technically- they’re right, but the link between physical exercise and mental happiness is well-proven in intelligent species. To their credit, SeaWorld recently built an underwater treadmill for its captive Orcas, which we suppose is a small start.
5. They Can’t Migrate And Travel
Confining Orcas to itty-bitty tanks is effectively a jail sentence for the hefty mammals. They spend the vast majority of their natural lives, exploring all of the furthest reaches of the ocean. Orcas love to migrate and travel, often wandering close to seven hundred miles per week throughout the seas.
Since their habitat is the wild ocean, and they can live virtually anywhere, Orcas enjoy nearly unparalleled freedom of motion in the sea. Recently, scientists tracked a group of Orcas and were amazed to determine that they migrated from Brazil to the Antarctic Peninsula and back, traveling continuously in their pod across warm and cold water.
Not so in captivity. Even the most massive tank wouldn’t meet the needs of travel-loving Orcas, and most are woefully inadequate enough to facilitate even one day of swimming.
6. Orcas Don’t All Speak The Same Language
We tend to think that because Orcas all look the same, that they speak the same language. This is far from the truth.
Orcas communicate dozens of different languages, and each pod has its own personal slang and dialects. Orcas live in ecotypes, units that have different social habits, diets, and languages. In each ecotype is a pod; or a family of orcas led by the head female.
These ecotypes evolved organically over time beneath the waves, and it’s both foolish and insensitive to put Orcas from different ecotypes together.
Some ecotypes are so different that scientists classify them as variations on the same species. Mash up these ecotypes, and you’ll see sparks fly- and not the good kind. Captive Orcas constantly fight, sometimes inflicting horrific damage on each other because they are forced to co-exist unnaturally.
7.Their Lifespans Are Slashed
Orcas don’t live very long in captivityprobably due to stress, boredom, and depression. In the wild, these impressive creatures tend to mimic our lifespans. Healthy female Orcas can live up to one hundred long years, and males live to be eighty.
Although this is on the higher end of their lifespan, Orcas generally reach at least fifty years old in the wild.
Captive Orcas see their lifespans slashed dramatically, with many of them living to be only fourteen years old.
8. Their Health Deteriorates
Take the Orca out of the ocean and watch the amazingly painful process of their health and wellness deteriorate beyond belief. This is one of the biggest atrocities of using Orcas for human entertainment, and a crime against the animal kingdom.
Although nobody knows for certain, we estimate that at least one hundred and sixty Orcas have died in captivity since they were first pulled out of the world’s waters. This doesn’t count stillborn deaths or those who died of preventable health conditions.
The most common sign of a significant problem is a collapsed dorsal fin, which indicates poor diet and lack of exercise. Captive Orcas have terrible teeth, a sad byproduct of gnawing on their cage bars. They also suffer from ailments like pneumonia and antibiotic-resistant infections.
Some get battered and bruised by fellow Orcas, who gang up on them out of frustration. Overall, it’s a sad and tragic state of affairs.
9. They’re KeptIn Cramped Tanks
Free Orcas have the run of the ocean, zipping around from sea to shining sea with ease, but in captivity, that’s a whole other story.
Although we puny humans might think that the big tanks used to house Orcas are large enough for the mammals, it’s a much different story when you weigh up to twelve thousand pounds! It’s the equivalent of keeping a grown human locked in a small bathroom for their entire life, and as you can imagine, there are serious consequences.
Orcas go crazy in captivity and are known to gnaw on the metal bars in their tanks to alleviate stress, aggression, or boredom.
They also swim in circles, growing more and more depressed as the years pass. Number 4: They Get Zero Stimulation Orcas, like all intelligent animals, need stimulation in order to be happy.
Notorious SeaWorld resident Tilikum was once described as the “loneliest whale in the world” after he defiled and drowned Dawn Brancheau, his trainer.
Tilikum didn’t kill Brancheau out of natural aggression, but a lifetime of abuse at the hand of his human captors and fellow Orcas. His tale is a sad, cautionary story about what happens when we interfere with nature.
Tilikum’s tale of woe is far from alone; as many ‘problem’ Orcas get the same cold shoulder, being isolated from their peers and given very little attention.
Animal activists advocated for Tilikum and other Orcas like him, requesting that they go to a humane sea pen to live, as opposed to small tanks.
Tragically, Tilikum died in captivity in 2017, but his story sparked enough outrage for us to start looking at the way we treat these big, beautiful beasts.
10. They Are Treated Like Breeding Machines
Captive Orcas are continually being bred with one another. Not only do their offspring never know the joy of the full breadth of the open ocean, but the breeding process is cruel in and of itself. Wild Orcas swim in pods and have very elaborate social systems that designate who they choose to mate with and why. Captive Orcas don’t have these choices.
Orcas from different pods are regularly inseminated, with many female Orcas forcibly impregnated several times during their short lives.
SeaWorld and MarineLand are essentially puppy mills for killer whales, cranking out calves at a breakneck speed without much care for the animals themselves. In the wild, female Orcas generally give birth at age fifteen.
In captivity, they are inseminated at age eight and immediately separated from their calves after giving birth. This inhumane practice fosters separation anxiety and depression. Number 2: They Are Highly Intelligent Perhaps one of the most damaging aspects of keeping Orcas captive is that they know exactly what’s happening to them.
Orcas are exceptionally intelligent animals, and their brains are four times bigger than ours. Orca brains clock in at an average of twelve pounds, the product of millennia of years of evolution- way longer than our short time on the planet.
Some speculate that Orcas are more cognitively advanced than humans, and they are undoubtedly able to do what we do with ease: set up complex familial structures and develop language.
Orcas are not just majestic marine animals; they are also exceptionally smart and capable of social interactions on par with people, so why is it fair to keep them locked up in tiny, watery, jail cells?
11. They Become Dangerous
Wild Orcas are not dangerous to humans; in fact, there are few, if any, documented attacks of Orcas on people in the open seas. Orcas are ticking time bombs in captivity, regularly attacking trainers, and causing mayhem in their tiny tanks. One of the most famous Orcas gone bad is Tilikum, who killed three people due to stress and exhaustion.
Tilikum’s story is heartbreakingly documented in Blackfish, which makes the impassioned case that the constant pressure of performing and cramped quarters make Orcas go insane and lash out. Tilikum’s tale is a tragedy, not just for the people he drowned, but for Tilikum himself, and all of the other Orcas wasting away in minuscule tanks.
In fact, dozens of people have been gravely injured, or died, as a result of interacting with captive Orcas- which is what possibly earned the creatures their nickname.
