Sure, you know, it seems strange and funny but ultimately it's sad and it shows how much these animals don't belong in captivity.
A false killer whale, a species in the dolphin family lept from its tank in front of a crowd of people at a show in Japan and into concrete.
It was one of the saddest things I've read as we struggle to save dolphins in the gulf, swimming in oil, sperm whales, basted in crude and this intelligent animal basically leaps to what would be it's own death.
Of course the park is brushing this off as just an accident, that the dolphin got too excited and accidentally jumped out of it's lifeline, water filled tank. Sure.
Accidents happen, but I cannot say, either way why this happened.
Mr O'Barry said: 'The habitat of that false killer whale is so unnatural it leapt out in desperation.
'It wanted to end it. Why does a person jump out of a building?'
Hideshi Teruya, who manages the dolphin section at the park, said the it suffered minor scratches and bruises on its head and fin, but had a healthy appetite for mackerel and squid after it was returned to the tank.
He said: 'It was playing around and jumped out by accident from the momentum.'
Kuru, which means 'black' in the local dialect, was captured six years ago in the seas around Okinawa.
Mr Teruya denied the captivity was cruel and said the tank was not overcrowded and followed aquarium guidelines.
Shocking moment dolphin desperate to escape captivity leaps out of its own tank during marine show
Here is the video and what is most shocking to me, is you can see all the other dolphins rushing to the tank, looking at their friend on the ground. Curiosity? I mean, I know I'm putting my own feelings but they are right there, looking on as the other people are and it's fascinating to note.
They were watching from the beginning of the operation of getting Kuru comfortable to back to its tank (No sex is mentioned, which bothers me even more, this is not an "IT").
But you can tell that they are curious about what's going on.
Captivity is cruel and unusual for these intelligent and self aware animals. The only way to see them is in the wild. When my family went whale watching last week we saw pods of common dolphins swimming for miles, quickly darting under and around our boat and leaping in the water. They don't swim in circles, they don't swim in tanks, they roam the oceans for hundreds of miles at a time.
This is how they belong...
And like this. If you want to see dolphins or whales, this is how you see them. With reputable and well run companies that use good practices and environmentally friendly boats, if possible.
And if you are lucky, you get to see things like this...
A humpback whale feeding on krill. Or if you are amazingly lucky, as the people who are in Santa Barbara and experiencing the best whale watching in a decade, you get a friendly humpback like this guy...
This is what I chose to do for my birthday last week, go whale watching and spend a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where the have exhibits of rescued and rehabilitated animals like sea otters.
And very rare and special animals that are hard to see in the wild, sea horses...
Ultimately, my wild child and beautiful girl has decided that the best way she wants to see dolphins is from a boat, with her hair in the wind and the sun on her face.
It helps support local economies and not huge corporations that profit from the captivity of these amazingly intelligent and self aware creatures.
“At the very least, you could put it in line with hunting chimps,” said Hal Whitehead, who studies sperm whales at Dalhousie University in Halifax. “When you compare relative brain size, or levels of self-awareness, sociality, the importance of culture, cetaceans come out on most of these measures in the gap between chimps and humans. They fit the philosophical definition of personhood.”
How much more personable can you get than to wave the flag for tribe or team? Among sperm and killer whales, Dr. Whitehead said, “there’s a feeling of what one might call ethnicity or cultural identity, of saying, ‘This is my clan, and it’s different from the others.’ ” One way whales express their ethnicity is through dialect. Every clan has its signature call, and in regions of the ocean where two clans overlap, the differences between calls become exaggerated. “It’s like if you’re Irish and you run across someone who is Scottish or Welsh,” said Dr. Whitehead. “You’ll speak with an even stronger Irish accent to make it really clear whose group you belong to.”
When Richard C. Connor of the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth began studying bottlenose dolphins in the 1980s, he had no idea what to expect. “What I discovered was way beyond anything I might have imagined,” Dr. Connor said. “Bottlenose dolphins have incredibly complex social lives mediated by emotions and feelings very much like our own.” They are so sweet! “Dolphins pet and stroke each other a lot, and rub against each other in a gentle way,” Dr. Connor said. And so mean! “It can be easy to tell when they’re upset with each other,” he said. “They have quite a few different vocalizations to express their displeasure.”
And I also know that I cannot guess what or why this happened to Kuru, but we do know, as I've said, they have a very good sense of where they are and a jump out of their tank would be a very bad thing for them. They are smart enough to understand that, that is not a guess on my part,there is scientific evidence of this.
And yes, we keep chimps and gorillas captive and I still argue it is not the same, they have habitats that are bigger and enrichment that comes closer to their natural habitat, there is nothing but the ocean that can come close to what cetaceans are used to.
We must reconsider and we must also keep pushing our government to stop Japan, Norway and Iceland from whaling, as well as Russia, which was just approved to kill over 140 Gray Whales every year for the next five years.
When will this madness stop?
UPDATE: The title - And the title is a paraphrasing from Ric O'Barry, someone who is well known for attempting stop the captivity of dolphins, for trying to stop the slaughter of dolphins in places like Taiji, Japan in the documentary , The Cove.
Can I say that this is what happened? No. Can I say for sure that it is not what happened, no, I don't know either way. I am merely taking a quote from the article and then presenting an alternative to seeing dolphins in captivity.
Whether you rec the diary because of a title is your choice, but I feel the title is important to a moral debate about what we are doing to cetaceans in general, from dolphin slaughters, to whaling.
We will never know what happened or why, but asking the question is important.
Update II: Can Dolphins Commit Suicide?
Finally, we visited Dr. Lori Marino, a neuroscientist and marine mammal specialist at Emory University in Atlanta. In the animal behavior world she is a rock star for a mirror test study that showed dolphins recognized their reflections. Self awareness and a sense of past, present and future are essential if one is to commit suicide. She shows us a human brain and a dolphin brain and explains how evolved they both are. Such big brains indicate a high level of cognitive processes. In fact, Dr. Marino believes that humans and dolphins share emotions, that they are more alike than different. "I think the idea that other animals can't commit suicide because they are hardwired to live is very old fashioned," Dr. Marino explains. "Basically it says that we are aware of what we are doing and other animals are just driven by this hardwired red in tooth and claw to survive and there is no evidence for that." So how would they commit suicide? There are examples of dolphins and whales beating their heads on walls and jumping out of their tanks. Hard evidence? No. Tantalizing information. Yes.
Emphasis Mine
Does it answer the question, no, but it doesn't refute it either. That's where I am, on the fence.