Shamu lost his mind

I respectfully disagree. Yes seaworld is a for profit organization but they do a lot of good things for the animals in the wild funded by shamu's tricks. If you ever ask a sea world trainer they do not force the whales or dolphins to do tricks, they simply ask them to and reward them for doing it. I'm not sure about the whales but the dolphins at sea world live twice as long as their wild counter-parts and are mating in captivity.

A lot of the "tricks" the whales do are actually maneuvers they do in the wild to catch food.

 

lol i thought i saw california in the post but yes i go all the way to flordia just to visit seaworld

 

I would have to say killer whales fall into the leave it in the ocean category IMO.

There aren't many animals with KILLER in their name, and killer whales are definitely not the one I would want to try to train.

It is sad for the family, but she took a calculated risk in working with wild animals and payed the price.

 

67% of orcas in captivity are tank-bred.

 

I hope people don't bag on SeaWorld too much. This is a big animal and sometimes bad things happen that we can't explain. Don't forget, SeaWorld SAVES more animals and returns them to the ocean than any other orginization or government in this country.

 

What Stepho said. Almost everything the trainers ask the whales to do for "tricks", whales do in the wild. Like beaching up on the platform out of the water? Ocra beach themselves catching seals, then go back into the ocean. Those trainers know the risk, and they love what they do. And the whale was just an accomplice, the water's what killed her

The whale probably just had a moment where instinct took over where she couldn't control it. Something seal sized and in a black wetsuit falls into the water sounds like it would trigger an instinctive response, and it did.

It amazes me how horrified people are when they find out what killer whales are like in the wild. They are definitely one of the top predators in the ocean, because they use teamwork and crazy weird mammal skills to catch and kill their pray (you won't see sharks beaching themselves or blowing bubbles to catch something). Whales are smart. I would be scared poopless if I was in the water with a pod of orca, simply because I would have no clue what they might do. They could be nice and pass on. They could be nice and want to play, which could kill me. Or they could want to kill me, which could kill me. In their territory, you're at their mercy.

 

I heard it first on the news and they improperly said it happened in California. I commented (based on what I heard) that it happened in California and just googled for a story. It wasn't until later that I found out the news was wrong so I edited the original post.

 

Inspired by this thread, I've been watching some youtube videos under the simple search of "orcas hunting" or similar. Some of those videos are really cool. I'm not posting any of them because obviously some people would have problems with them. But if you're bored and interested, I'd check them out. There's a video of a group of orcas hunting a group of dolphins. I didn't even know killer whales hunted dolphins, so you learn something new every day I suppose.

 

Tilly 3, Trainers 0. They had it coming...

 

You haven't seen insanity until you find them hunting. I was in the Puget Sound and all of the wildlife was going crazy. I asked my friend who lived up there what on earth was going on. He matter of factly said that we were close to a pod of orcas hunting and all the other animals are running for their lives.