It always is portrayed as being a dream job. Training whales, dolphins as well as other similar intelligent creatures has become portrayed as the kind of job that many who love animals would do at no cost if possible. Getting paid for frolicking with such creatures could well be icing about the cake, cream in your coffee, and breakfast in bed all lumped into one. With few facilities in a position to keep large cetaceans in proper captivity and also provide adequate care, the opportunities for this kind of career are very low. As it turns out, maybe that is just as well. Such careers seemingly have quite the dark side.
With recent headlines yelling “Trainer Killed by Whale” and the like ubiquitously appearing globally in print, on TV and the Internet, it’s being revealed just how disturbing captivity is to such intelligent animals as whales and dolphins. Tilikum, the killer whale that killed his trainer at Sea World in Orlando, Florida, was actually associated with two previous deaths. Trainers were warned about the potential violence of Tilikum and special precautions were to be regarded with Tilikum that are not normally extended for some other whales in captivity. Tilikum had apparently been obviously irritated earlier in the day, refusing to perform and misbehaving in general.
Although this incident is unbelievably sad and unfortunate, it raises countless concerns. Cetaceans are considered by many philosophers and ethicists to be non-human persons. Cetaceans, coupled with great apes and elephants, are amongst the few non-human creatures known to pass the mirror test. The mirror test involves placing a mark of some sort on a part of the animal which the animal can see only by looking in a mirror. When the animal sees the spot on him or her self in the mirror, the animal recognizes that the spot is on him or herself. As an example, if a dot is placed on the forehead of a chimpanzee, the chimpanzee will identify that the dot is on his or her own forehead when he or she looks in the mirror. Cetaceans have exhibited this self-awareness similarly whenever a pen mark is positioned on their body. Upon seeing the mark in a mirror, they will either preen in front of the mirror or try to remove the mark. If a pen without ink is utilized, causing n! o mark, the creature will look in the mirror to check out what was done and just go on his way when he sees nothing there. Self-awareness and intricate social behavior and communication are essential elements attributable to non-human persons.
If these animals are indeed non-human persons, than it is undoubtedly a huge question of our right to hold them in captivity. Given that they’re self aware, and that they have great social needs just like humans do, how should keeping them in virtual solitary confinement possibly be justified? That “dream job” suddenly begins to take on a number of ethical dilemmas.
Most of those that would ponder training such creatures as Shamu or Flipper would do so out of a deep respect for their intelligence, playful behavior and when it comes to the dolphin especially, their enduring smile. It must be hard to juxtapose those feelings with the awareness that the animals are in captivity, not by their choice. Trainers are in effective jailers, regardless of how gentle, caring and loving they are to their captives.
The administrators and management of Aquariums that keep cetaceans justify their actions with the claim of research, much similar to the Japanese whalers justify their slaughter of numerous the creatures each year. True researchers say that little is often learned from captive cetaceans as they are so removed from their natural habitat. In the case of the large killer whales, the creatures are unnaturally isolated as they would normally live in pods of no lower than five other whales.
Some of the difficulty within the debate over whether these creatures should continue being kept in captivity or released lies in the uncertainty of whether creatures who have been born in captivity would be able to survive in the wild. However, it is often shown that Killer Whales that have been caught in the ocean and brought into captivity are readily accepted back to their pods upon release. There’s little justification for keeping wild-caught animals.
Aquariums are scrambling to breed cetaceans in captivity. There is growing pressure to release the whales and dolphins and also the seals and walruses. Successful breeding would give the aquariums some seeming justification to keeping the animals, as they would supposedly have little chance for survival in the wild. Needless to say they are scrambling. The animals attract hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide. And while it is nearly self-evident that keeping such creatures is wrong, money happens to be the deciding factor, regardless of the ethics involved, in any such situation.
True research institutions do not keep such animals, even ones that are less intelligent. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, as an example, has an exhibit that usually contains large animals such as sun fish, sea turtles and Great White Sharks. These animals are only kept for brief periods of time and then released. These are animals which have been difficult to research in the open ocean and little is known about them, so short term captivity can be justified. But even for these creatures, which are not considered self aware and that live usually solitary lives, it’s felt that it might be unjust to keep them in captivity for an extended length of time.
Let’s at least commence with this as a model – short term captivity and reports of the actual research accomplished. Once the research becomes obviously repeated and nothing new is being learned, a ban on captivity unless new scientific studies are approved by some governing panel. Situated near the proper habitat, some of these creatures would probably come and put on a show voluntarily. Now that would be a true dream job, without ethical dilemmas attached.
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