ORLANDO, Fla. - Rocky, a 700-pound grizzly considered one of themost gentle animals of all Hollywood's performing beasts, bites downon the neck of a veteran trainer. Illusionist Roy Horn is severelymauled by a show tiger during a Las Vegas performance. An elephantat an Indonesian tourist resort tramples its longtime handler todeath.
And now the latest - a 40-year-old trainer at SeaWorld Orlando isdrowned by a massive 12,000-pound killer whale named Tilikum, anincident that raises anew the question of whether some beasts,especially the biggest ones, have any business being tamed toentertain.
Descriptions of Tilikum, the 22-foot orca which has now killedtwo trainers, inevitably come around to his intimidating size.
At nearly six tons, the bull bought for breeding is a giant amongkiller whales, the largest in captivity.
"Humans trying to incarcerate orcas or elephants or any type oflarge brain or large society species, it's proven it doesn't work,"said Mark Berman, associate director at the environmental groupEarth Island Institute in Berkeley, Calif. "They're just too big."
No animals were meant to entertain humans, he said.
In fact, an investigation by California's workplace safety officeinto a 2006 attack by an orca on a trainer at SeaWorld's San Diegopark initially reported that it was only a matter of time before atrainer was killed. That trainer escaped with a broken foot.
However, after objections from SeaWorld that the office had noplace offering opinions that a trainer's death was inevitable, theworkplace safety officials rescinded the report and apologized. Theynoted its investigation required expertise it didn't have.
Former SeaWorld head trainer Thad Lacinak says captive killerwhales serve as ambassadors of the species to educate the public andhelp protect them in the wild.
"These animals are invaluable in terms of what we can learn fromthem. And you cannot learn about killer whales through a pair ofbinoculars," Lacinak said.
Using killer whales to perform, or displaying animals at zoos,brings them to life for the public, he said, something that watchingthe Discovery Channel just can't do.
"We know for a fact that people do not learn in staticconditions. They learn from these animals when they are entertainedby them," Lacinak said. "That's just how people learn. They don'tlearn when they're bored ... They have a greater appreciation of theanimals when they walk out." Lacinak also stated the obvious - thattrainers know their jobs are inherently dangerous but take the risksbecause they believe they're outweighed by the rewards.
Orlando SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau was rubbing Tilikum froma poolside platform on Wednesday when the whale reached up, grabbedher ponytail and dragged her underwater. She died from multipletraumatic injuries and drowning.
Brancheau's funeral was set for Monday at a church in Chicago,where a wake was held Sunday.
Killer whales are the largest of the dolphin species. They areextremely intelligent and the most efficient predators in the sea.Some say killer whales are just too smart to be penned in pools thatcan bore them and possibly lead to trouble.
"Orcas are simply too big, too complex, too intelligent to beadequately accommodated in captivity," said Naomi Rose, a marinemammal scientist with the Humane Society of the United States. "Thetanks are always going to be too featureless, too small. ... Thenumber of incidents where trainers have been injured is much greaterthan most people know. They aren't all reported."
Orcas in the wild can travel up to 100 miles in a day andthousands of miles in a lifetime in the ocean, where they aregenerally harmless to humans, said Howard Garrett, co-founder anddirector of the Washington-based nonprofit Orca Network.
"In their natural habitat, there is no record of any harm to ahuman anywhere," Garrett said. "You cannot say that about elephantsor wolves or any other highly evolved social mammal, and that reallyis extraordinary."
Even in captivity, orcas rarely attack out of aggression, Lacinaksaid, adding that they are usually cases of a killer whale trying toplay with a trainer.
"It was not a bloodthirsty attack," Lacinak said of the recentincident at SeaWorld.
He said the whale likely saw the trainer's ponytail as a toy,then dragged the woman into the water and turned it into a game.
Gary Wilson, a professor at Moorpark College in California, thecountry's only school where students can learn to train marinemammals, believes that interacting with animals in the wild would bebetter, but that's not possible for most people.
"If it was a perfect world we wouldn't need to have any animalsin captivity, but the reality is in order to learn about theseanimals and to actually ensure their survival in the wild, we needto have them in captivity so we can study them and people can learnto appreciate them," Wilson said. "If SeaWorld didn't have dolphinsand whales in captivity, there would be many fewer people in theworld that even cared about them at all."
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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