So the Whale Asked the Gladiator…

This week at Sea World in Florida a killer whale killed its trainer. Details regarding treatment of the animal and its history of aggression against humans are trickling out, and soon we’ll all have a lot of conflicting information over which to bicker on this issue and plenty of questions, like, was Sea World at fault or was this just a tragic accident? As valuable as answers to these specific questions may be, in light of this latest horror we do have some larger questions to tackle regarding our relationship to the natural world, and they are worthy of discussion.

Over millennia, humans have domesticated many species and have engaged in exploration to the depths and breadth of the earth to find out more about how living creatures came to be, how they may serve us, and what the lives of animals can tell us about ourselves. From the domestication of the canine to bear-baiting, these pursuits can be benign or malevolent; it all depends on your point of view. However, some things are certain: 1) human beings anthropomorphize animals, often to the detriment of the animal, and 2) in an effort to transcend the human condition, we often transfer our love of a trait found in an animal onto the entire organism, thereby obscuring the animal’s true nature.

The idea that man has dominion over the natural world is ancient; it’s in the first few chapters of the Bible and other world religions teach a similar principle. To the extent that humans top the food chain (so far as we can see) we do have a right to exploit the natural world and its denizens for our survival. Of course, with that right there is an attendant responsibility to preserve that which is eternal and perhaps a result of the divine without utterly destroying habitats in a variety of locales. To be clear, to raise animals for food or as helpmates to industry, in my view is not immoral or in any way wrong. What is wrong, damn near criminal in fact, is our tendency to take animals that have no free choice in the matter and use them for our entertainment and amusement and then condemn them for acting aggressively against us.

The Sea World incident involving Telly the Orca is multi-faceted and there isn’t one truly right answer to the question of marine conservation and I don’t pretend to know enough to answer them all. One complicating factor is that as cruel and confining the cetacean shows may seem to me personally, it is also true that the people who train these animals love them dearly and by the act of conservation inspire others to enter the admirable field of marine biology. On the other hand, scientists attached to the Museum of Natural History and other outlets have maintained that we don’t necessarily need to make orca dance in the water to preserve them for scientific study. It is only the profit motive that keeps such shows in business, because it is an expensive endeavor to feed and house whales that cannot survive in the wild.

We are shocked when a woman’s face is torn off by her pet chimpanzee, but isn’t the real matter whether such an animal is really a pet at all? I don’t want to engage in blaming the victim, but someone who is mauled by a wild animal, no matter how long domesticated, was playing with a fire they couldn’t possibly understand and it was only a matter of time before being burned. So when we consider Telly the killer whale, it’s helpful to remember the killer part. Society needs to make more of a commitment to scientific study and preservation of the natural world so that animals may live in their rightful habitat, without developing a dependency on humans. But that entails a harder choice, which is paying for it out of public or private coffers. In the end, if we can make some money and save a few whales, we’ll likely do just that.

If the only way to see a horse is at the track or to see a whale is at a marina, we’re doing something terribly, terribly wrong. Not necessarily to the horse, since it is in their observed nature to run the hills and plains, but to our posterity. To make a greyhound race on a track is cruel because of the way it is practiced – the use of drugs, selective breeding that leads to infirmities – and its only practical results; entertainment for the audience and profit for the venue owners.

The point is we consider gladiatorial combat barbaric because it pitted slaves against each other and ended in the death of one, if not both. The slaves’ lack of free will in the matter is essential to our understanding of this as a moral issue. Perhaps the best thing to come from the recent tragic death of Telly’s trainer is that we have a fresh opportunity to look at our relationship to the natural world and really ask ourselves how far do we need to go for thrills and kicks.

Are you not entertained?

© David Mark Speer