Last week, arguing that orcas should not be kept in captivity, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk lamented that captive orcas are \u201cswimming in their own diluted urine.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0A perfect metaphor for the insanity of Animal Rights: apparently she believes that wild orcas all use a giant toilet where they flush their urine away\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t be silly,\u201d some may say, \u201cin the ocean there is lots of room for the urine to dissipate whereas an aquarium is much smaller.\u201d\u00a0 This is emblematic of the sort of \u201cfacts-be-damned\u201d thinking PETA endorses.\u00a0 Simple truth: the water in any U.S. orca habitat is orders of magnitude cleaner than the water in the ocean.\u00a0 It is filtered, UV sterilized, chemically balanced, and checked several times a day.<\/p>\n
If you believe orca\u2019s should not have to swim in dirty water containing dilute urine, by all means get them the heck out of the filthy ocean and into a clean aquarium\u2026<\/p>\n
In the same interview, Bob Barker explained that the enclosures orcas are kept in are equivalent to putting a human in a bathtub.\u00a0 Really? When is the last time you were able to swim at full speed in your bathtub?\u00a0 Dive many times your height below the water and then leap into the air more than twice your height?\u00a0 Maybe in Bob Barker\u2019s bathtub\u2026 Simple truth: orcas are kept in habitats costing tens of millions of dollars, their diets are superlative; and their exercise and enrichment plans among the best in the world. Cetologists and trainers at Sea World have been instrumental in protecting these animals in the wild and in captivity, and have provided more knowledge and funding to help orcas than almost anyone else in the world while also fostering interest and passion for these animals in tens of millions of children. Bravo!<\/p>\n
Mr. Barker also spoke about how \u201cdemeaning\u201d it is for an animal to have to perform tricks for the entertainment of humans.\u00a0 This is absurd. An animal learns a behavior and it does that behavior and receives praise and reward.\u00a0 This exercises their bodies and their minds, and is in no way demeaning to the animal.\u00a0 Animals make no value judgments about whether doing a flip befits their social standing\u2014they simply do the behavior and have a great time. It is a game, one that they play in the wild as well, and one they can stop anytime they want. Perhaps Mr. Barker is simply projecting his life onto the animals\u2014he DID spend his life performing in front of the masses in exchange for a great deal of money which he now seems determined to spend ruining the lives of as many animals as possible.<\/p>\n
HSUS is now lobbying to have Tilikum the orca released to the wild.\u00a0 They want to repeat the Keiko adventure which generated many donations.\u00a0 You remember Keiko, the orca who was taken at great expense from his nice Oregon enclosure where he was healthy and happy and turned loose into the wild where he pined away for months following boats and swimming into bays looking for any friend who would feed him fish and rub his belly as he remembered from his days in captivity. Until he finally died with pneumonia, starving and lonely.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Yes, let\u2019s do that again! Because animals deserve to be in the wild\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week, arguing that orcas should not be kept in captivity, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk lamented that captive orcas are \u201cswimming in their own diluted urine.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0A perfect metaphor for the insanity of Animal Rights: apparently she believes that wild orcas all use a giant toilet where they flush their urine away\u2026 \u201cDon\u2019t be silly,\u201d […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animal-rights","category-exotic-animals","category-48-id","category-115-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-line-bottom","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":788,"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions\/788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}