Two Penn’orth: Whales are wild animals not criminals

Life is full of things that never really live up to their names: a hamburger is composed of beef, not ham and so-called killer whales are in fact gentle and timid.

Except the last example is perhaps not as accurate as we might think. Two weeks ago, experienced Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau was dragged to her death by a captive orca named Tilikum in front of hundreds of horrified spectators.

No explanation has been offered yet as to why the whale reacted in the way it did, and despite other instances of trainer deaths, the reaction to this latest tragedy provoked shock and horror. It led to calls for the animal to be euthanized immediately. One extreme religious group in the US even claimed the whale should be stoned to death along with its head trainer in a biblical style punishment ritual.

This is where my problem begins; why, as human beings do we not seem to be able to understand that orcas are wild animals with natural instincts? What right do we have to ruthlessly slaughter any wild animal which displays any natural animalistic tendencies? Crude as it may sound, this latest incident is simply an unavoidable consequence of working in such close proximity to these huge animals.

Orcas are naturally social animals who prefer to conglomerate in large groups; instead they are being callously shoved into a tank the size of a fishbowl to be pointed and gawped at.

I would say that I am an animal lover; I have a dog and I enjoy an episode of Animal 24:7 as much as the next person, however I write this not merely from an animal lover’s perspective. This is another issue which together with littering, deforestation and animal hunting which demonstrates how we humans continue to exercise a ruthless dominance over the natural world.

We have placed ourselves at the pinnacle of civilisation and now see it as our right to exploit the environment as we wish. I am not a fanatical environmental protester; I am merely observing a worrying trend amongst the human population in which we seem to believe it is our responsibility to play God.

What is clear is that we need to stop and take stock of our actions; nature is not at our command as we have been reminded by the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. We cannot expect nature to be beaten into submission. When it comes to the instance of Tilikum, we should not be seeing it as our role to suggest ridiculously brutal punishments for an animal’s behaviour, but rather we should be proclaiming at the top of our lungs: ‘Free Willy!’