Killers

 Urgh, this story. It is, of course, terrible that the trainer has been killed. However. I absolutely detest the keeping of marine mammals in captivity. As far as I'm concerned there's absolutely no justification for it at all and the very idea makes me angry. Zoos I can get, because they serve a purpose; which is the breeding and reintroduction of endangered species to their natural habitats. The education of people about the animals is a nice accident which goes along with that, but in itself education isn't a justifiable reason for keeping animals in zoos; entertaining people certainly isn't. Since marine mammals don't breed in captivity, and anyway that's not the aim of places like SeaWorld, I can't justify them. (We have Gerald Durrell to thank for almost single-handedly changing the purpose of zoos and our perception of them.)

There's also the issue, killer whales aside, of certain animal keepers treating dangerous predatory animals as pets. I can't stand it when a tiger, or bear, or whatever, kills it's keeper and then is destroyed itself; usually for acting in a way entirely in keeping with it's nature. It may do tricks for you, and it may eat it's dinner out of a bowl with it's name on it, but the second you forget that it's a wild animal, and stop giving it the respect that that demands, you're putting yourself at risk. The root of the problem there I think is that some people forget that the true domesticated animals (cats, dogs, horses, farm animals) have been domesticated for tens of thousands of years and have adapted to living with humans; and when you consider the damage that they can do, the stupidity of treating a wild animal in the same way soon becomes clear. Being bred in captivity, even three or four generations in captivity, is not the same thing as domestication.

Don't even get me started on the pointlessness of reintroducing Keiko into the 'wild'.

Argle.

/rant.

This article sums it up better than I could, and without the anger.