Daily Dose of Common Sense

This week, a killer whale–which had already been involved in two deaths–killed a trainer at Sea World in Orlando in front of a crowd.

Now, I’m not going to go all PETA on your ass and start ranting about animals in captivity. My kids like to see the bears, elephants, and cows at the zoo as much as the next person. What doesn’t make sense is this is an animal who was involved in other deadly incidents. First a trainer was killed in 1991 and then a gatecrasher was found lying on top of the animal in 1999. In each case, it appeared the whale thought humans were toys.

How “dangerous” does an animal need to be before we decide it’s not worth the human life to keep it in captivity? I’m sure the orca show at Sea World is a big draw. And, the trainers are experienced and careful. But, when animals are prone to attack, is it really a good idea to keep them around? Here’s how a witness described the event:

Another audience member, Victoria Biniak, told WKMG-TV the whale “took off really fast in the tank, and then he came back, shot up in the air, grabbed the trainer by the waist and started thrashing around, and one of her shoes flew off.”

Yikes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 11:15 am and is filed under Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.