Sea+World

Tilikum is an orca whale who has been bread in captivity almost his whole life. He has been transferred from many different places because of previous events that occurred in his life (Vary). He is a large whale and is very intelligent. Trainers were told not to go near him after the death of the trainer. He is very large and powerful according to trainers of sea world (Smolowe). Brancheau was a caring loving person, you knew that she cared for the whales and she wouldn’t want any harm done to them. During the show on February 4th, 2010 Tilikum aggressively grabbed Mrs. Brancheau’s ponytail and dragged her light weight body into the pool, from there Tilikum kept Mrs. Brancheau underneath the massively large body where she ended up drowning (Ledwig). Tilikum has been involved in two other murders amongst sea world trainers since the early 1980’s. Reports of vicious kills from an orca (Tilikum) has been reported many times through out the years of this whale’s life (Vary). Yes, Tilikum is the proud to say that he is the proud father of 14 calves in the park. He has been living in sea world since he has been at least two years old so it is only deem able that he have so many offspring. He set the park record by having that many kids (Ledwig). She was brutally assaulted by Tilikum when they were performing together during a show. They were creating magic when suddenly Tilikum turned violent, Ms. Brancheau was confused of what he was doing when suddenly she was grabbed by her ponytail and dragged underneath the water (Ledwig). After the show of the amazing Ms. Brancheau and Tilikum Dawn was rubbing Tilikum and then he suddenly turned aggressive and grabbed her and pulled her into the pool (Smolowe). A 12,000 pound killer whale named Tilikum snagged the blond ponytail of the trainer Dawn Brancheau and dragged her into the fish tank. From there she was thrashed around and she was drowned during the process (Vary). Some trainers feel that the 22-ft orca had no intention to do such a thing because Tilikum has been living at Sea World since the age of two. They think that even though the whale killed a person it would be cruel for them to remove Tilikum from a place that has been home to him for basically his whole life (Ledwig). Dawn had the most experience with Tilikum then anyone in the entire park did. She had 30 years of training with the whale so when Tilikum turned violent it was strange that he turned on her. People believe that Tilikum was trying to get her attention where as others believe that he just turned violent and attacked the person that was closes to him. To us we will never know what Tilikum was thinking, all that we can draw from this experience is that any animal in captivity can turn violent at any given moment (Smolowe). Reporters went around and question several of people about whether a whale can live happily in a contained environment. One of the responses they got was “The animal has a larger brain than a human, and it's living in a bare concrete box. Their habitat is so radically altered, they cannot stay mentally healthy”. There is a lot of truth in the statement that was said, you can call for cruel and unusual punishment if one person does that to another person but you look at humans doing such things to animals. Animals do not have a voice in society so they have to use actions to speak up about what they want to say, maybe what Tilikum did was a warning (Vary)? Tilikum had been involved in two other deaths of sea world trainers. Even though the park knew he is dangerous and tends to kill his trainers they still let him train and perform live. These deaths date back to the 1980’s. They believe that they should put Tilikum back into the wild but when you think about it you are not going to be able to do that. Because Tilikum was taking from the wild at the age of two, he never learned how to survive on his own because he was raised in captivity (Vary). ** Ledwig, Crystal. "Killer Whale Kills Trainer at Sea World While Audience Watches" Print ** ** Smolowe, Jill. 73.10 (March 15, 2010): p.81. (625 words) From //Expanded Academic ASAP//. **  ** Vary, Adam B. 1093 (March 12, 2010): p.26. (643 words)From Student Resource Center – **** Gold **
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