> Many cetaceans in captivity develop stereotypies, or unnatural, often purposeless behaviors that can be a manifestation of poor mental health. Such behaviors include repetitive pacing, swaying, head-bobbing or circling, and bar-biting (Cetacean Inspiration, 2011). One of the most prominent stereotypies noticed in these whales is an activity known as slide outs. The whale will slide out of the water and sit motionless, sometimes for 10 minutes at a time (Cetacean Inspiration, 2011). This creates safety issues for the guests of marine mammal parks like SeaWorld. If a whale did this in the wild for too long of a time the weight of the whale could crush its own internal organs (Cetacean Inspiration, 2011).
https://blogs.umass.edu/natsci397a-eross/the-detriments-of-c...
> Using data from between 1973-4 and 1987, females have a mean life expectancy of 50.2 yr
How is this possible? I don't understand how a 14 year observation window allows someone to observe an average life expectancy of 50 years.
Quick and dirty: size is a pretty good indicator to approximate, but if you've got yourself a dead whale you can check the bones to get a better number.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110926051048/https://blog.sfga...
There's a whole book about that sort of thing, by a fairly well-respected scientist in the field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expression_of_the_Emotions...
Most whales have a natural range of thousands of miles over the course of a year. Keeping them in tanks, no matter how generous to our eyes, is the equivalent of keeping a human in a bathroom for their entire life—-with exactly as little stimulation or variety as that implies.
Another response observes that whales in captivity always develop at least some neurotic behaviours, and this is generally regarded as directly caused by the incredibly limited environment in which they spend their lives. At one time, the argument was made that having them perform for crowds was necessary to keep them from going crazy.
I think that’s actually a valid argument if you keep something in captivity. When you put humans in jail it’s also better to give them something to do instead of just having them sit around.
Freedom is still the best option though.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4997274/
>From 1979 to 1980, however, we were able to interact with juvenile orcas in an unstructured way at San Diego’s SeaWorld facility. We observed in the animals what appeared to be pranks, tests of trust, limited use of tactical deception, emotional self-control, and empathetic behaviors. Our observations were consistent with those of a former Seaworld trainer, and provide important insights into orca cognition, communication, and social intelligence. However, after being trained as performers within Seaworld’s commercial entertainment program, a number of orcas began to exhibit aggressive behaviors. The orcas who previously established apparent friendships with humans were most affected, although significant aggression also occurred in some of their descendants, and among the orcas they lived with.
All that to say I have never met a reptile I felt would rather be in captivity. Maybe the exception is the tegu whick does seem very content to remain captive.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/03/orcas-cap...
Even if they look happy during shows, the "behind the scenes" activities can be objectively very cruel.
https://www.thedodo.com/tilileaks-exclusive-documents--63986...
We need to stop assuming as people we're able to tell the emotions of non-humans without specific training/experience.