Common claims
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A different format from the other articles, this page is a collection of various claims and myths circulating the internet, which are often pushed upon well-meaning and unsuspecting people by anti-zoo activists in the hopes of recruiting them to their ideology.
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I have started with the most important or frequently parroted claims, and will update this article with time.
Kayla, Malia and Trua (front to back), by Chad Sparkes
“They are forced to work for food! If they don’t perform in shows, they’ll have to starve!”
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I am putting this one on the top of the list, since it is likely the most common myth, by far. There is a simple reason for this misunderstanding, but it is completely false.
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Training of any animal in a modern context (basically any zoo, circus, or other institution worth their salt), is based on positive reinforcement, which means to "add" something, a reward, the animal enjoys. This is one of four forms of training in operative conditioning - the other being negative reinforcement (removing something unpleasant, thus encouraging the behavior), negative punishment (removing something positive, like grounding a teenager, to discourage behavior), and positive punishment (adding something unpleasant, to discourage behavior).
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Whether or not to use the other three forms when keeping say, a dog from antisocial behavior, is a debate between many dog owners and professionals, but in training new behaviors ("tricks", in layman's terms) should only be done with positive reinforcement. The entire point is that the whole process should be fun and rewarding for the animal.
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There was a time when zoos and circuses may have commonly employed the others, like taking away an animal's food (negative punishment), or hitting an animal (positive punishment, and it should go without saying that both of these are abusive and cruel, to any animal), but that time is long since past.
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"But", you may say. "They reward the whales with fish. If they don't do the trick, they don't get the fish, right? How is that not negative punishment and withholding food?"
This is the misunderstanding I mentioned. Positive reinforcement training is based on adding something fun - and food or a treat is an easy motivator for many animals (but not all). Trainers use a "bridge", which is usually a sound signal (such as from a whistle), to tell the animal the behavior was done correctly, at the exact right time, and so the animal finishes the behavior and returns to the trainer.
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What happens if the requested behavior is not done correctly, is a neutral response, where the trainer simply stands for a few seconds and sends the animal to do something else. This in no way means the animal will not be fed. It will get its full day's worth of food at the time it's supposed to, regardless of whether it performs well or not at all.
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Even if we for the sake of argument suggested that the people who work with the animals don't care for them at all (which is a ludicrous idea), in the case of cetaceans, each animal is worth a fortune. Their diets are specially prescribed to them by vets, tailored for each individual's age and state of health.
Do you think they would want to endanger any animal's health by withholding food? Do you think trainers would want to work around frustrated top predators that aren't being fed? Or would they treat the animals in the way that's best for them, thus best for everyone?
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For the record, food is only one form of positive reinforcement, of which there are countless. Each animal has a profile written on him or her, including their likes and dislikes, and the trainers know (beyond the profiles, they have actually worked closely with each animal for years, and know them like old friends) what each individual likes. You can find shows where one whale, or several, will do an entire show without a single fish being given, but instead be given things like ice, toys, buckets of water (they love massage), playtime, or one time there was a show where Malia was given only a feather, and she joyfully kept it, jumping all around the pool with the feather in her mouth!
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That is just a small example of what different rewards there are.
Nothing negative happens to the whales if they don't perform. Sometimes, they simply don't want to, and so that is explained to the audience, there will be no show today. Or maybe a whale doesn't feel like doing one particular behavior, but may want to do something else.
It's a working relationship between trainer and whale, it is in no way a master and servant relationship. You could never even attempt such a thing with a proud, powerful creature like a killer whale. They would never lower themselves to "work" for you. They will only do what you ask, if they like you.
Bottlenose dolphin at Taiji Whale Museum, by m-louis
“SeaWorld and all other marine parks and dolphinariums support the Japanese dolphin slaughter”
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I have already dealt with this topic in my article about The Cove, but for the sake of completeness: NO.
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After the death of Kina (a false killer whale caught on Iki Island in 1987, and kept at various facitilies in Hawaii, and who passed away in 2019), there is not a single animal from a drive hunt left in North America.
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The only animals SeaWorld has ever taken from Japan, were 13 false killer whales (according to what I can see on Ceta Base), the last imported in 1988. It has been illegal and undesirable to take any cetaceans from drive hunts anywhere in the world, for decades.
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When marine parks, like SeaWorld, did take whales and dolphins from the drive hunts, they did so with the intent to save. As I explained in the article on The Cove, dolphinariums were never the motivation behind the hunts. Hunting dolphins for meat has been going on since at least the 17th century in Japan, and an additional, modern motivation is "pest control", because they think the dolphins are eating too much fish. Selling dolphins was just another way of making money, well into the latter half of the 20th century.
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Marine parks and dolphinariums thus came 1) because there are dolphins for sale, and 2) in the hopes of saving them from a terrible fate.
It may be a misguided compassion, that's up to each to decide, but it can be likened to a person taking pity on an animal in a horrible pet store, and so takes it home to "save" it, even though the pet store was just happy to get the money, and will keep mistreating future animals.
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In later years, facilities across most of the world have decided to distance themselves from the drive hunts completely. While my own opinions on this are neutral and irrelevant - I completely understand and commend those facilities for no longer buying from the drive hunts. Naturally, it would look highly hypocritical to be a place for loving and caring for dolphins and promoting their conservation, and buying them from people who kill and eat them.
Ruth Coustick-Deal
“Killer whales swim 100 miles every day!”
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This is another very frequent claim, and similar figures are thrown around about other animals, from dolphins to big cats.
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Briefly, no, they do not. It is possible for them to swim 100 miles in one day, they have been observed doing it, as in an absolute maximum distance they are capable of travelling in one day.
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By comparison, horses can travel 40 miles in one day.
Hamsters 5 miles.
Budgies 250 miles.
Macaws 500 miles!
Humans over 150 miles!
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100 miles equals 366.66 feet per minute, 24/7, only swimming in a straight line, doing nothing else.
(Metric: 160 km per day, or 111 meters per minute)
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The then much more amusing claim of “HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of miles EVERY DAY!”
I have seen this about killer whales, I have seen it about tigers.
I'm sorry for being rude, but do these people even do basic math, or biology?
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The Earth is roughly 23 000 miles in circumference. You know, around the equator for example. To get up to that, they would have to be at the speed of spacecraft. Maybe not spacecraft, but 100 000 miles in 24 hours is 1.15 miles per secon- why do I even bother.
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But let’s just for the sake of argument say “2000 miles” (again, the maximum recorded in one day is no more than one hundred), which would be the minimum of “thousands” in plural: That would be 2.23 kilometers or 1.38 miles per MINUTE.
Yeah. Very realistic. It would be faster than a cheetah at top speed, or for that matter, the black marlin, the fastest animal in the sea.
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Claim thoroughly debunked.
While 100 miles is possible, it's as reasonable as expecting a human to run 150 miles in one day. We're capable of it, but it's not normal daily behavior.
Martin Robson
“Dorsal collapse doesn’t happen in the wild, and it means the animal is sick or depressed”
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In fact, it does happen in the wild, but it's true that it happens much more frequently in human care, and so far, to 100% of mature male killer whales. It is not known exactly why it happens to some females and not others, though genetics seem to play a part, since mother and daughter often get dorsal fins of very similar shape and "lean". (See Katina, Kalina and Nalani, Kasatka and Kalia, Sharkane and Shouka, Takara and Sakari.)
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As for males, it is very simple physics: gravity.
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A cetacean's dorsal fin has no rigid parts in it, it is only made up of collagen. A mature bull killer whale's dorsal fin can be 6 feet tall, and weighs accordingly. In an artificial setting in the care of man, whales and dolphins spend a lot more time at the surface, because they are interacting with people so much and playing at the surface.
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Below is a collage of various wild killer whales with collapsed dorsal fins, and I tried to only pick the ones who look the most "normal". In many cases with dorsal collapse in the wild, you'll see that the fin has clearly been injured, as the fin looks abnormal. In human care, in the several dozen adult males all have the same cause, and have similar curvatures to the base of the dorsal fin, coming slowly as they mature, simply due to the height and weight of the dorsal fin.
A collection of bulls with dorsal collapse in the wild. Top to bottom, left to right, they are: AE1 "Jack" in Alaska, by Flip Nicklin, "Port" in South Africa, by Dave Hurwitz, his companion "Starboard" by Rossler, an unknown whale by Jenny van Twillert, an unknown whale in Monterey by Robert Harding, Sn090 or "Floppy" in Iceland by Orca Guardians Iceland, an unknown Icelandic whale by Tom Walmsley, Iniesta in the strait of Gibraltar by unknown author, and finally, an unknown whale by unknown author.
As it is today, the fin simply doesn't stand a chance to stay straight in a man-made environment. But beyond mere looks, it doesn't matter, since it doesn't impair the whale's movement, doesn't hurt him, and doesn't in any way mean he is not healthy.
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Speculating freely now, if we had a scenario with deeper pools (say 15 meters/50 feet, as SeaWorld had intended to build before animal rights activists blocked it), larger pools with moving water (as I said, SeaWorld tried-), if the whales would be conditioned to swim as much as possible at greater depths, and they would not be interacting with trainers much, if at all, at the surface anymore but rather at depth, and if they were fed through devices placed at depth rather than with buckets into the mouth, then, I think we could have mature bull killer whales with erect dorsal fins. But that's just my personal speculation.
Tekoa at Loro Parque in 2010, by Martin Robson. I have adjusted the light and sharpness to make the skin more visible.
Tekoa in the early years is often shown as the absolute worst example of raking in human care.
“Whales don't rake each other in the wild, it is a sign of abnormal aggression”
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"Raking" is the term used when whales displace each other with their teeth, like how many land mammals would nip at or bite each other, and "rake marks" is what the subsequent marks on the skin are called.
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As can be shown with the collage below, rake marks are completely normal (and you can see countless, albeit less extreme, examples any time you look at wild whales where the skin is clearly visible), and a result of normal killer whale behavior.
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All social animals have some way of telling others off. Whether with biting, the threat of a bite, a kick (with ungulates like horses), a swipe with a paw, a peck of a beak, and so on. Since killer whales are highly social and intelligent, this is one of the tools they use to "displace" or "tell each other off". Naturally, the absolute rarest place you'll find rake marks are in the mature, dominant females. And usually, the places you'll find most rake marks are in very young individuals, and subadult males, because they are at the bottom of the hierarchy (and perhaps act out of line more, so need to be "put in their place", in the minds of the dominant animals).
Photos by Dave Ellifrit, FIRMM, unknown, unknown (whale is named "Mario"), Ingrid Visser, unknown, patch.com, Craig Matkin, and unknown.
Sadly, I found most of these in various places online around 2015, and can't find them again.
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These images (also adjusted for better visibility) show everything from young calves to adult males that have been severely raked. All of these are scratch marks made by the teeth of other whales in their own pod. The top middle image shows the dorsal fin is still bleeding. Whales shed their skin constantly, so these marks are fresh, and will heal over and fade.
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The top right image is that of J50 Scarlet from the Southern residents (who starved to death at the age of four), in the first few months of her life. The claim was that this was due to a "difficult labor", a statement that simply cannot be true, which I explain here.
In short, too much time had passed since her birth (it would have been healed over), it showed a clear rake mark shape (not like the "chewed-up" pattern seen other times whales have tried to save another, or dragged a body around), the very same calf was observed being thrown out of the water by her mother and had subsequent rake marks all over her body (seen below), and when whales are born, the midsection where the dorsal fin is located, is the thickest part. When that part is out, the calf is born. There is no reasonable way she would be stuck with the dorsal fin out for another whale to pull on.
Also, no killer whale birth has ever been observed in the wild, including J50's, so this was just baseless speculation to begin with.
As can clearly be seen, J50's whole body is covered with typical rake marks, fresh rake marks, and this is not immediately after birth.
Corky showing the worn teeth she's had for decades. Photo by Glen Scarborough.
“Their teeth are all worn down to the gum, and it doesn't happen in the wild”
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Another common criticism is that the teeth wear down horribly on most or all whales "because of captivity". In fact, only a very small number of whales have severely worn teeth (alive as of early 2023, Corky, Katina, Stella, Shouka, Inouk, Tuar, Nalani and Makaio, and among the recently departed, Kiska, Kayla and Tilikum), and it does happen in the wild. Below is a collage of examples, and proof that it's not just the offshore shark-eating whales (a population off North America's west coast, that has never been held in human care) that this happens to.
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It is not known for certain why it happens to some whales and not others, but genetics may play a role, as does the facility. Two whales that are infamous for their questionable living conditions are Lolita and Kshamenk, and they both have perfect teeth, even at their high ages (57 and 34 as of 2023). SeaWorld Orlando, on the other hand, which has much better survival and breeding than most facilities, has overall horrible teeth.
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Whales at Sealand of the Pacific, a sea pen with a horrible track record, had great teeth. Tilikum's teeth started wearing down after he came to SWO. Some speculate that the tooth wear is because they chew the gates, which are absent at places like Sealand and Miami Seaquarium. Orky and Corky both had theirs worn to the gum line at Marineland of the Pacific, which was also only a single pool.
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Stella, who lived most of her life at Kamogawa Sea World (not US SeaWorld-related), and lives since 2011 at Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium, has severely worn teeth, while her offspring (three daughers and one granddaughter at KSW born 1998-2012, and one grandson and one daughter at PNPA born 2008-2012) all have excellent teeth. At SWO, Makaio, born 2010, had poor teeth at a relatively early age.
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Between all this confusion and lack of a true pattern, is the difference that in the wild, the whales are at the mercy of nature, while when the same thing happens in human care, there are marine mammal care experts there to tend to all their needs, tailor their diet perfectly for whatever nutrients they need more of, take care of their teeth, and give medications if need be. When deceased whales are found stranded with worn teeth, it's quickly said that this is proof of a sick animal and likely the cause of death, while if you look at Corky, she's had teeth worn to the gum line for over 40 years, so that on its own is not it.
The first is a stranded whale in Iceland, the second from Ireland, the third is a live whale in Norway, the fourth is a Spanish whale stranded in the Netherlands, and the last two are unknown. Photos by Skeusshorn, Patrick Browne, WILDLIFE GmbH, Jeroen Hoekendijk, Moe Flannery, John K Ford.
It is rare to find photos of live, wild whales with their mouths open.
fuji.tim
“Killer whales don't leave their mothers for as long as they live”
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This is a common claim so widely believed to be universal to killer whales, it even stretches to other species of the dolphin family and other toothed whales, with states trying to ban the transfer of all cetaceans - even if all that they have are bottlenose dolphins, a species widely different from killer whales.
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Even as it stands, this is a stubborn myth that only holds true for some specific subpopulations. As it is, killer whale research in the wild is still in its infancy, even after 50 years of it, as that research has focused almost entirely on the residents and Bigg's transients off the North American pacific coast.
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Killer whale ecotype informative rant, skip this down to the next bold line if you find it superfluous:
A 2024 suggestion is to split these two populations into two separate species, the genus Orcinus would then be split into O. orca and O. ater. This comes without first splitting any other subpopulation into subspecies, as might be wise, and completely ignoring all other killer whales.
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By the North American pacific coast, there are residents, Bigg's transients and offshores. Informative websites, documentaries, and infographics also like to mention the two types in the North Atlantic, "type 1" by Iceland-Norway (the type found most often in marine parks), and "type 2" from Scotland-Svalbard (one of the largest in the world, minke whale specialist, now functionally extinct with only two elderly males left). As well, 4-5 types in the Antarctic, these being type A, large B and small B, C and D.
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But other than these 10 types, the rest of the entire killer whale species (or genus) seems to get almost completely ignored. While they are mentioned in other countries from time to time, I have never seen them included any time ecotypes or subpopulations are discussed. This again comes into how poorly they are studied as a species as a whole.
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As it is, there are completely different killer whale populations in Hawaii, Mexico, the Galapagos islands, at least two separate populations in Argentina, they are found in the Caribbean, in Newfoundland-Labrador, the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, Gibraltar, South Africa, around Mozambique and Mayotte, multiple populations around Australia, New Zealand, at least two subpopulations off Russia's far east and Japan, not to mention occasional sightings almost all over the world.
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As it is, while the residents and transients off the American pacific coast are among the most well-studied animals on Earth, and the whales in the northeastern Atlantic and Gibraltar have also been studied for a few decades, almost all other populations are very poorly studied and understood.
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Here continues the actual topic of social structures:
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It is thus from the famous Northern and Southern residents in Canada and the United States, that this "myth" comes from. It is true that as a rule, they stay within their pod, close to their mothers and maternal relatives, for their entire lives (but there are exceptions, as genetics later proved, with whales switching pods and staying close with unrelated individuals for decades).