This is the heartbreaking moment when Morgan the Orca jumps out of the tank. Animal activists believe it was a suicide attempt.
A video that went viral in 2016 shows a killer whale lying motionless on the edge of a tank for 10 minutes.
Animal activists and concerned viewers claimed the animal was trying to take its own life because it was so unhappy being kept in Loro Park, Canary Islands .
However, park management trolled the video, calling it "exaggerated" and claiming the behavior was "perfectly normal."
A killer whale that stays on the beach for too long will be crushed under its own weight, and its huge body that cannot float will crush its internal organs and die.
Another video released around the same time showed her repeatedly banging her head against a metal gate.
It has also been suggested that this killer whale was actually trying to "escape" captivity rather than harming herself in her clip.
Morgan was captured in the Wadden Sea off the coast of the Netherlands and placed in captivity in 2010 after being found to be malnourished and in poor condition.
She has been the subject of a long-running battle between park organizations and animal rights activists who argue that killer whales should not be kept in captivity.
Morgan It was originally claimed to have been captured under the condition that it was returned to the wild and not shown to the public. rice field.
Parks claims she cannot be released into the wild because she is deaf and cannot survive at sea.
Morgan was originally "owned" by SeaWorld, but she was loaned to a Spanish park as part of a breeding program.
and she revealed her apparent plight to the world in May 2016 in an infamous video released byThe Dolphin Project
. rice field. Her concrete tank, 100 meters long and 12 meters deep, is under a sign that says "Loro Parque"
Problem
John Hargrove
"This is one of many examples of what goes wrong in captivitynever seen before." It's this strange behavior in nature," says the Dolphin Project.
It remains unclear exactly what Morgan was doing while lying on the edge of the tank, but experts at the time did not rule out an attempt at self-harm.
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Former orca trainer John Hargrovetold the Daily Mail: Her behavior shows signs of serious distress and serious social problems. ''[53][54] Hargrove, who worked with her 20 orcas over the course of 14 years while working at SeaWorld, added:
Marine biologist Dr. Ingrid Visser described Morgan's actions as "fundamentally wrong" and said she was trying to escape.
Wolfgang Rades, but , the director of the Loro Parque Zoo disagrees, stating: "Swimming on the beach itself is perfectly normal behaviour. Killer whales do it all the time when they are hunting in the wild.
"They are not unhappy."
He added:
Her ownership was officially transferred to Lolo Her Parque in 2017 as SeaWorld stopped breeding killer whales.
Free Her Morgan Foundation exploited this whale as it was trained to perform tricks and placed in a tank "barely big enough" for its size. claimed to have been
"We have not given up on Morgan. She continues to expose the scandal of what happened as she continues to suffer in her confinement," the group claimed. I'm here.
Morgan, meanwhile, suffered tragedy this year when her 2018-born calf Ulla died last month.
Killer whales remain in Loro Park to this day, and the dispute between the aquarium and animal rights activists shows no signs of ending.
Whales in captivity have been reported to exhibit self-destructive behavior, including clenching their teeth and banging their heads against tanks.
and HugoThere have been high-profile incidents such as him shoving his head into a tank and later claiming he got a brain aneurysm, essentially committing suicide.
Another killer whale - named Kiska - was photographed last week and banged its head against the side of the tank in a chilling echo of Hugo.
Wild whales also display self-destructive behaviors, often due to confusion or disease, along with reports of large numbers of whales washing up on beaches.
It is unclear whether these behaviors can be definitively classified as "suicide attempts", but the animals appear to be in distress.
And these behaviors have been widely documented in captive killer whales.
The killer whale has her 6 kg brain, the second largest in the animal kingdom. This is four times his weight of 1.5 kg in humans.
Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist at the nonprofit Institute for Animal Welfare, published in 2019 National His Geographic said otherwise due to its size and intelligence. Good to keep in an enclosure.
"This is basic biology," she said.
"If polar bears, elephants, and killer whales have evolved to travel long distances to find food and mates, then they are adapted to such locomotion.
"If you put [an orca] in a box that is 150 feet long, 90 feet wide and 30 feet deep, you basically turn it into a couch potato."
She added: . "Not a single marine mammal, adapted to thrive in the world we created for them in a concrete box."
Self-mutilation
However, while it is accepted that animals can engage in self-destructive behavior, it is unclear whether whales can "suicide" in the human understanding of the term.
110} However, it has been claimed that dolphins can take their own lives - there are many cases like that of Peter.According to a 2017 study , found that 25% of all orcas in captivity had severe dental damage, and 70% had at least some dental problems. Some killer whales are said to grind their teeth on the wall of the tank until the nerve is exposed.
Her hit documentary film Blackfish revealed the psychological toll purported to occur in captive killer whales. This includes the testimony of former trainers.
SeaWorld's trainers claimed that whales, when working at the aquarium, regularly self-harmed due to psychological trauma. I'm here.
One person said that whales regularly scratch their jaws and must be given drugs such as Valium to calm them down.
Hargrove added: “I have worked with several whales, been medicated daily, and have personally seen them die of disease at a very young age.
”This was the hardest decision of my life to leave the whales I loved so much that I could become a whistleblower and expose the industry."
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