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Monday, March 01, 2010

Orca Attack Prompts Debate


‘You cannot learn ... through a pair of binoculars’

ORLANDO, Fla.
- Rocky, a 700-pound grizzly considered one of the most gentle animals of all Hollywood's performing beasts, bites down on the neck of a veteran trainer. Illusionist Roy Horn is severely mauled by a show tiger during a Las Vegas performance. An elephant at an Indonesian tourist resort tramples its longtime handler to death.

And now the latest — a 40-year-old trainer at SeaWorld Orlando is drowned by a massive 12,000-pound killer whale named Tilikum, an incident that raises anew the question of whether some beasts, especially the biggest ones, have any business being tamed to entertain.

Descriptions of Tilikum, the 22-foot orca which has now killed two trainers, inevitably come around to his intimidating size.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

once people stopped going to watch shows like these, the shows will disappear, but people, for the most part, are curious and looking for a thrill. a shame it is at the risk of at least one human being!!

Anonymous said...

They are wild animals , I hate to see them in a show! If I was a grizz. I would bite him too.

Anonymous said...

The trainers know the risk better than most of us. It's a job that they love, so just like a NASCAR driver or a sky diver, you hate to see someone die but atleast they went out doing what they love to do. One of the popular tv animal personalities (forgot his name) said that 95% of zoo/show animals are born and raised in captivity. They are probably better off under these conditions.

Anonymous said...

Totally agree with anon 1:04. And the family of the latest continues to support Sea World, stating that this was their loved one's "dream job. And she loved the whales as if they were her own children." Same with Roy the tiger guy, he plead for people not to have ill feelings toward his tiger who attacked him.