Thursday 25 February 2010

Killer whales: a bit like cows

People tend to stay indoors over winter, so there haven't been any cow attack stories recently, so I'll have to make do with this:

A killer whale at the SeaWorld amusement park in central Florida killed a trainer a sheriff's spokesman said...

Media reports said the orca at the park's Shamu Stadium grabbed the woman by the waist, thrashed her about and took her underwater. The trainer was killed just before the start of a public performance and the stadium was immediately evacuated... The sheriff's official said preliminary accounts indicated she slipped and fell in, but that was still under investigation...

The orca involved in Wednesday's incident, named Tillikum but popularly known as Tilly, has a controversial past. Tilly was blamed for the drowning of one of his trainers in 1991 while he was performing at Sealand of the Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia, the Orlando Sentinel said.

Sold to SeaWorld as a stud in 1992, the whale was involved in a second incident when authorities discovered the body of a naked man lying across his back in July 1999. Authorities said the man, who had either snuck into SeaWorld after hours or hidden in the park until it closed, most likely drowned after suffering hypothermia in the 12.7 degrees Celsius water.

A former contractor with SeaWorld told the Sentinel that Tilly is typically kept isolated from SeaWorld's other killer whales and that trainers were not allowed to get in the water with him because of his history.


There's no video of the incident, but I imagine it was a bit like Nigel's savage attack on a damp rag. Only with more splashing and an actual death..

8 comments:

Ross said...

The clue is in the name "Killer Whales". They aren't "Happy Fun Whales".

Macheath said...

the stadium was immediately evacuated

Surely 'cleared' is more linguistically appropriate - unless they feared Tilly was about to leave the tank in search of another victim.

Interesting to note that if the same response had been applied in the European Parliament, it would have taken less than a minute, if the number of empty seats around Farage is anything to go by.

JuliaM said...

"...unless they feared Tilly was about to leave the tank in search of another victim."

Just wait until they de-evolve and have legs once more. Nowhere will be safe!

View from the Solent said...

Bugger. If the safety elfs get wind of that, they'll fence off the sea round the whole of Great Britain. Precautionary principle. For the cheeeeldren, of course.

Mark Wadsworth said...

R, especially as this particular one had previous form :)

McH, that puzzled me as well, unless, as JuliaM suggests, they thought it was about to de-evolve and grow legs.

VFTS, yup, good idea. Safety first and all that.

James Higham said...

You know, I was thinking about this - very like cows indeed. One just cannot get away from them.

manfromwi24 said...

you know I just said something to the same degree on my blog at http://voiceofoceananimals.blogspot.com/ And as for the cows yeah I've milked them before so i know about the cows that kick and the ones that don't. Same can be said about these creatures. As to their being called killer whales to the other commentor, that has to deal with their hunters instincts around other fish. Now I've got mixed feelings about seaworld parks but I believe it is important to make sure public opinion about them is not changed to hunt them because they can be protectors in the wild against shark attacks

JuliaM said...

"...they can be protectors in the wild against shark attacks"

Well, I often save a really nice bit of my meal on the side of the plate until I've finished rthe rest, too... ;)