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![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/800px-Orca_collapsed_dorsal_fin.jpg\" "\\"800px-Orca_collapsed_dorsal_fin\\"")
<\/a>Tilikum. Photo by Ian Griffiths.<\/p><\/div>\n
If you got itchy when I started talking about civil rights for vampires\/sociopaths, you’re gonna love<\/em> this: civil rights for killer whales.<\/p>\n <\/a>Or perhaps more accurately, civil rights for killer<\/em> whales. Literally. One of these guys, Tilikum by (Human-ascribed) name, killed one of his jailers in broad daylight and, according to the BBC, has been “linked to two other deaths<\/a>“. \u00a0Regardless, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has launched a lawsuit<\/a> in the US District Court in San Diego, on behalf of Tilikum and four other SeaWorld orcas, charging that their incarceration violates the 13th<\/sup> Amendment against slavery\u2014 and the judge, while skeptical, hasn’t yet thrown out the case. A bemused<\/a> fourth estate<\/a> is all over<\/a> the story for the moment, although it remains to be seen how much traction accrues to any PETA action that doesn’t involve naked women in cages<\/a>.<\/p>\n Artist: Peter MacDougal. For "Bulk Food".<\/p><\/div>\n This issue is especially resonant to a fallen marine mammalogist such as myself. I’ve worked with captive marine mammals on occasion, even done a bit of theoretical work on orcas. Over my short-lived and ill-advised tenure with the North Pacific Universities Marine Mammal Research Consortium I grew familiar with the toxic backstage political environment at the Vancouver Aquarium (which, for all its toxicity, was significantly better than anything I ever heard coming out of Seaworld). \u00a0Back in the nineties I presented an intervenor report at the Vancouver Parks Board hearings on ending the Aquarium’s captive whale displays, which nearly got me a job until I remarked in those hearings on the obvious hypocrisy of the Board itself.\u00a0 (That also resulted in the appearance of the misleading and inflammatory story “Marine Mammal Expert Recommends Euthenasia For Captive Killer Whales” in the Vancouver Sun. Say, if anyone out there happens to encounter Petti Fong<\/a> standing on a curb by heavy traffic, do me a favor and push her under a bus, okay?)<\/p>\n All these experiences even inspired my coauthorship of a behind-the-scenes story<\/a> in which we finally crack the orca language and discover that they’re even bigger assholes than we are. One of the few intentionally<\/em> funny stories I’ve ever written, and lemme tell you it reeks<\/em> of verisimilitude right down to the names of the characters.<\/p>\n So here we are, with the animal-rights movement putting their money where their rhetoric is and actually trying to get Tilikum et al<\/em> classified as slaves in a court of law. I’ve gone over the lawsuit itself, and in terms of orca biology and behavior it’s pretty tight. Para 17 goes a bit overboard in describing orca feeding as “social events carried out in the context of an array of traditions and rituals”, which implies some kind of cross-species mind-reading technology that certainly wasn’t in wide use back in my<\/em> day.\u00a0 Para 41 commits a small lie of omission when it states “In nature, aggression between members of a pod, or between pods in the same resident clan or community \u2026 is virtually unknown”; true, but relations between resident and transient<\/em> pods are somewhat more antagonistic. Still. The stuff on social bonds, brain structure, habitat requirements \u2014 not to mention the generally barbaric treatment of orcas in captivity \u2014 is pretty much spot-on.<\/p>\n Significantly, Seaworld doesn’t challenge any of these facts. They’ve stated that charges of abuse are utterly irrelevant as far as they’re concerned.\u00a0 From what I’ve seen reported, their defense boils down to two basic claims: 1) The whole case is bullshit because the Constitution only applies to people and killer whales aren’t; and 2) if PETA wins this case, it’s open season on everything from zoos to the law-enforcement’s K9 programs. “We’re talking about hell unleashed,” their lawyer is quoted as saying.<\/p>\n I have problems with both those points.<\/p>\n First, the Property-not-people angle. PETA argues that dismissing orcas as property “is the same argument that was used against African-Americans and women before their constitutional rights were protected”. Sealand rebuts that that’s an entirely inappropriate analogy because “both women and African-Americans are people for which the Constitution was written to protect.” This being yet another iteration of the founding fathers know best <\/em>argument so beloved by the Tea Party: the Constitution is gospel, and cannot be changed. <\/em><\/p>\n Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the original Consitution define blacks as less than human, too?\u00a0 As in, one slave equals three-fifths of a “real” man<\/a>, at least for purposes of political representation? Citing African Americans and women doesn’t exactly bolster Seaworld’s case \u2014 although they’ve also made the claim that the whole whales-as-slaves argument “defies common sense”, so they’ve always got the Spluttering Outrage and Handwaving defense to fall back on.<\/p>\n More telling, though, is Argument #2: that if the tewwowists win, “All hell breaks loose.”\u00a0 Which is another way of saying “It mustn’t be, so it isn’t”.<\/p>\n Don’t even think<\/em> about the abuse of the organism, they are saying; it pales in the shadow of the carnage and inconvenience that will be brought down upon us if the whalehuggers have their way.\u00a0 How will the hundreds employed by zoos and marine parks make ends meet? How will the police protect us from evil-doers without furry canine slaves to do their bidding? What about the innocent middle-class family with the pet cockatoo or the beagle in the back yard? Will their doors be the next to get kicked in by PETA’s stormtroopers?\u00a0 The only argument I haven’t<\/em> heard yet \u2014 and I heard it often enough from the mouths of the Vancouver Aquarium’s PR hacks, so I suppose it’s only a matter of time \u2014 is Won’t somebody think of the CHILDREN?<\/em><\/p>\n I don’t know why we should have to explain the implications of the law to a lawyer, but: if PETA wins, then captive orcas will be slaves. Legally. And good luck making the case that we shouldn’t free slaves because it would force the manager of Sealand to look for another job.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/bulk.jpg\" "\\"bulk\\"")
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