In my opinion, captivity should be illegal.  I know that many people will disagree with me but, this is how I feel and let me tell you why.  #1-  these animals are social beings, they live their whole lives in the wild with their families in their pods  #2-  each pod has a different dialect and putting animals from different parts of the world and from completely different pods would be akin to putting me (an american) in a room with a chinese speaking person, a russian speaking person, a spanish speaking person and a french speaking person and keeping me locked there with only them for the rest of my life that sounds awful and lonely  # 3- these animals are forced to perform mindless circus tricks everyday and I dont want to hear that u can't force them because not feeding them until they do the trick 'right" is forcing, food deprivation and positive reinforcement are like mayo and miracle whip  so close with just a smidge of a difference. # 4- The lifespan of a captive orca is considerably shorter than that of a wild orca. Orca's in captivity are lucky to live into their 20's (although there are a few who have lived longer) the average lifespan of a wild orca is much longer with females living 50 years (with a max of 90) and males living 30 years (with a max of 50)  #5- Orca's in the wild stay with their pods their whole lives with generations and generations living together males in the wild are known for being "mama's boys"  always staying close to their mothers, they may leave her for brief periods to mate with an unrelated female but they will always return to her. In captivity calves are seperated from their mothers all the time Take Keet for instance, he was seperated from his mother Kalina at under 2 years oldt o support her next pregnancy and never saw her again before she died in 2010.  #6-  In the wild young females orcas learn to care for calves by watching other older females in the pod care for their calves.  in captivity there has been a few instances where Orca mothers have rejected their calves (Kayla rejected her daughter Halyn, Kohana rejected her son Ad'an) probably due to the fact that these Orcas did not see another female care for a calf previous to their giving birth themselves.  Taima had 3 calves in her lifetime, sumar, tekoa and malia.  Both Sumar and tekoa had to be taken from her at a very young age due to her aggression towards them (she threw Sumar out onto the slideout and started to attack him) most likely because she had seen her mother Gudrun trying to attack and drown her sister Nyar who was born mentally and physically sick.  #6.5-  In the wild Orca females start to breed around 15 years of age and have a calf roughly every 5 years until about age 40.  In captivity the orcas breed at a much younger age (6-10) and much more frequently so  their bodies are not given enough time to recover after pregnancy and delivery before they are pregnant again.  I am sure I can think of 100 more reasons why captivity is bad but those are a few just off the top of my head.  I will write more posts about this as time goes.



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