You know, I learned something today

Hewoh.

Here are some wonderful facts about Sea World’s orcas!

The average lifespan of wild orcas ranges from 30-50 years, although some females can easily make it past 80 (a wild orca named J2 or ‘Granny’ is 103 this year!). The lifespan of a Sea World orca is around 25 years, the median age being 9. But at least they put on a good show!

Don’t worry, collapsed dorsal fins are a common condition, although in the wild only sick or injured orcas have collapsed dorsal fins. All of Sea World’s males and some females have it, it makes them look unique! 

The size of Sea World’s tanks compared to an orca is about the same as a human to a bathtub. Lot’s of room to stretch and move!

Wild orcas swim 100+ miles a day, they would have to swim around their tank 1,400+ times a day to achieve that. But that seems like a lot of work, and you may see the animals hanging out near the surface of the water or on the bottoms of their tanks for hours. That’s a lot more relaxing than swimming all those miles!

Sea World gives their orcas a Valium-like drug to stop the whales from acting aggressively towards each other and to numb their minds from their vastly uninteresting concrete tanks. Buying a ticket to Sea World is an excellent way to help them pay for these drugs that they pump their animals full with!

Many captive orcas show abnormal behaviors like head bobbing, chewing on concrete, and self mutilation by banging their heads into the side of the tank. Obviously just temper-tantrums! Silly things.

In the wild, there has been only one orca attack. Bad orca! While in captivity, there have been over 100 attacks and 4 deaths. These animals just need more training, it couldn’t possibly be related to their confinement! 

Food is used as reinforcement for tricks. Do a trick, get your dinner. Don’t want to do a trick? I guess you don’t eat tonight you stubborn thing! 

See? Sea World isn’t as bad as people make it out to be! Oh, one more fact: for every $1,000,000 Sea World makes, about $600 goes into conservation efforts (about $0.5 a ticket). I’m so glad they care about conservation of the ocean! Amazing work!

Sources: (x) (x) (x) (x)