A Comic’s Take On Killer Whale Training

[Beringia]

Comedian Doug Stanhope pulls no punches….at all. You’ll cringe at points, especially in his treatment of Dawn Brancheau, but boy does he nail it.

Great blog series on working with killer whales.

http://timzimmermann.com/2011/02/15/are-wild-orca-captures-about-to-begin-again/

see bottom right for the series

[Arctic Dave]

1. Reminds of the book, Corporation.

When the writer is telling a story about a group of monkeys in a cage.

They have a banana dropped into the cage, as soon as one them grabs the banana, all of them are given a painful electric shock. Soon they start to attack the monkey that tries to go for the banana. They eventually start to rotate out a monkey one by one. The new monkey not knowing, tries for the banana and is attacked by the other monkeys. Soon all of the original monkeys are rotated out and the newest monkey goes for the banana and is promptly attacked by the others, which by the way, have never been shocked but attack the other monkey because they think that is they way things are supposed to be.

Corporate America.

[Beringia]

2. I don't get it

Do you mean the similarity is people will be cruel, by following what other people do without questioning it?

[Arctic Dave]

6. Training people and animals to so things that are not natural.

But make the masters money.

Starve, beat or propaganda as behavior management.

[lexington filly]

3. I was horrified at the time of the

trainers death & never imagined it could be used as source material for a comedian. Am so glad to see this guy use his art to create awareness and educate
audiences. Make them think? We can't feel entertained by animals, I don't think, once we know something's based upon brutal practices and obscene cruelty.
Glad this showed up on DU. These types of things deserve all the bad PR we can give them.

[Beringia]

4. I agree

It is out there to be used as comedy, but it is cruel how these animals are used for entertaiment, so the comedy has redeeming value. I worked at Sea World as a teenager in the concessions and used to go look at the killer whales whenever I could. I didn't realize how cruel it was to use them this way, but I surely see it now. It was interesting, once I sat in the front row, to draw them. No audience was there. And there were 3 killer whales and the big one pushed the other two away, thinking I was an important person or something, maybe a scientist?

I also witnessed first hand an incident where a killer whale grabbed a trainer's leg and then pushed him into the wall. They pulled him out and he had tears in his wet suit, not sure what else. There was no audience there.

And I remember, it was back in the early 80s, in their show, one of the trainers took a child from the audience and the killer whale rose up to kiss the child. After the death of that female trainer, now OSHA requires barriers.

[ffr]

5. We're brought up to think these shows are natural.

This is man over animals. They're here for our entertainment and they're treated humanely.

The fact is, it is unnatural for these animals to be doing what they are and they are not given the choice whether they want to or not. I'd guess that they'd not want to be captives if they had the choice, just as we wouldn't.