Companies like SeaWorld might deny that and claim that all their orcas lead happy and healthy lives but the statistics of their 50 year history present a different image.Over the last 50 years SeaWorld has held 79.Keep up-to-date with all the news from WDC and the world of whales and dolphins.To receive emails about our campaigns and how you can support them, please enter your email address below and press the ‘subscribe’ button. Postmortem MRI studies of the killer whale brain have shown that it is on the scale of 3.5-6.5 times as massive as a common bottlenose dolphin, another cetacean species that has demonstrated non-human-person-like qualities [1] . The French philosopher René Descartes wrote in his meditations that thinking is the essence of being. Killer whales (or orcas) are powerful predators capable of killing leopard seals and great white sharks. ",Campaign for intelligent marine mammals to have right to life, which would protect them from hunters and captivity,Fishermen drive bottle-nose dolphins into a net during their annual hunt off Taiji, Japan. They can live 60 years or more, and they stay in tightknit matrilineal groups led by older females that model specific behaviors to younger animals. Having knowledge implies having thoughts and perceptions which constitute that knowledge. Studies of vocalisations have shown that each population of orcas has a distinct dialect that no other population uses. Many researchers accept that cultural experiences have helped shape human evolution – and evidence has now emerged that the same may be true of killer whales.Human genomes have evolved in response to our cultural behaviours: a classic example is the way that some human populations.But whether genomes and culture co-evolve in other animal species has been unclear.Killer whales, like people, are widely dispersed from the tropics to the poles. "If we are lucky it could take 10 years," said White. However, it describes perfectly what is at stake with the concept known as ‘.Is every person a human being or are there perhaps persons that are not members of the human species? "We are at the stage of climate scientists 20 years ago. There is evidence that orcas in captivity suffer physically and mentally from their confinement. They grow up to four metres in length and with their...Dr Nicolette Scourse is an academic, educator, author and illustrator with a passion for whales,...News that Shinzo Abe is stepping down as Japan’s prime minister could be another nail...As I headed up north to begin my 2020 summer fieldwork season here on the...For the last 20 years, I’ve been leading Whale and Dolphin Conservation's work to end...Whale and Dolphin Conservation is a founding supporter of the Natutama Foundation. Professor,Instead of AI, I wish instead to examine cetacean intelligence. Considering the most recent scientific findings, how is it that orcas are not yet considered non-human persons? Experts are divided as to whether the injuries and deaths were accidental or deliberate attempts to cause harm. It is with this, then, that I want to propose to put ethics before metaphysics in considering the moral status of what legal scholars and ethicists call “non-human persons.” In particular, I want to look at,To begin with, I would like to make a distinction clear: I am not claiming that orcas, for example, are morally equivalent to humans, but I am suggesting that we ought to be more cautious with regard to understanding our place in the animal world as a whole, particularly as it relates to the precariousness of life itself. You can unsubscribe at any time. Dolphins at the centre were rewarded with fish if they collected litter from their tanks and carried it in their mouths to the staff but Kelly found a weakness in the scheme. What then is a person?Generally speaking, a person is someone who is self-aware and intelligent, has a consciousness, thoughts and feelings, an ability to solve complex problems, and is able to initiate actions on his or her own volition.Self-awareness is potentially one of the most important criteria for personhood. They have also been recorded preying on usually terrestrial species such as moose swimming between islands. A short.Not every animal or AI is a person, but depending on how we define the criteria, the species might be wider or narrower; either way, we are more attuned to the complexity of the moral world around us. Accordingly, if orcas possess self-awareness as indicated by them passing the mirror test then it is probable that they also have knowledge of themselves and their environment, thus are likely to have thoughts about themselves and the world around them.Further studies of their social behaviour indicate that they indeed possess emotions, for example some scientists have pondered whether they grieve over the death of a family member. When people dropped paper into her tank, she hid it under a rock on the bottom. They might not be writing books or producing off-Broadway plays, but orcas do actually have their own culture, just like us, and now researchers have found evidence that suggests this might have,Turns out, a number of orca cultures have evolved differently over the years, despite the fact that they all share a common ancestor, making them the first creatures -.Before we get into the details, we have to first address exactly what a whale culture is.It’s safe to say that different cultures arise and flourish because they are, in some way, disconnected from other cultures, which is why our human cultures have started to,So what the heck does all this mean for orcas? Whenever a species passes through this sort of population bottleneck, it can rapidly gain a unique genetic identity.“We suspect that the [invasion] event and subsequent bottleneck occur first and then the behavioural flexibility allows the founder group to adapt to local conditions,” says Foote.When juveniles learn social behaviours from adults, it helps solidify the group identity and gradually reinforce its distinct genetic signature.Essentially, a few individuals can colonise new habitats and ecological niches thanks to their behavioural flexibility.