Are Orcas Slaves?

Five Orcas, Five Slaves or Five Persons?

Wise is the founder and president both of the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights and the Nonhuman Rights Project, the world’s first nonprofit dedicated to achieving legal rights for nonhuman primates. The rights project currently comprises dozens of political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, lawyers, statisticians, cognitive scientists, primatologists, cetacean experts, public policy experts and others working quietly to ready the most powerful lawsuit they can. They are working to identify judges and jurisdictions that have previously shown themselves open to considering and embracing legal change. The lawsuit, Wise emphasized, had to be exactly right or it would be doomed to fail.

Oooh, judge shopping! Lindsay Lohan could learn a thing or two...

Last week Wise moved, not on his own lawsuit but as a so-called “friend of the court” in a previously filed case where the plaintiffs are “Tilikum, Katina, Corky, Kasatka and Ulises, five orcas.” And while the center’s amicus curiae motion and Wise’s individual affidavit have been accepted by the court, neither the defendants nor the group representing the plaintiffs want him involved.

If I recall correctly, Corky was the name of one of the Orcas at Marineland  of the Pacific, a now defunct marine park in Palos Verdes Calif, over twenty years ago.  Could it be the same Corky? It seems possible.

In October 2011, the animal rights activists’ group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, jumped the gun in Wise’s eyes by filing a federal lawsuit against SeaWorld and its theme parks in San Diego and Orlando claiming the orcas were subject to “involuntary servitude.” The orcas regularly entertain crowds at SeaWorld’s theme parks. And the PETA humans behind the lawsuit, three marine-mammal experts and two former trainers — the orcas’ “next friends,” in legal parlance — want to see the five relocated from confined spaces to suitable sanctuaries.

Person-hood for Orcas?  I think not. Orcas are intelligent animals, but not much more than most of the carnivores that man has occasionally captured and trained.  Probably on the order of a dog or wolf. The difference between dogs though, in situation, is that dogs have largely adapted and co-evolved with humans over many thousands of years.  The dog is poorly suited for life on it's own, compared to it's wild relative, the wolf, and it's association with man largely mutual.  The Orca has no such history, and the Orca gets no benefit from it's captivity, except a stead food supply and  perhaps antibiotics when it get sick.

I view catching and training Orcas as a minor sin, justified from an educational and scientific viewpoint.

UPDATE 2/10/12 Case Dismissed!