Dudley Zoo killer Whale » Dudley Zoo

Originally Posted by Hyak2

Hi, Cuddles was captured late in 1968 and sent to Flamingo Park Zoo (now flamingoland)
where he (initially thought to be a she) was kept for a few years. Pentland Hick the then owner of the zoo paid $15000 for him and flew him over from Seattle - he was captured by famous whale catchers Griffin and Goldsbury and was a massive hit at FP as the only performing killer whale in europe at the time. (Holland had had one a few months earlier but it died soon after arrival). He lived with 2 BNDs in the current sealion pool ~250,000 gallons.

After the first year he became more and more unreliable to handle, at one point pinning a swimmer underwater and roughing up trainers cleaning the pool etc. Cuddles became severely ill at FP at one point including having several terrible bouts of intestinal bleeding - turning the whole pool red with blood on more than one occasion and then becoming dark grey instead of the normal killer whale black colour as a side effect of loosing the blood. Fortunately he was cured, supposedly by a white which from Devon who told the vet not to worry and the whale would stop bleeding the moment he put the phone down.........that was at 8:30 one morning. While checking back through the log books,the vet found the last time Cuddles was seen to pass blood was 8:31am that same day.........

In the early 70's Pentland Hick sold the zoo out of the blue and Cuddles was moved, against all advice, to a hurriedly adapted dolphin pool at Dudley - slightly over 15m long and 6m wide and 3.5m deep on the left side of the castle bridge. It was totally inadequate for him , even by the standards of zoos in those days. Initially the plan was to build new dolphin and whale pools at Dudley, then to move him to Marineland in France, but in the end Cuddles suspiciously broke a rib in April 1974, the infection overtook him and he died a few days later.

I have several pictures of him at Dudley and FP, I'll dig them out if people are interested?

Originally Posted by Hyak2

Hi, Cuddles was captured late in 1968 and sent to Flamingo Park Zoo (now flamingoland)
where he (initially thought to be a she) was kept for a few years. Pentland Hick the then owner of the zoo paid $15000 for him and flew him over from Seattle - he was captured by famous whale catchers Griffin and Goldsbury and was a massive hit at FP as the only performing killer whale in europe at the time. (Holland had had one a few months earlier but it died soon after arrival). He lived with 2 BNDs in the current sealion pool ~250,000 gallons.

After the first year he became more and more unreliable to handle, at one point pinning a swimmer underwater and roughing up trainers cleaning the pool etc. Cuddles became severely ill at FP at one point including having several terrible bouts of intestinal bleeding - turning the whole pool red with blood on more than one occasion and then becoming dark grey instead of the normal killer whale black colour as a side effect of loosing the blood. Fortunately he was cured, supposedly by a white which from Devon who told the vet not to worry and the whale would stop bleeding the moment he put the phone down.........that was at 8:30 one morning. While checking back through the log books,the vet found the last time Cuddles was seen to pass blood was 8:31am that same day.........

In the early 70's Pentland Hick sold the zoo out of the blue and Cuddles was moved, against all advice, to a hurriedly adapted dolphin pool at Dudley - slightly over 15m long and 6m wide and 3.5m deep on the left side of the castle bridge. It was totally inadequate for him , even by the standards of zoos in those days. Initially the plan was to build new dolphin and whale pools at Dudley, then to move him to Marineland in France, but in the end Cuddles suspiciously broke a rib in April 1974, the infection overtook him and he died a few days later.

I have several pictures of him at Dudley and FP, I'll dig them out if people are interested?