What species would you ban from zoos?

They could have added misleading TV documentaries to it, as they do more damage as not many people read scientific papers, the worst of them was blackfish the damage that did is still being felt now by sea world

 

Definitely, although they do mention a certain documentary.

 

Sorry I know you didn't want to debate but I just wanted to give a little input on lifespan statistics with wild and captive killer whales.

I completely agree with you about your point on maximum ages, and I've definitely noticed it, too. However, if we are playing the average game, here's what we currently know about captive and wild killer whales. According to NOAA, wild whales live an average of 30 for males and 50 for females. I've personally done the math and gone through the National Marine Mammal Inventory Report (and Ceta Base because it's a godsend) to calculate the average age of deceased whales (since I can't just say the current whales are dead and throw them in, take this number with a grain of salt). I also excluded calves that didn't reach their first birthday to make sure it the criteria was as consistent as possible with the wild criteria. The outcome was an average of 15 years for females and 16 for males across the four parks (including SeaWorld Aurora's Kandu and excluding Loro Parque since there haven't been any deaths aside from a calf yet). It's not equivalent, but I should point out that it's steadily improving, with whales rarely if ever reaching their teens in the 70's, while whales generally died in their 20's during the 2000's. By the 2010's, most of the dead whales (with a few exceptions) had at least reached 20, rather than occasionally doing so.

Here's the problem with the equivalent data, though. I've mainly seen one particular study done by SeaWorld cited to confirm the equivalency, but I had a lot of issues with how that study was conducted. First of all, SeaWorld chose to remove all animals of "estimated age" (born before the 1972 research on the Southern residents began). This placed a cap on wild whales' ages at 41, which was already a massive blow to the lifespan study. I also had an issue with SeaWorld's decision to still include their own whales of estimated age (wild-captured) in the study, since the best we have is tooth-aging for the most part (and based on the 200 different life expectancy averages I get whenever I look up beluga life expectancy, that isn't exactly a precise science). Second of all, they chose the Southern residents. I understand that choice because it's the most well-studied population of wild orca, but it's also one of the most critically endangered. The population is essentially starving to death, so there's going to be a lot of outliers in that respect. Finally, SeaWorld decided to predict the lifespans of their living whales during the study. As a result, they predicted that Unna and Kayla would reach 40, while Kasatka would reach 50. That didn't work out so great. They predicted that all of their wild females would reach about 50 years of age, and so far Corky is the only whale they've ever had to do that, with Katina still almost 10 years away from that mark. For males, they predicted them to reach 30 as well, which all of their wild caught males at the time (Tilikum and Ulises) had already done. As for captive-bred animals, females were projected to reach 40, while males were projected to reach 25 (again, a lot of the males have already reached or are approaching that age). They then compared that to the ages of the endangered population, which has an average of 19 in males and 31 in females as a result of depleted food, and called it a win. I'm just not a fan of the way that study was conducted, but I think it fits pretty well with how a lot of studies are conducted recently, in which scientists are starting to get into the sad habit of manipulating variables to come up with their results, but not placing that in the title and therefore misleading those who just read the title and believe they've heard the full story.

I personally don't like the use of ASR on orcas because of sample size. The Southern residents are believed to have had less than 90 individuals before captures, which means that if even one whale dies, the ASR is already less than 99%. That becomes even more dramatic at SeaWorld, where in the event that all 20 survive a year (which happened in years such as 2016 and 2018), their ASR is 100% and therefore most likely greater than a larger population which is more likely to lose an individual. However, if SeaWorld has a particularly bad year (such as 2010 or 2017) in which they suddenly lose several individuals, suddenly their ASR looks absolutely atrocious. Even if you average it out over an extended period of time, the population is still too small to reliably account for the constant dramatic fluctuations. I also think that the disregard for lifespan is not a great idea in orcas, given that most orcas which die outside of Washington are either calves or elderly.

We have a little experience with sea pens already. Dolphins Plus Bayside held four dolphins which were born at Discovery Cove between 2014 and 2018 (Axl, Brigg, Hurlee, and Ige). They were sent to SeaWorld Orlando in 2018 (probably as a result of the red tide outbreak we had in Florida). Dolphin Research Center currently holds another individual born at SeaWorld Orlando in 1979, named Sandy. He's been there since 1991, so he's currently 40 years old, and he's spent 28 of those years in the sea pen (and survived numerous major hurricanes within that pen, which I would assume would create the biggest fluctuations in water quality). Over in California, the US Navy currently holds around 80 dolphins, including 4 born at SeaWorld San Diego and one born at SeaWorld Orlando (Kama, Sparky, Nitro, Charlie, and Tango). Unfortunately we have less information on welfare here because of the lack of transparency with the US Navy, however, other tank-bred dolphins have also been held there for shorter periods of time (Belle, Duncan, Bobby, and Deke). Only Bobby has died thus far.

 

I kind of disagree. I don't know how recent one should go because of course, orca captivity is always changing to keep up with the needs of the animals, but lifespan definitely is not matching up. Currently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration places the orca lifespan at 30 for males and 50 for females (on average, of course there's outliers which reach much older ages, but frankly those are still just outliers). So far, only five captive orcas worldwide have reached those ages: Bingo at Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium (spent most of his life at Kamogawa Seaworld), Tilikum at SeaWorld Orlando, Corky and Ulises at SeaWorld San Diego, and Lolita at Miami Seaquarium. It should also be noted that lifespan isn't everything when it comes to welfare, and the best proof of that would be Lolita. Of course there are parks which were run much more poorly, but there are currently 22 orcas in captivity in North America, and only Corky, Ulises, Lolita, Kyuquot, and Keet can really be accurately labelled as elderly. Hopefully Kyuquot will become the sixth whale in captivity to reach the average wild age at the end of next year, but we still have a long ways to wait for the females, since the next oldest after Corky, Katina, is only 43.

EDIT: Sorry, I forgot Kshamenk should be turning 30 sometime this year. So Ky would actually be the seventh.

 

I believe that orca's shouldn't be kept due to several issues that I don't think can be solved in a practically and economically feasible way.

• High levels of stereotypy in many animals. Orca's in captivity also show increased levels of aggression (and no, this is most likely not because of them being "forced" to perform in show as it's their own choose wether they participate or not). Although interpreting behavior should always be done very carefully, this does suggest certain levels of frustration.
• Up to this day relatively low lifespans. Even though they have certainly improved, they still remain quite low.
• Low genetic diversity and low population due to very limited spaces. Only the biggest parks can house orca's and a large amount of tanks (mostly in places like Eastern Asia, but also that of lolita) used for them are already not fit. This means that maintaining a genetically healthy population that's population-pure to avoid outbreeding issues is extremely difficult. You'd need new founders on the regular.
• Lack of possibilities to simulate a more natural group composition due to space-restraints.

On the other hand I don't have a problem with bottlenose dolphins in captivity. They don't suffer from the problems mentioned above and a study (A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF CORTISOL LEVELS IN WILD AND CAPTIVE ATLANTIC BOTTLENOSE DOLPHIN (Tursiops truncatus), KILLER WHALE, (Orcinus orca), AND BELUGA WHALE (Delphinapterus leucas).) did find equal to lower levels of stress in captive bottlenose dolphins then in wild ones. Interestingly they also find the same in orcas and belugas, which suggests that those hormones on their own are not enough to asses the welfare status of these animals.

 

Meerkats.

 

Definitely Mandrills and Siamangs

 

Just curious, why?

 

Well @redpanda756 it’s kind of a long story I’d rather not get into.

 

Concerning killer whales. It is worth to reading a compilation from Loro Parque which answers many misconceptions also on this thread.
https://www.loroparque.com/pdf/encyclopedia.pdf

By the way: the very name of the thread is loaded. What about the question: is it right to make bans that anybody, anywhere under any circumstances cannot keep some animal?

For younger forum members: understand the trick of loaded questions, which frame the whole discussion the wrong way. Often any answer is wrong other than pointing that the discussion is framed. A well known example is 'did you stop stealing?' It may be more valuable to know than anything about orcas.

 

I agree with you 100%. No other animal in captivity has reached this level of controversy and it's no coincidence why. Many former trainers have spoken out against the keeping of orcas in captivity. Orcas don't live in a stimulating enough environment in captivity to be happy and healthy. Orcas also don't attack humans in the wild. In captivity, there have been multiple *brutal deaths on humans from Killer Whales. Not caused by playfulness, but aggression.
The management caring for these animals are horribly irresponsible as well. Before Seaworld's breeding ban, female orcas were forcibly bred as early as 8 years old. One orca was forced to be inseminated 5 times - and all 5 calves were miscarriages.

 

Playful?
Killer whales are crazy intelligent and are aware of the power they hold over their trainers. They wouldn't drag their trainers underwater for minutes at a time or mutilate them out of being "playful". Take Tilikum for example. I don't think he was being playful when he dragged his trainer into the pool, thrashed her, mutilated her, and ripped off her arm. This was clearly aggressive begavior.

 

Would you call a dog tearing at a toy and ripping a stuffed animal apart playful? It is improper to put any label on these behaviors. Proper animal behavior experts know this. I think you should read up on the rest of this thread before bringing up topics that have been discussed in detail before. No need to get back into the argument unless new information is brought in.

 

No species should, in principle, be banned from being put on exhibit. But no facility, by contrast, currently has the money, space, expertise, or behavioral data set to safely and humanely keep a variety of oceanic megafauna. This includes things like blue whales, sperm whales, fin whales, orcas, narwhals, great white sharks, and mako sharks, but also things like giant squid, colossal squid, Greenland sharks, goblin sharks, and other deep-sea taxa. For the former group, it’s mostly an issue of space: no aquarium has room for or can afford a 500 million gallon tank that takes up a dozen city blocks. For the latter, it’s more an issue of science: the behavioral data about life in the deep is still just too incomplete.

 

I'm a bit confused about the narwhals. They are about the same size as their closest relative, the beluga, which is kept in captivity

 

Narwhals need much more room, they usually end up damaging their tusk when kept in captivity.

 

They are, but they don’t do well in captivity at all. Every attempt has resulted in rapid deterioration and death of the animals. The truth is that scientists just don’t know a whole lot about narwhals. Unlike belugas, which are very sociable and friendly with people, narwhals are extremely skittish and fearful.

 

I can understand that they do not adapt well to captivity. I have a few books that said the same thing about gorillas, which were said to live for about 1 year. I was just wondering about the space needed.

 

The tusk means they definitely need more space to maneuver than a beluga. I don’t know how much space that is, nor do scientists, I believe. I would love to see a “unicorn of the sea” in an aquarium someday, because short of an expensive arctic cruise around Greenland, I would never get the chance to see one otherwise. But I think that day is still a long way off, sadly.