Tees for Animal Lover
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Getting the chance to see a wild animal up close is a dream come true for any child. After spending days reading books, hearing songs, and watching TV shows featuring everything from lions to whales, kids are reasonably infatuated with the idea of getting to see them face to face. Unfortunately, these sort of interactions typically only happen when the animals are in captivity.
In this video, we see a group of little kids playing with a Beluga whale through the glass in an aquarium. On the surface, it seems like a ton of fun, the kids run back and forth and the whales follow them with a measured curiosity. At one point the whale presses its head against the glass as if trying to get a better look at the kids and then things take a stark turn as the whale lunges towards them with its mouth agape. The children seem to think this is a fun game, but in reality, this is a blatant act of aggression.
Beluga whales are incredibly intelligent mammals who are highly communicative. They’ve been known to imitate human speech and they also communicate through their actions as well. Lunging with an open mouth is commonly witnessed in captive marine mammals and experts believe it is a result of the animal’s sheer frustration at being trapped in a tank a small fraction of the size of their natural habitat. That is enough in itself to drive any intelligent being to the brink, but add on loud screaming crowds and constant tapping and banging on the glass and you can see why this animal would revert to aggression.
While these kids might have gotten a once in a lifetime experience seeing this whale up close, what is it that they really learned here? That captive animals like playing with visitors? Without the larger context of knowing how captivity impacts these smart, emotional beings, they’ll never know that their afternoon of fun came at the cost of another.
Just because we have the ability to capture wild animals and put them on display does not mean that we should. Rather, it is our responsibility to learn about the important role that they play in the wild and do all that we can to keep them that way. You can help make this a reality by refusing to visit any facility that holds animals in captivity. When the paying stops so can the suffering.