There was a hubbub recently when Tilikum, a resident of Orlando’s SeaWorld theme park, attacked and killed one of his trainers, 40-year-old Dawn Brancheau. People were surprised that a killer whale would kill. But then, killer whales have been misunderstood for a long time.
For starters, killer whales aren’t whales. Orcinus orca are members of the delphinidae family, meaning that they are, taxonomically, dolphins. Their common name “killer whale” comes from the fact that they kill whales. Their formal name orcinus means “belonging to the realm of the dead.”
It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that Brancheau’s is the third human death in which Tilikum has been involved. This orca’s sordid history began in 1983, when he was captured off the coast of Iceland. A year later he was sold to an aquarium in British Columbia. In 1991 a trainer there slipped and fell into the pool with Tilikum and two other orcas. They killed her.
In 1992 Tilikum was shipped off to SeaWorld. On a July morning in 1999, workers arrived at the park to find a dead, naked man floating in Tilikum’s pool. The maniac had stowed away in the park the night before in order to go skinny-dipping with the 22-foot, 12,000-pound orca. And then there was poor Mrs. Brancheau. Tilikum jumped up, grabbed her by the ponytail, and pulled her into his tank shortly after a performance.
Orcas are what we call apex predators. They can kill everything. Salmon, cod, and other fish make up a large part of the orca diet. So do sea mammals, such as seals, dolphins, and sea lions. They’ll eat penguins and pelicans, squid and octopi. Small minke whales are a favorite food, but they’ll kill gray whales and humpback whales, just as easily. They’ll kill blue whales, the largest animals on the planet, and sperm whales, fearsome creatures in their own right. If a moose or a deer happens to be wading in shallow water, as they often do in the Pacific Northwest, they’re game, too. It’s a common misconception that sharks are the top of the oceanic food chain: Orcas kill them quite easily, from hammerheads to whalesharks to great whites. Orcas have even been known to kill, and on rare occasion eat, other orcas.
But here’s what makes orcas so interesting, and ultimately so terrifying: A great white shark kills because that’s what it does. Sharks are remorseless eating machines. Orcas are not. They’re terribly smart. And their intelligence can make them unpredictable.
Taxonomically speaking, orcas are a single species. But different members of the species behave very differently. Researchers have identified three main “types.” “Resident” orcas live in large pods which travel the same migratory routes, close to coasts, year in and year out. They eat mostly fish and are content to exist side by side with dolphins and seals and other marine mammals.
So say you’re a spunky sea lion playing in the water 10 feet from shore and you see an orca come along. You don’t cross to the other side of the beach because you see friendly resident orcas every day. Heck, some of your best friends are orcas. But this happens to be a “transient” orca. Transients travel in very small pods and go hither, thither, and yon. They eat few fish, preferring to munch on bigger mammals. Like you. So long, sea lion.
Then there are the “offshore” orcas, which live far out in open water. They eat some fish, but also enjoy feasting on large whales, sharks—anything that moves, really. The point here is that there’s no biological difference between a good resident orca and a terrifying transient or offshore orca. The difference is cultural. It’s both as small and as large as the difference between an Amish farmer and a Mafia hitman.
But back to Tilikum. I know what you’re thinking—three strikes, you’re out; time to give Tilikum the chair. Yet it’s worth considering that in the whole of recorded history there have been exactly zero documented cases of humans killed by orcas in the wild. Out there in nature, you can count on one hand the number of times an orca has even mistakenly bitten a human.
Orcas only started harming people when people started putting them in pools and treating them as if they were some kind of cross between a panda and a porpoise. Erich Hoyt, author of Orca: The Whale Called Killer, recalls how at SeaWorld in 1976, “orcas were trained to perform Bicentennial patriotic skits, which included donning George Washington wigs and reenacting scenes from American history.” From SeaWorld to Free Willy, American culture convinced itself that the orca was a cute, tame, amusing creature.
Of course, that view of the cuddly, domesticated killer whale is just another mirage of modernity. Some things are wild enough that they should not—and probably cannot—be tamed.
Jonathan V. Last
