We look at whales with a degree of awe, almost veneration. In some Pacific, Inuit, and Native American mythologies, they are worshiped as gods. Even in the Judeo-Christian tradition, they are given a remarkable, though largely unremarked, distinction. Read the book of Genesis carefully, and you will see that they are mentioned before, and separately from, all the other animals:

These are largely post-religious days, at least at the level of global technocracies. But we have evidently not wriggled free of our atavistic reverence for these colossal marine mammals. That, at any rate, seems the only way to explain the international outrage at Japan’s announcement that it intends to resume commercial whaling in 2019.