The interactions between humans and dolphins started centuries ago when our ancestors carved drawings of cetaceans on rocks and passed on legends and folk tales; some described them as beasts and others as spiritual creatures. These marine mammals are also hunted as long as three thousand years ago as resources: their meat for food; their blubber for oil, and their teeth and bones for clothes, jewelry, or tools (Bauer, McCafferty, Simmonds, & Wright, 2013, p.201). As time pass, dolphin and whale hunting became a more prominent and structured industry, and the knowledge about these marine mammals’ biology and behaviors grew. In recent decades, with the help of ample media exposure and scientific publications, the public shifted its attitude …show more content…
As an animal with relatively high intelligence, some believe that keeping dolphins in man-made tanks are unethical because it prohibits them from performing behaviors that are common in dolphins in the wild. These dolphins live up to 30 years in small confined tanks that hinders their movements, much like a person spending the rest of his life in a bathtub-sized space. They slowly develop symptoms that suggest chronic stress, and might even attack human trainers out of frustration or aggression. As mentioned previously, killer whales are highly intelligent animals that can communicate with each other and swim up to 100 miles a day. However, they usually spend time with only two to three other killer whales in captivity, and often during the nights, they are isolated. Because the tanks in marine parks are cleaned every day and does not provide any entertainment for the animals, some killer whales started eating the paint on the walls out of boredom. One of the killer whales in SeaWorld, Unna, repeated this process so much that it bloodied and bruised her jaw. So much paint was peeled off that her trainer had trouble identifying his own position while performing in the water (Hargrove, 2015, p. 84). Since the killer whale performances require absolute precision, trainer rely on the paint on the bottom of the tank to position themselves, when the paint was bitten off, it poses great risks on the