#cetacean management

[orcinus-veterinarius]

Omg, in relation to your commerson's reblog: I got to meet the Aquatica commersons recently, and I was Shook! I work with Bottlenose, so I was not prepared for how tiny they are! The one we got to interact with was in his forties (!!!) and he was smaller than a bottlenose calf. It blew my mind!

Juan!!! How exciting that you got to meet him! I can’t believe how old he is… I don’t believe Commerson’s have ever been documented living longer than their early to mid-20s in the wild.

For those interested, here’s a short video from a few years ago introducing Juan!

[mammalidentifier]

im sorry seals molt? my association with that word is insects so i am confused and intrigued

They do! I’d say most species of animals sloughs off “old” parts of their bodies at some point of their lives in some capacity. The word “molting” is used as a catch-all term for this process, although exactly what body part they shed and how they do it varies from animal to animal. Arthropods grow an entire new exoskeleton and shed the old one, but for most other animals, this process only involves shedding the outermost layer of their bodies, the pelage and/or their first layer of skin. Reptiles are quite famous for this because they sometimes manage to come out of their old skins and leave them almost fully intact as if they were kigurumi pajamas:

Mammals tend to mostly only shed fur or hair, growing thicker fur during colder months and losing it in favor of shorter fur during warmer months. How obvious this is depends on the climate, though. It’s quite perceptible in mammals that live in the arctic whose fur changes color depending on the season:

But even the difference between the summer coats and winter coats of domestic dogs can be palpable if you live in places with colder climates!

(I’m quite fascinated by this because I was born and raised in a tropical country and my dogs look the same all year round heh)

But back to the seals. Pinnipeds don’t really use their fur to keep warm like other mammals do, but they still have it, and they have to shed their old coats and grow new ones accordingly, which they do once a year!

In elephant seals, this process is so sudden and so extreme it’s called catastrophic molting. They don’t only lose their fur, but also a layer of dead skin all at once and this forces them to stay on land for a full month without swimming (and therefore, without hunting and eating) until the process is fully done. Because molting requires redirecting blood flow towards the skin instead of to their vital organs as usual, if they swam in the cold waters they’re usually accustomed to while molting, they’d freeze!

Bonus fun fact: despite having lost their fur during the evolution process, cetaceans like whales and dolphins also go through a molting process where they lose a layer of dead skin, which they scrape off by rubbing against rocks and rolling on sand banks.

It’s been recently discovered (as of 2020!) that the reason whales migrate annually from arctic waters to tropical waters is the exact same reason elephant seals spend a month on land: to molt! It’s much easier for a whale to keep warm while shedding its skin in warm waters than it is in cold waters.

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

Let's talk about zoo animal welfare for a second...

(And I want to preface this by saying I have a 4 year Bachelor degree in Animal Science (focusing in welfare and behaviour with a major in Canine and Equine Science) before I got sidetracked into zoo animals and did 3 internships working with wild canids, ungulates and marine mammals - this involved both hands on behaviour modification/desenitisation as well as hands off behavioural observation and welfare study. I worked for 2 years as a marine mammal specialist and worked specifically in facilities to improve husbandry, behavioural training and welfare practises.

I also worked in a facility in the Asia Pacific, working to improve welfare standards for bottlenose dolphins and continued to work with cetacean welfare researchers after this. I also did a course in zoo management, husbandry and welfare and this involved working in an accredited zoo facility learning things like exhibit design, behaviour management and husbandry with multiple species.)

So a few points to say about zoo animal welfare when discussing zoo standards and practises:

The average person does not have the expertise to do behaviour observation and welfare evaluation in zoo animals - that's why when the general public visits a zoo and says "the animal looks sad" it's worth being skeptical of that claim. But it doesn't mean a gut feeling about a zoo's quality can be completely invalid. Just that it might be worth researching further or seeking more information.

However, with experience, it is possible to analyse behaviour in the context of welfare. And context to that behaviour is always important (for example, Moo Deng showing stress related behaviour towards the specific context of being touched or followed around by her keeper - very much an indication of poor handling practises)

Poor animal husbandry and welfare is not limited to specific countries or regions, however it can be more normalised and accepted under the influnce of cultures and laws. Or even just the culture of the zoo itself such as the "this is the way we've always done it" places.

Being an accredited zoo is a start to good welfare, but it doesn't make any sort of welfare concern obsolete. And accreditation is supposed to ensure that welfare concerns are addressed but because they are mostly run as a volunteer based organisation, they often don't have resources to check into every concern (unless it's a government funded organisation)

A zoo contributing to conservation research is great, but not if it is at the expense of the animals' welfare - welfare should always be prioritised, with research and conservation efforts to follow.

Welfare is a state that is in flux. So a negative welfare state can move into positive welfare state under different influences.

There are multiple factors that influence zoo animal welfare: enclosure/habitat, expression of natural behaviour, guest interaction, diet, enrichment, water quality, hygeine ect. It'll rarely just be one factor, though it does depend how salient that factor is.

Just because a keeper or management of a zoo have been there for a long time, doesn't mean they can't be criticised - it is possible to be still using outdated practises and believing in methodologies and management practises that need updating - that's the whole point of continued education

Having limited resources can often impact welfare. Giving a facility the resources they need to improve is a good start to improving welfare.

Even if an animal is being handled in an inappropriate way for a short time, that doesn't mean that can't have long term implications for welfare eg. if every time your dog jumped on you when you got home and you smacked him in the face once before going on with your day, that doesn't mean that your dog won't learn negative associations with your arrival just because it was one time.

Best practise husbandry of zoo animals involves:

Use of positive reinforcement based voluntary husbandry and health care

All interaction based on choice and voluntary interaction that is reinforced with primary reinforcement such as food

Mostly hands off approaches for the species that require them (ungulates, large primates, large carnivores)

Relatively stable social groups with aggression only in specific situations/contexts that are normal for the species

Back areas for animals to rest outside of public view

Species appropriate habitats to meet species specific behaviour requirements

Five freedoms of welfare being met but goes above and beyond the bare minimum

Poor zoo animal husbandry involves animals:

Being forced into anything such as presentations, education programs, medical procedures/gating

Any use of physical punishment such as chasing, slapping, pushing or poking - negative reinforcement such as bull hooks are also fairly outdated in handling species like elephants

Being excessively handled, chased and touched/restrained for no reason (eg. for social media videos)

Showing signs of avoidance and aggression constantly towards their keepers

Have constant conflict happening in their social groups

Are living in enclosures that are not suitable for their specific specific needs - size is only one factor in this. Substrate, habitat design, water quality ect. are also things to consider.

Are too close to the public/at risk from the public

Have no areas to retreat from the public/rest away from potential stressors

Have no enrichment program/no daily enrichment

Those are all flags that there could be some poor welfare happening and that a zoo is not prioritising welfare

Okay there's the ramble of the day done. Feel free to ask questions for further clarification if needed.

[monstatron]

SUNILA ARKANS

“ Sunila is the last of a lineage of powerful animans. She's one of the few remaining cetaceans that dares to expose herself amongst the the rest of animan society. She can often be found engaging with others through street fighting, a fun pass time and a good source of income for her. If you encounter be on edge... Well, not too on edge. She's one of the most hospitable animans out there! Even if she has a sharp, sassy attitude, she makes good company. In addition, she’s a trusted ally of Obasi. For the most part she’s here to keep the peace. “

my orca girl sunila! :3 managed to get her new ref done before artfight!

that’s right, she’s in the blade in the city universe. she’s a guard that’s a trusted ally of the phantoms and sunila is often seen lumbering around safehouses and clubs, keeping a watchful eye over activities in the area. it’s her job to keep others safe— phantom or not.

[elbiotipo]

do you think a hypothetical highly developed alien species, i.e. sapient, would have a body form much different from that of a human, beyond things such as taxonomic classification? the human body is essentially purpose-made to function as the best possible instrument of labor, with dextrous hands, an upright posture, long maneuverable limbs, etc. as labor is what seperates us from animals and what allows our life.

I've had this debate, I think that's an anthropocentric argument. Let's revise what are considered some of the "smartest" animals, in terms of problem solving, sociality, abstract thought, etc:

Primates, which are 99% identical to us

Cetaceans (dolphins, orcas, whales)

Corvids

Parrots

Octopuses

I'm missing more than a few, but notice that besides primates, which are basically us, they all have radically different body plans. Birds and octopuses do have dextrous appendages and use them to solve problems and use tools, but as you can see the difference between each and also primates is colossal. Cetaceans don't even have manipulators, yet they display very complex social behavior and problem solving, and have what some people have called a proto-language and "culture" (controversial but more here)

It's questionable that it was labor, or the use of tools on itself, that made us humans. What makes us human is perhaps one of the hottest topics to debate, but from the time I studied anthropology, it is not any anatomical feature, it seems to be abstract thought and culture. Abstract thought, as my professor put it, is the ability to imagine and concieve of something that doesn't exist yet (or cannot exist, or cannot be seen materially, like ideas) and managing to create it in real life, to take it out your mind so to speak and change the material world. Culture is the ability to transfer ideas from generation to generation through social learning. Many animals have social learning, but few (except maybe, maybe, cetaceans and corvids) have culture. I think this is key, for example octopuses are very smart, and they do have social skills, but they don't transfer any of those skills to the next generation or to their fellows, they don't really have a society*. Humans do; every single human being is shaped by culture, shares it and changes it and modifies it.

It was once thought that humans first evolved abstract thought and that "forced us" to become upright and use tools, now we know this isn't the case. Australopithecus already had upright bipedal posture, free hands for tool use, and it was probably pretty smart, yet it would have remained simply a bipedal ape if not by the development of abstract thought and culture. It's not like other animals don't have similar things, it's that humans are so incredibly defined by it that it makes our way of life unique.

With regards to alien life, well, we've seen incredibly complex behavior arise in animals as different as mollusks and vertebrates. I believe that alien life will look indeed, very, very alien, especially since the development of our own multicellular life was very bumpy and strange. But you know what's interesting? I believe that while we would have many differences between us and any alien civilization, we would be able to communicate and understand each other, to which degree I cannot say. Because, if what I say is true, and abstract thought and culture, mediated by language, are what create social animals capable of society and 'civilization', it means that there is a language that can be translated, and if that is the case, we can talk with them. About what? I cannot say.

(unless, like Lynn Marguillis has done a decent case for, the nervous system has its origin on modified microtubules, which are the result of endosymbiosis, and so it's a unique thing to animals and probably to Earth itself... then again, even slime molds, which are fungi, are able to display behavior similar to nervous systems, so I don't think this is a limitation)

*well, there's Octopolis and Octlantis, but that's more of individuals living together rather than a social group

[treason-and-plot]

“I saw you from my roof, when I was scanning the sea for cetaceans with my telescope,” says Warren.

“What?” says Cookie.   

“Cetaceans. Whales and dolphins,” says Warren.

“Obviously I know what cetaceans are, Warren,” says Cookie. “I just don't understand what you mean when you say you saw me. Saw what, exactly?"

“I saw you sitting on the sand, crying,” says Warren. His kind, pale green-blue eyes are fixed on her face, and for one terrifying and thrilling moment she thinks he is going to reach out and touch her, caress her cheek, or maybe even take one of her hands in his. But the moment passes, leaving her skin tingling with a dizzying combination of relief and regret. “The sight of such a beautiful woman alone and crying tore at my heartstrings. I knew I had to jump in my speedboat and come down here straight away to try and help you. "

His chivalrous words make Cookie feel like bursting into tears again, but she manages to get a grip on her composure. She gives him a sweet and demure smile and shrugs dismissively.

“I’m touched by your concern, Warren, but I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” she says. “I wasn’t crying. I was just sitting on the sand enjoying the view. I often come down to this little beach when I’m in the mood for some solitude. It’s one of my favourite spots.”

Several creases appear on Warren’s bronzed forehead.

“I know when someone is distressed, Cookie,” he says. “I don’t even have to see their tears. I can sense it. I can sense it in animals too. That’s why they call me the whale whisperer. I have a gift, an intuition. I can tune in to human and animal needs and feelings. And right now I can sense that you’re in pain. Deep, deep pain. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“No,” says Cookie quickly, stepping backwards. “You are one hundred percent not right, Warren. I’m perfectly fine. And I don’t believe in any of that new age nonsense, so you’re wasting your breath. Anyway, I have to get home now. Raj will be wondering where I am."

"Cookie," he says gently. "Please let me help you."

"For the last time, I don't need help!" she says, panicked and furious, and turns and walks away from him up the sand as fast as her heels will allow her to.

[stiltsthegm]

Trace's Forum Post

By popular demand: the text version of Trace's forum rant that I recited on Eidolon EDM episode 0. I made this several months ago as a way to try and solidify her personality and voice in my head.

>If you want to go back to Earth so badly, why don't you just move in with a human? There's gotta be a bunch of 'em that'd love to have a dolphin roommate.

this post was written by a human. i have no idea what you get out of browsing a cetacean forum but whatever floats your boat i guess.

and before some asshole butts in goin 'why are you assuming theyre human they could be a manatee or something'

no. fuck no. only a human would be stupid enough to make that suggestion.

in the extremely unlikely event im wrong [which im not because im a genius], heres why thats a really bad idea and you should be embarrassed for even thinking it.

dolphin fans are maniacs. like we all make fun of horses here and their spindly-ass legs and how nothing about their body makes any sense and someone politely chuckling a mile away could startle them into throwing themselves off a cliff. but horse people have nothing on dolphin people. its a whole other fuckin level.

yeah sure lets play this scenario out, lets get all hypothetical. i move in with someone rich enough and weird enough to spend a completely absurd amount of money bringing me back from the moon and also constructing an aquarium for me inside their presumably giant apartment or mansion or whatever. do you know what happens to dolphins in this situation? like, historically? wild shit. dolphin people dont want to just be your friend. they want to make a spiritual connection, whatever the hell that means. theyll spend hours every day talking to you like youre a baby, assuming that if they do it enough, theyll one day wake up to you reciting a sonnet to them. theyll put drugs in your fish hoping to 'expand your mind' and form a 'psychic connection'. theyll do shit with electrodes. and if you somehow do not immediately try to get your smooth ass out of there, its fuckin over for you. youll become a shadow of your former self, doing flips on command and squeaking out the best approximation you can manage for 'i love you, janice' to get just one more treat.

ive seen that shit happen. its fucking bad.

so no, i will not be taking your advice. im gonna get rich and then ill use my own goddamn money to buy a ticket back and then create a sickass aquarium mansion with reefs. and if i really want some human companionship ill just dangle some grant money in front of some middle-aged marine biologists whose idea of a good day is proving that an abyssal sea cucumber hasnt gone extinct yet. they understand what im about more than any 'dolphin fan' and are just as depressed as me.

[a-minke-whales-tale]

Estimation of Energy Consumption During Swimming

One of the big questions I have had for quite a while is to estimate really just how fast I would normally swim, my normal energy consumption, and questioning if really I could breach, either partially or entirely.

Starting from my most recent estimations of the shape and size of the suit (which I have another post on that soon so this is sort of sneak preview). The length is 2,4 meters, width 0,36 meters, and height around 0,28 meters (I originally started at a target around 3,5 meters or so I think to give an idea how much the size has changed). The flukes would be 0,7 meters across and roughly 0,2 meters in length.

We can approximate a whale as more or less an ellipsoid with several protrusions at least for a first order guess. In this case the dorsal fin is small so it will be ignored and I will only add in the flukes (however this notably only changes the result around 5%). I did not include the flippers because when swimming straight and continuously, we tend to hold our flippers against our side and bring them out only when manoeuvring. This is in contrast to the delphinids (like dolphin and orca whose flippers tend to remain in the flowstream).

Using this equation we can calculate the wetted area of the suit (note that these sorts of approximations tend to lose accuracy as one axis becomes stretched as has happened here but it is what we have for now).

The drag equation is fairly straight forward.

However to turn it into energy this drag force needs to be multiplied by the distance over which it occurs. To become power it is then divided by time. This does make the power required to move through the water functionally a cubic relation.

From this paper, Simulated and experimental estimates of hydrodynamic drag from bio-logging tags, we can get drag coefficients corresponding to velocity. It is worth noting that these values are for bottlenose dolphins, however a variety of papers tend to put the coefficient of drag in this range so we will use it.

The efficiency of the kicks also poses some question. I took 56% from Propulsive Efficiency of the Underwater Dolphin Kick in Humans which notes 56% within its abstract for cetacean swimming efficiency. It does however note that other papers have reported 79% for monofin users, and 86% in bottlenose dolphins though that those numbers are idealised and ignores body drag.

Taking this data yields the following table which gives the needed input power and MET rating.

2,5 MET is equivalent to a gentle walk and 6 MET to running. Minke whale generally cruise swim between 5-10 kph though can swim as fast as 40kph. From this swimming at 10kph is likely to be a significant struggle for any length of time, however 5kph corresponds to 1,6 which is roughly equivalent to making this tumblr post.

From this chart there is very much no way I would be able to reach the top speed of normal minke (which would require around 5kW exertion). However in very short bursts humans can produce 2000-2500W of power so it is possible for a very brief moment I could get near to 20kph, though that would have to be a very short moment given the nature of both the breathholding and thermal management of the suit.

However knowing that 1,5m/s (5kph) is a very relaxed swimming speed, and 3m/s is quite achievable for very short periods does mean that I will likely be able to breach entirely out of the water.

From Energetic and physical limitations on the breaching performance of large whales, minke whales would make breach attempts between 1,6 and 3,4 m/s of which half of the observed breaches were full breaches (which I believe in this paper a full breach is 40% of the body above the water, baleen whales tend not to fully clear the water in the way delphinids do).

I do have the advantage of being quite a lot smaller than a normal minke, so even moving at 3m/s I should have a higher chance of nearly fully lifting myself from the water.

It is nice to know that at least certain aspects of minke movement are achievable for me. 5kph is not terribly fast but that is plenty fast for movement and still potentially a very relaxed movement as I swim around. Also knowing that I can realistically breach (in the way baleen whales do) is quite comforting and exciting as that is something I have worried about quite a lot - that being said, there are human monofin users who are themselves capable to fully exit the water on a breach, and even with my old monofins which are far more flexible I can already exceed the 40% boundary of a full breach.

Zwem Vrij, ~Kala

[foxbirdy]

hi!

just saw your pictures of you doing some marine biology fieldwork and i just wondered if you have any stories about the experience that you would like to share. Im in 1st year uni right now and i have no idea what im gonna specialize in other than “science!!” but i work on boats for my job right now (tallships, very cool stuff) and so marine environment work really appeals to me. If you have the time, I would love to get a picture of what the work you’re doing entails.

(What does the day-to day of marine biology research look like? What kind of stuff are you studying/information are you gathering? Whats it like? Is it awesome? feel free to answer none of these also)

thank you!!

OH, I'm jealous - it's a dream of my mine to get to work on a tallship. & I love to talk about this stuff!

In all honesty, the day-to-day changes pretty dramatically depending on what project work is available. Right now, as a student, a lot of what I'm involved in ties into coursework or research that's happening at the university! I volunteer with a couple different labs, and there's a huge variety of stuff to get in on. For example:

Last Saturday, I spent about six hours pulling otoliths and gonads out of eighty invasive roi, taape, and toau caught by local spearfishermen. Otoliths are the ear bones of fish, and similar to the rings of a tree, they have ringed annuli that can give a lot of information about the life history of the individual species. We cast these otoliths in resin, and then cut cross-sections to look at them under the microscope. The hope is that this information will help us understand when these species become reproductive, and how to control their populations.

The last several Fridays, I've been involved with an effort to collect some water quality and plankton data after a lot of heavy rain. This work was out on the boats, and we used deep and shallow drogues, YSI, light meter, secchi disk, and a couple plankton nets, moving out from the swollen rivermouth and into deeper, saltier water.

Last month, I spent a lot of time on invertebrate snorkel surveys, mostly looking for presence/absence in the nearshore. Next Tuesday, I'll be doing fish surveys in the same location. The Wednesday after I'm hopping on a wetlands restoration project & removing invasive bull grass, and a night snorkel afterwards. Next Friday is a lab day, working to process the plankton samples we've collected, and I'll be in the coral nursery afterwards. That's the really fun thing about university - there's so much different work going on, all the time!

In the summers, outside of school, that work is just as varied. I've really enjoyed having jobs that allow me to do a little bit of everything, and thus far, my supervisors have been very supportive of me in that. Here's some other projects I've gotten to work on, all within just one position:

Servicing passive monitoring systems! These are pictures of my replacing a SEABIRD logger, which has been taking a water temperature measurement every thirty seconds for the past 360 days. This helps conservation managers track heatwaves in sensitive ecosystems. We prepped new loggers with batteries and SD cards and waterproof tape to prevent biofouling, and then used snips and zipties to make the switch.

Scientific fishing! This helps get life history and population data for our target species, large pelagic fish. We collected biopsy samples, placed tags, and released primarily ahi, but also ono, and mahi. (Full disclaimer: this picture is from a subsistence fishing trip and not a scientific one, where people generally have too many things in their hands & are moving too quickly to take pictures. He was a very delicious dinner for our crew, though.)

Other marine tagging! I got to assist with bluewater cetacean tagging of several different dolphin and small whale species, and shark tagging for galapagos, blacktip reef, grey reef, and dusky sharks. Cetacean tagging was done with an air rifle, not easy at high speeds on the boat. Shark tagging was more hands-on, as we had to manually apply the tags.

Coral reef monitoring! The mission of these surveys was to track coral health through heat stress events, and to identify harmful species. I'm looking under the coral head in these pictures for crown-of-thorns starfish, one of the most urgent species threats to reefs in the Pacific.

This is the bastard. Notice the dead coral around him.

Oh I'm about to smack into the photo limit, huh. Please hold!

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

An estimated 90 percent of all traded goods travel by sea, where vessels tap into a vast network of shipping routes that connect even the most far-flung places. 

But humans aren’t the only ones traversing vast distances across these marine highways. A new study found that shipping occurs in more than 90 percent of whale ranges, where the animals can often get hit—becoming what scientists grimly refer to as “ocean roadkill.” By combining shipping and whale distribution data, the researchers pinpointed the areas with the highest risk of whale-vessel collision for several species. They discovered just a small fraction of these hotspots have any collision protection measures in place. 

“There’s just extremely high overlap of shipping traffic with whales,” said study co-author Briana Abrahms, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington. “These whales are just having to contend with an incredibly, incredibly busy ocean, and shipping traffic is a leading cause of mortality for several whale species.” 

Shipping, cruise and fishing vessels fatally strike an estimated 20,000 whales around the world each year. Scientists say this is likely an underestimate because vessels could unwittingly hit a whale whose body sinks to the seafloor before it is recorded. Climate change could be increasing vessel strike risk as ocean warming and marine heatwaves push whales closer to human activity.

There is a bright spot. Research shows that low-speed zones and shipping reroutes can help keep whales out of danger, while reducing emissions and improving air quality for people. And a little protection could go a long way: Expanding these management measures across an additional 2.6 percent of the ocean could mitigate the highest-risk collision hotspots, according to the study. 

Whales are some of the most well-traveled cosmopolitans of the sea. For example, humpbacks can swim around 5,000 miles each year during their seasonal migration. Yet the exact hang-out spots or routes that different cetacean species use on their journeys are still largely a mystery. 

To help change that, the researchers collated more than 435,000 whale sightings from a variety of sources, including government surveys, scientific tagging studies, whale-watching citizen scientists and even historic whaling records. They focused on four globally ranging species: fin whales, sperm whales, humpbacks and blue whales—the largest mammals on Earth. 

The scientists then inputted this deluge of data into a predictive model, and created some of the first comprehensive worldwide maps for where these ocean giants spend their time.

Now, scientists can “take a really global look at where these animals are in the ocean where we haven’t really always had eyes on in the past,” Abrahms said. 

[ihazyourkitty]

Morgan and her calf deserve better

And by that I mean, they deserve better than the Free Morgan Foundation's blatant lies and self contradictions (links to their Facebook post).

I have to wonder what kind of gall one has to posses to take it upon themselves to post something like this. They've decided to name Morgan's calf CODDA, because: "In recognition of the 2021 film “CODA” which told the story of a Child of Deaf Adults and with deep respect and appreciation for the contributions of the deaf community, we have named Morgan’s new calf CODDA because it is the Child of Deaf & Deceased Adults."

How interesting.... in honor of the deaf community, they are on the one hand acknowledging that Morgan is hearing impaired (which they have been trying to downplay if not outright deny for years), while simultaneously saying this:

"...Loro Parque has always insisted that Morgan is deaf and therefore will never be able to communicate and socialize properly with her calf."

The latter part, that Morgan will never be able to properly socialize with her calf, is something Loro Parque has never claimed to my knowledge. That is what FMF is claiming.

So let me get this straight... the Free Morgan Foundation wants to liberate Morgan from LP, ideally back to the wild, but is also now claiming that Morgan won't be able to properly communicate or socialize with her calf...... so let me get this straight.... allowing her to breed is not in her best interests, but setting her free.... is? I'm sorry, would being in the wild or a sanctuary somehow magically give her the ability to socialize properly?

Also, they're taking it on themselves to name her calf in honor of the deaf community, while simultaneously saying that Morgan would be an unfit mother because she is deaf. Just........ let that sink in!

Yeah, orcas don't have hands with which they can sign. Do these "orca experts" not realize that orcas also communicate through visual and body language cues? What an incredibly egotistical, anthropocentric mindset to take here, to assume Morgan can't be a good mom because she can't communicate like deaf humans do.

They continue: "Loro Parque claims they are breeding orca for conservation, but no responsible facility would breed a hybrid offspring (mother and father of the calf come from different genetic populations and therefore the calf has no conservation value)."

Conservation value is not measured simply by genetic purity, nor by whether or not you can release a certain individual back into the wild. Loro Parque does scientific research, and several papers on their orcas have been published. Whether you like them or not, that is a fact. Conservation is achieved through scientific collaboration between ex situ and in situ efforts. To claim this calf has no conservation value just tells me that you have no idea what you're talking about. Yes, Loro Parque is an entertainment venue as well. Entertainment, education and conservation are not mutually exclusive things.

They then go on to say the Loro Parque has said the calf's father is Keto. No, they have not! To claim that they did is a bald faced lie, but why tell it? Because it gives them an excuse to shoehorn in Alexis Martinez's death:

"No other animals which kill humans are used for breeding – and this once again shows the lack of any moral standards by Loro Parque and its owners and management."

Okay, but they're not breeding these animals to select for specific traits. They aren't being bred for domestication. That's not how these zoological breeding programs work! They breed to maintain genetic diversity, not to weed out aggression.

For as much as they talk about animal welfare, are they going to talk about how socio-sexual behavior and breeding are actually important parts of cetacean welfare? If they want to ban LP from breeding, there are only two ways to do that: hormonal birth control, whose long term effects on orcas are poorly understood, or through separating males and females. In Morgan's case, that would mean keeping her in isolation since she's the only female there right now. Explain to me how either of those options are supposed to be kinder than allowing her to breed naturally? (And yes, it was natural breeding, because LP doesn't use artificial insemination).

But that's not what FMF cares about. They will actively lie and sacrifice animal welfare for the sake of getting what they want for an orca they have never worked with.

It should be noted that third party studies from the US Navy have confirmed Morgan's hearing impairment, and multiple court cases in Europe have dismissed FMF's claims. And yet these grifters press on, because you know what sells better than an orca show?

The aesthetic of an orca suffering.

In fact, the idea sells so well, that people on reddit can post stuff like this and no one bats an eye:

The shameless anthropomorphism in the first three comments are bad enough, but that last one....

Imagine hoping the calf dies. Just imagine hoping an otherwise perfectly healthy animal... dies. And for what? Because you think animal welfare should be measured against the human construct of "freedom?"

Blackfish, Free Morgan, etc. This is not based on animal welfare, and it never was. It's based on the morbid aesthetic of an animal suffering for likes, clicks and donations.... donations that, ironically enough, have little to no conservation value. The biggest threats orcas and other cetaceans face today is not the captivity of a few individuals. Emptying the tanks does not help their wild counterparts... but it does certainly hurt the ones that are in human care.

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

It's captivity with ~marketing~

And SEA LIFE continues to get inunandated with angry comments on their videos of their belugas because of this marketing.

Aafter deliberately alienating themselves from the industry, talking down to accredited facilities and making all these promises about belugas swimming "free" (see: in a sea pen) - the whales are still in the "temporary" care pool after 4 years - because they are consistently failing to acclimitise to the sea pen.

What does that look like? It looks like two whales refusing to station, unable to eat from the stress and developing stomach ulcers (also likely from the stress). It looks like thousands of dollars poured into a "intermediate habitat" that still failed to help the whales acclimate.

At least they even have an indoor care pool to look after them in! Whale Sanctuary Project doesn't even have an indoor care pool in their building plans. And they want to take on even more potentially vulnerable whales with genetic and health issues (Marineland Canada belugas).

I feel bad for the Beluga Sanctuary staff because it's not their fault that Merlin, a multi million dollar company, set them up for failure for the sake of marketing/jumping on a misinformed bandwagon and getting donations from a misinformed public.

Little Grey and Little White are doing well in their care pools - despite that facility being significantly smaller than their tank in China. And these poor whales are going to continue to be moved back and forth from the sea pen even though they have consistently shown an inability to adapt.

For their sake, I hope they do. Because this "sanctuary" doesn't seem to be willing to just let these whales live where they feel comfortable and safe.

They are going to continue to force them into an environment they are struggling to be in for the sake of appeasing the public, which was sold a lie that their welfare would magically improve in a sea pen.

I always get a good laugh reading comments celebrating an animal being “freed from captivity!” when it moves to sanctuary.

That is still captivity, my guys.

[tanadrin]

Do you think it's possible there's a planet with multiple stable sentient species who interact? Or would such a situation inevitably end up with one getting wiped out or the two hybridizing

Well, they could only hybridize if they were closely related, like humans and Neanderthals. And IIRC there's some evidence that humans and Neanderthals/Denisovans probably weren't all that interfertile to begin with, with most coding Neanderthal alleles getting weeded out of our genome.

I think it would be very difficult for two sentient species that shared overlapping niches to survive. H. sapiens and Neanderthals were both smart, seem to have both had language and culture, and had similar levels of technological sophistication, but the latter had a much lower population and so couldn't really compete when their cousins invaded their territory. And maybe some of this is a function of the wider human clade's tendency to engage in warfare and ecologically disruptive hunting--there's a big wave of megafauna extinction that seems to have followed the expansion of human populations all over the globe--but I'm not sure how many species of big-brained tool-users any niche could support.

But I do think that species with very different niches could coexist peacefully, at least long enough to work out that species in other niches were sentient, and to develop the ethical frameworks necessary for coexistence. If there were superintelligent squid, they wouldn't ever compete directly with humans for habitat (though we might have eaten a fair few by accident). We have also managed (just!) not to render extinct cetaceans, which are fairly intelligent, or our close cousins the chimpanzee. I could also imagine a science fictional scenario where two intelligent species were in some kind of important symbiotic or commensalist relationship that would stabilize their coexistence.

I think the other tricky thing though would be timing. It took a long time for the genus Homo to develop intelligence. AFAICT the australopithecines were closer to chimpanzees in terms of intelligence than they were to us; H. erectus was a lot smarter, but probably didn't have language; it's not until 700,000 to 200,000 years ago you get human species that are more fully developed in terms of their intelligence, and that feels like a super narrow window in terms of evolution for another intelligence species to also emerge. Because once you do get intelligent tool-users who spread over most of the globe, they seem likely to me to start to modify their environment in profound ways, like we have. So if another intelligent species doesn't already exist, the circumstances in which it is likely to arise after one species comes to prominence are going to be very different--more of an uplift scenario, maybe. Like I think if we discovered a group of chimpanzees with rudimentary language tomorrow, we would do our best not to fuck with them, but we would inevitably have some kind of impact on their existence for better or worse, right?

Maybe your best bet for multiple sentient species would be to have a reason that the first species (singular or plural) that arose didn't come to dominate the entire planet--they were aquatic, and so never mastered fire; or they were otherwise highly restricted in the biomes they could inhabit; or they were small in number like the Neanderthals, but could retreat to refugia in mountains and forests rather than be wiped out; or they were a diverse clade like early humans, but they also spread out very rapidly, and were subsequently isolated by climate conditions. Like, imagine Denisovans (who were already in Asia) had crossed the Bering Strait land bridge to the Americas, and then sea levels rose cutting them off until the Age of Discovery. If you had a planet that didn't effectively have a two supercontinents like Earth, you might have many more opportunities for related-but-geographically-divided species to develop (though that doesn't avoid the problem of what happens when they meet each other and start competing then).

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

The Whale Sanctuary Project have their sights set on Wikie and Keijo and they want to accelerate their plans and make a bay pen to put them into.

This "revolutionary plan" is exactly like what these whales already have - round the clock vet care, med pools, gated pools, slide outs - but with more stressors and uncontrollable variables than before.

These ~natural elements~ is just the naturalism fallacy being used as a marketing ploy. These whales don't understand this "natural life." You might as well be plucking them out and throwing them on a different planet.

Now, if you haven't worked on and around the ocean before, let me shed some light as someone who had to take a boat out to the Pacific Ocean to work with dolphins every day.

The ocean doesn't take kindly to man-made structures.

It will wear things down, ocean winds will rip your pontoons out and shred them, storm surges don't care about the weighted blocks you put down to stop your net lifting out. The animals will need to be fed in hurricane force winds that pull you off your feet. The net will need to be checked by divers and maintained no matter the season.

Your animals will have to fight daily with currents and tides that tug them around - sometimes those tides can pull them into nets. Wild marine life will harass them for their fish and naive animals will spook and shy away from coral and fish and anything that they haven't seen before (so good luck getting stationing for feeding when there's a weird looking fish around). You have to scoop out trash, cigarette butts and plastic bags and hope to whatever god you have that your retrieval training is enough to stop your animals from eating them. Your animals will very likely eat leaves, sticks, pebbles, anything they can get their mouths on.

(Since the sanctuary doesn't like training, I wonder if they'd even train a retrieval behaviour since it's "unnatural".)

A sea sanctuary is just captivity with a fun little animal rights activist spin on it. It is still captivity, no matter how big you make it. Wikie has been in human care for over 20 years. She has adapted to her current environment and throwing her into a bay pen is going to be stressful for her. She won't know anything about this new environment and there will be only a flood of new stimuli with nowhere to retreat from it.

The beluga Little Grey got stomach ulcers within only a few days of being out in the smaller acclimation bay pens. Little Grey and Little White have only been in human care for a bit over 5 years and they are struggling, even with the chance to decompress in their indoor pool.

Why are we planning this? What is this serving? We have no evidence that a sea pen is an inherently better housing situation for cetaceans.

We started with sea pens when orcas were first being captured! And orcas died there too.

Namu was one of the first captured killer whales and he died in a sea pen. The sea pen doesn't magically fix welfare issues caused by poor management.

"But that wasn't a REAL sanctuary!"

Okay then if sea pens are so inherently enriching and fix all welfare issues, why was Keiko logging for hours in his bay pen? Why did he become overweight and sluggish and sexually fixated on a giant red ball until someone who actually knew what they were doing started a proper training plan for him?

Why did Nami die with 180 lbs of stones in her stomach that she had ingested while living in a sea pen? Aren't sea pens so inherently enriching and stimulating that they don't need enrichment or training sessions? As Lori Marino put it in a bizarre webinar last year: "they'll be enriched by the flora and fauna; they won't need trainer relationships."

Anyway stop falling for these scammers and advocate for actual animal welfare that has science to back it up.

[lurkdragonstuff]

I'm an atheist and a philosophical materialist. I don't think there's anything more to the universe than what can be observed and measured. Disagree if you want, that's fine, but take as read that this is where I'm coming from.

As you can imagine, this makes it very strange to me that my brain thinks I'm a dragon.

I have been trying to square this circle for years. Since around the 2000's, when I first made contact with the Internet, I would look in on the otherkin community, and the draconic community nested inside it, and I would think, man. I wish I could believe that. I wish I could believe that souls were real, and that I had one, and that it was a dragon, and that's why I was so odd. For quite a while, I just explained it as a furry fandom thing. Sure, yes, my fursona is feral, but ferals are furries, too. This is still true! I'm still in furry fandom, and my dragonself still acts as my fursona. But they are also, in a deeper sense, me.

I'm a secular pagan. I don't think gods exist, and I don't think magic is literally real. I can't really cast a curse on shitty charities. The moon's a big shiny rock. It doesn't care if I roar at it when the sun reflects off it just so and I can see the whole of its tidally locked face.

But my dragon brain doesn't know that. It likes the big shiny rock. It likes little shiny rocks, too. It likes to light things on fire, and considers this a sacred act, both bringing destruction to noxious things and bringing honour to things worthy of it. It likes to growl and hiss when things annoy it. It likes to collect things, to have a hoard. It likes to range around its territory, keeping an eye on what's around in what season. It finds it frustrating that its wings don't seem to work at all, and its other limbs barely better. It wants its tail back. It wants its fire breath.

I'm autistic. Sometimes speaking is hard, and I growl and hiss when things annoy me. I like to collect things related to my special interests; I have a sprawling collection of cetacean, Nintendo, and SEGA figurines, as well as lots of little animal figures. Plushies, too, and videogames, and books. I do wildlife photography, as well, marking who's around in what seasons. This is, to my frustration, limited a lot by waning energy because of chronic health problems.

If backed into a corner, to say what I really believe, of course I'm a human. It is in my DNA, expressed in a bipedal body plan, five fingers on the forelimbs only, nails and not claws, no wings, no muzzle, no tail, short neck, skin and fur instead of scales. Not even any horns. I find this frustrating, but it is what it is. I also find it frustrating when people call me 'she' and not 'they', and that really there is no feasible gender presentation that would guarantee that strangers would use the right word. The best I can hope for is that people will read the 'they/them' button on my hat, or otherwise call me 'he'. Still wrong, but at least novel.

I honestly think my draconic identity developed when I was younger as a way to explain why I was so weird. I have never been normal. I will never be normal. As an adult, I have fancy words like "autism" and "anxiety and depression secondary to post-traumatic stress disorder" and "seasonal affective disorder" to explain why I'm abnormal.

But a part of my brain, I think the same one that still believes in magic and deities even though I don't, tilts its head, then grins a sharp grin and says, "Cool story, bro. I'm still a dragon."

I generally have, for any given of my eccentricities, the philosophical materialist explanation (generally that I am either brainweird in some way or another or am playing pretend for placebo purposes to manage executive function etc.) and the dragon explanation (generally what the pretend play revolves around). But - and this is hard to explain - it isn't exactly playing pretend, either. It's me.

When I'm pretending to be Link, either playing a Zelda game or writing Zelda fanfic, Link isn't me. I might be inhabiting him as an actor, but he isn't me. When I play Animal Crossing, and I'm playing a character named after me, that's closer. It's me but greater. Me but more. Me existing in a life I wish I could have.

When I put on my mask, when I sit and daydream about the multiverse-hopping shenanigans I get up to, when I hiss at someone startling me by getting into my space, that's me. I'm not a dragon, I'm a human wearing a mask, daydreaming, hissing because "back the fuck off!" isn't allowed in the workplace.

Yeah. Cool story, bro.

I am still a dragon.

[spongebob-connoisseur]

Guess what I got! The recording scripts for all of the episodes of Spongebob season 13!! Gang gang

I got it from some guy from YouTube. He said this was leaked on internet archive and Nick tried to scrub it clean off the interwebz. He managed to salvage some and he gave me a link. His account was gone before I had an opportunity to say thank you, so now I have it. I'm sharing it here because idgaf if my account gets taken down lol. But also no one checks tumblr anyways.

I made sure to print out the Slappy Daze recording script because idgaf about the other episodes tbh. I only care about my beloved Peter Lorre fish's day in the limelight <3 I put it in this plastic slip and keep it in a nice binder. It's my most prized possession besides Slappy's character sheet. I also have the Squidferatu script as well.

To be honest a lot of these scripts are pretty similar to the final product of the episode. There are some minor differences like Slappy wasn't originally in the script for There Will Be Grease. Instead it was supposed to be some nerdy fish asking if everything juice will make him sound more manly. Bless whoever snuck Slappy in there because you all remember me tweaking for a week when the episode came out because I was so happy Slappy got a part in the song lol.

Also the episode Upturn Girls was originally titled City Cetaceans.

Slappy Daze is pretty near identical to the final product tbh. Nothing really changed besides a few words. I am fascinated by the fact that the first draft is dated as being July 30th 2021. By that point I already fully and completely developed Slappy brain worms and was already considering watching Lorre's movies to get my fix cuz the airings of the Patrick show were frustrating. Ahh the good ol days <3

I also do believe Slippy (Slappy's female counterpart) was made for Slappy Daze originally though. The episode gives a physical description of Slippy which makes me think she just made for the moment. I think she was added to Mid-Season Finale in The Patrick Star Show episode afterwards but Mid-Season Finale aired first. Nickelodeon actually did mess up with this episode and released it on DVD before it officially aired. Now the pieces are coming together. This is only interesting to me lol.

Spongebob fans are such h8rs fr. Where else would you find THE original dreamy haired emo boy Cesare the Somnanbulist working as an assistant for the primary care physician fish Dr. Caligari? I would LOVE for Cesare to rid me of my allergies😤😤

Squidferatu actually has the most differences between the script and the final product. Plus plenty of interesting details. Squidferatu actually has two scripts, part one and part two.

The first and most important detail to me is the fact that Slappy is still named "Laszlo". You've seen Slappy's character sheet where it mentions he was formerly named "Laszlo" (obviously a reference to Peter Lorre's birth name Laszlo Löwenstein).

But in the Squidferatu scripts you can actually find the EXACT moment where his name changes from Laszlo to Slappy. It all has to do with one specific gag.

These both are the same scene. The left side is from Squidferatu part 1 and the right is Squidferatu part 2.

I do think they absolutely fumbled the name Laszlo. There are enough cartoon characters named Slappy. Laszlo is much much cuter and brings the Lorre reference full circle but oh well.

I also keep forgetting to mention but the villager in Squidferatu who begs Spongebob and Squidward not to go to the castle was intended to be the same villager in the 1931 Dracula who warns Renfield, who actually was based on a villager from the 1922 Nosferatu who warns Thomas Hutter. This character respawned in 3 different pieces of media. I think he's the true star of this episode lol.

There is also the fact that carriage driver in Squidferatu is confirmed to be Nosferatu! I feel like this fact is obvious enough if you're familiar with Dracula media (1922 Nosferatu, 1931 Dracula, or even just reading the book) the count is always the carriage driver duh

Also the fact that in this episode he hisses like a vampire, is strangely humanoid, and briefly has the Nosferatu™ eyebrows which fully gives it away. Unfortunately the folks on the SB wiki do not agree >:((

The first time I saw the carriage driver I said "ohh he kinda bad" and you know what? I'm not retracting my statement. He IS a baddie. I'm tired of lying to myself otherwise.

Anyways this caused me to come up with a headcanon that Nosferatu is broke and likely does not pay Slappy. I mean that explains why Nos has taken on shifts at the Krusty Krab, but also explains why Slappy is working 2 jobs in The Patrick Star Show. I imagine property taxes on a castle really drains a vampire's family fortune. I'm getting off topic.

There are some extra gags that didn't make it into the episode.

There's also the fact that we've been robbed of Erik from the Phantom of The Opera giving the audience a cute wink uwu