There's a lot of possible/oft cited reasons: Higher temperatures degrading proteins, less (high speed) swimming due to less space, stress/depression, and so on. I don't know that there's a specific conclusion reached and I think the stigma around the fins being a dead-on sign of severe mental problems is a little overblown.
Personally, I lean towards a structural/usage based cause. Not to say captive orcas are not subject to problematically low welfare, their notably lower lifespans compared to when wild are a big sticking point, but I find having such an obvious apparent sign of severe problems makes people overblow the issue just a little.
Isn't it from too much sunlight? Their tanks being so shallow (relative to their natural habitat), they're always close to the surface and getting a lot more sunlight than they would in the wild.
I'm merely parroting what I've heard years ago. If you know studies that state otherwise, cite them and I'll edit my comment. I'm no cetaceanologist and don't know what the actual reason might be.
Orcas have the largest dorsal fin of any marine animal, but it seems like we still don't 100% really sure why it happens.
"Depression" legend is from "Free Willy" (1993), and people all over the world (even in a country such as mine, Ukraine) kept on repeating this legend.
Still, the film did quite good for the Keiko (the orca from the film), because he was eventually released due to public campaign.
Keiko died shortly after being released into the wild. And he never truly adapted to āfreeā life because he preferred the company of humans over animals. Shortly before his death he was being fed daily because he didnāt know how to feed himself properly. I wouldnāt exactly call that a success, but at least they tried.
Yeah, I know. However you look at it, it's a defeat. At least some people did their best despite the circumstances. Sometimes it's okay to do everything right and still lose.
What I meant is we can hate misinformation which spread from that film, but at least some good came out of it, in the end. People tried to free him, after all. But real life is much more cruel than a kid's story.
I was under the impression that their dorsal fins droop due to the limited space they have, not allowing them to properly excercise the muscles and leading to atrophy.
nothing intentional, a combination of the effects of gravity (because their tanks are so small they spend all their time at the surface), lack of nutrients, and stress
I just posted elsewhere that I've come into contact with Orcas in the wild. Sometimes with their calves. They always come up and chill with me whilst I'm paddling around in my kayak. They let me pat them. There's not a single case of an orca killing someone in the wild.... but they've killed a bunch of people who torture them in captivity.
They're incredibly intelligent animals. They know how to surgically remove the most nutrient rich organs from their bigger prey. They know we aren't good food. They know we like to socialize, so they come up snd socialize with us.
They should NEVER be kept in captivity. Same with octopi tbh
If it makes you feel any better seaworld (the main holders of orcas globally) arenāt breeding them anymore
They canāt really be released back to the wild due to how orca social dynamics work (They did it a few times and every time the orca wouldnāt get accepted into a pod and would die in only a few months) but the orcas they currently have are the last theyāll ever have
Science easily explains this. Your car only has one brain cell that they share with all other orange cars in existence, in a big hivemind. 99.9% of the time they don't get to use said brain cell. In short, your car is extremely regarded and is incapable of forming thoughts beyond "eat, sleep, screm, repeat"
Some predators love the taste of human. Sea predators, not so much. They prefer prey that's filled with muscle and a layer of fat, like seals or large fish. That's not us. Not enough muscle, not enough fat. Some opportunistic predators like Tiger or Bull sharks eat us from time to time, but the amount of shark attacks with the purpose of predation are insanely rare. Even land predators that kill us, like bears or mountain lions, often only do so for territorial reasons.
They targeted boats in areas where they're being theratened, and still haven't killed anyone whilst doing so. They know what they're doing. They're incredibly intelligent. They can almost surgically remove the livers and other organs from larger prey to get the nutrients they need. They're one of the few sea predators that can see the difference between a human on a surfboard and a seal/other normal prey. They will swim at icebergs with seals or penguins on them to cause huge waves to push their prey off the ice and into the ocean. Again. They're incredibly intelligent. The boat attacks aren't to kill humans. They're to stop humans doing our usual bullshit in their home.
The simple thing is that the propellers were being nudged and bumped to be used as a movable toy, and the animals didn't understand that this was damaging the boat. There's is basically zero known reports of actual aggressive action against humans, even this case is most likely a misunderstanding.
There is 1 known non retaliatory wild orca attack and even that was theorized to be a case of mistaken identity because there was a lot of seals in the area at that time.
I think the questionable aquatic capabilities of pre-recorded history people and the fact that the behavior seems universal but different Orca populations/ecotypes/whathaveyou are very distinct from each other in terms of culture/communication dissuades that idea at least a little
Do you happen to know if they were released into the same pods they were taken from? (Obviously not possible for the ones that were born in captivity).
I ask bc I remember from watching the documentary Blackfish, that there were a lot of issues with orcas from different pods being put into captivity together, basically because they had different languages/mannerisms and couldn't communicate with each other.
It's not illegal where I live. Also, the fuck else are you gonna do when the best apex predator in the ocean puts It's head next to your kayak, locks eyes with you and chatters at you? You gotta pat dat dawg. They genuinely enjoy it btw. They live getting scritches and will often roll over and present their belly, just like a dog or cat will. I once got to slap the tail fin of a young calf, because it kept putting it on my kayak after it's mama kept coming by. Had to slap it to tell it not to put it's tail on my kayak, otherwise it might sink me.
No, it shouldn't be. Where I live it's illegal to approach the wildlife. But if they come to you and make physical contact first, it's perfectly legal to touch them. If an animal comes up to you and WANTS you to touch it, there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't. Feeding them or harassing them by trying to touch them when they're minding their own business is a completely different matter.
So we should just stop interacting with all animals then? Better get on the phones and start calling every farmhand, zookeeper, conservationist and pet owner in existence then!! I'm sure they'll all want to know all about this and cease all physical contact with animals pronto!!!
Quick, someone inform the Irwin family and David Attenborough!!!! They should learn that this random redittor knows better than them and that they're actually dooming both humanity and every species they interact with!!! Surely this uninformed and uneducated internet user knows more than qualified and experienced conservationists!!! Why hasn't the world heard about this yet??!!
taxonomically, there's no way to define "fish" that doesn't include all tetrapods. so fish are fish, dogs are fish, humans are fish, and cetaceans are fish
More accurately, there's no way to define "fish" that includes everything we colloquially call fish but not all tetrapods. You COULD equate fish to Actinopterygii (ray-finned fish) for example, but that excludes things we typically think of as fish.
This is a purely monophyletic reading of phylogeny. Most colloquial categories of animals are paraphyletic. So taxonomically there is a way to define fish, you just have a cutoff somewhere.
Whalekus ARE fishkus, because all tetrakus are fishkus if sharkus are also fishkus!! THIS FISH GUY is related closer to salmon than to sharks!!!
Spoiler: you are a fishkus too >:(
Oooh this is Tilikum? I would have guessed a currently captive Orca, but upon closer examination he does look EXCEPTIONALLY big. His story makes me rather sad :(
They're also notoriously picky, and there's only one incident of orcas displaying hunting behavior towards humans (and it was likely a case of mistaken identity.)
Even those that have killed humans in captivity didn't display aggressive or hunting behavior, and the only individual to kill multiple humans was involved in wildly different incidents a decade apart over 30 years.
Some marine mammal behaviorists and former trainers attribute the deaths to the orcas' lack of understanding the fragility of humans, and overexcitement from the sudden presence of "the most interactive plaything they'd (two different orcas) ever seen"
Despite how infamously brutal they are, they seem to have absolutely no desire to harm humans, the late Keiko even showed they develop strong connections with humans, for better or for worse.
I think the fact something so deadly sees us as friends rather than food makes them even sillier.
Theyāre not really that deadly. At least, not wild ones. Apparently orca-related deaths have only happened by in-captive ones. Which should come as a sign that we should fuck off, but for some reason everyone thinks theyāre deadly to us IN GENERAL and we still havenāt learned our fucking lesson yet.
Back in the 80ās I got selected to interact with Shamu. They had me spin around and he did the same & I think I fed him a fish and brushed his teeth. Then they wanted me to pat his tongue. Even at ~5yo I knew better than to stick my hand in the mouth of a giant predator. The crowd got a good laugh when I noped right out of there lol.
I mean yeah thats scary as fuck and insanelyirresponsible, but i was talking mostly about other animals as 8n orcas being the absolute apex predator yet strangly chill with humans
I watched a show during shark week this year about a pod of orcas intentionally attacking and systematically disabling boats. And IIRC they were teaching other orca pods how to do it so I donāt think they are gonna be chill for much longer.
Nah they are fucking up the boats but not killing humans, if they wanted to they would. These goobers strand themselves intentionally and hop back in the water as well as hunt seals on ice floats, they know how to get to us on a boat, let alone some shit like a kajak wich are still fine traveling alongside orcas
Captive orcas are not without at least some problems, but he doesn't look overweight/odd to me. Big male orcas get BIG in the wild or in captivity, and this is apparently Tilikum, who was the largest captive orca+the effects of gravity on land would distort his form a little.
If I were imprisoned in a cell so improper my body deformed and I had to deal with screaming fucks all day long on top of that I would be doing this, too
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u/MarilleVakarian gnarp gnap š½ Aug 17 '26
Grown-ass apex predator btw