Emotion and Cognition in Our Oceans' Mammals

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Recommended: The humane treatment of animals

With forty-three dead (Bekoff, 2013) and countless others living in torment, it’s a wonder that humans haven’t decided to free the orca whales that are held captive in amusement parks all over the world. Marine biologists, psychologists, and other specialists in the field are beginning to recognize a kind of psychosis (Bekoff, 2013) that sets in on the jailed cetaceans. With symptoms that mimic those of humans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Bradshaw, 2010), there is no denying that these underwater inmates are sick. But instead of setting the innocent free, the people in positions of power, the ones who really have the ability to make a change in public opinion about cetaceans in captivity, are choosing profit over “vitality” (Clark, 2014). But not all cetaceans live lives of torment and torture. Cetaceans in the wild seem to combine intelligence and emotion, creating familial structures that endure over hundreds of years. Possibly more interesting than the psychological theory behind aggression in captive orca whales is theory behind healthy, wild orcas. The massive mammals, when living in the wild, exhibit behavior which proves their nickname as killers to be totally false. Cetaceans process and feel at a level close to that of humans.

Until recently, science has underestimated the extent to which animals feel and understand. Jonathan Balcombe recognizes, in his book Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals, that

“From the time Charles Darwin wrote his last book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) to about the time Neil Armstrong left footprints on the moon nearly a century later (1969), prevailing scientific dogma denied animals their hearts and minds. A nonhuma...

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... Is Misleading: Caging Orcas Okay. Psychology Today. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal- emotions/201307/seaworld-claims-blackfish-is-misleading-caging-orcas-okay

Bradshaw, G. A. (2010 February 26). The Woeful Whale. Psychology Today. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bear-in-mind/201002/the-woeful-whale

Clark, R. (2014 March 26). Freeing Lolita from "SeaLand". Psychology Today. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mothering-nature/201403/freeing-lolita- sealand?fb_action_ids=10152330235329414&fb_action_types=og.likes

Marino L, Connor RC, Fordyce RE, Herman LM, Hof PR, et al. (2007) Cetaceans have complex brains for complex cognition. PLoS Biol 5(6):e139. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050139

Oteyza, K. (Producer), & Cowperthwaite, G. (Director). (2013). Blackfish [Motion Picture]. United States: Dogwoof.

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