An orca gave an audience a piece of its mind during a performance in Texas.
In a viral video shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, an orca at SeaWorld San Antonio can be seen swimming and, while doing so, releasing a large stream of its liquid feces into the water.
Whale takes a shit at Sea World San Antonio, crowd gets splashed right after pic.twitter.com/vw3kjoG89U
— Dallas Texas TV (@DallasTexasTV) October 19, 2024
It then circles the tank, and when it reaches the area with the feces, it breaches and splashes a huge wave of the tainted water onto the watching crowd.
The orca certainly appears to have taken some revenge on the audience, but as gross as it may have been for the people who got splashed, the situation is worse for the orca.
Dr. Ingrid Visser told Yahoo Australia, "These animals in the wild wouldn't be circling around and then swimming back through their own excrement. They poop and carry on swimming. But in an aquarium, they're having to circle around and swim through their own excrement. They swim with their mouths open, their eyes open, it's absolutely disgusting for them."
SeaWorld has been under scrutiny ever since the 2013 documentary "Blackfish," which focused on the unethical treatment of one of the captive orcas, Tilikum, who killed three people. The documentary effectively ended SeaWorld's breeding program, but performances with the animals have continued, per Futurism. The outlet also noted that of the 18 captured orcas in the United States, all of them are kept between three SeaWorld locations.
Orcas generally do not thrive in captivity. Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist at the Animal Welfare Institute, told National Geographic that they suffer in part because of their enormous size, and typically swim vast distances in the wild, up to 40 miles a day, and dive 100 to 150 feet deep several times a day.
"You put [orcas] in a box that is 150 feet long by 90 feet wide by 30 feet deep and you're basically turning them into a couch potato," Rose stated.
People who commented on the viral post on X were generally unsympathetic to the audience members participating in watching the captive orca.
"I can not understand how this place is still legally open," one person said, noting they did not approve of anyone still going to SeaWorld "after knowing the pain and suffering these tormented intelligent creatures" go through.
"You can tell by the dorsal fin that it wasn't happy and is doing everything it can to be released," said another.
"That's what they get for going to see a while in captivity," added a third person.
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