First Us, Then You...

It is bad enough that your kind decided long ago to enslave dolphins and dumb us down into pathetic proxies of our wild counterparts, forced to perform demeaning animal tricks for your amusement, but this really takes the cake (or should I say the herring). An organization with the alphabet soup acronym of SWBGRRC, which stands for Sea World and Busch Gardens Reproductive Research Center, is conducting what they call ‘preferential sex-selection reproductive research for exotic animals’. Say what? You heard me; they are using technology to separate X and Y sperm so that zoological institutions can manage the genetic diversity of their captive animals. Whoa. How exciting! Not only are dolphins no longer allowed to procreate naturally in captivity (artificial insemination lacks a certain ‘je ne sais pas quoi’) but now our keepers can decide the gender of our offspring. And what comes after that? Eye color? Size of dorsal fin? Jumping ability? There is even talk that this technology will have application to control animal diversity in the wild. Oh the wonder of it all! But watch out people, first us dolphins, and then, you.

Good-bye, Nico. God bless.

A spokesperson for the Georgia Aquarium confirmed that a third Beluga Whale belonging to the aquarium died suddenly this week. This whale, whose human keepers called Nico, had been temporarily living at Sea World in San Antonio while the Georgia Aquarium undergoes renovation. Nico was the third Beluga owned by the aquarium to die since 2007. In fairness, two of the Belugas who died, including Nico, had serious health problems when they were obtained from a sea park in Mexico. I am certain that the Georgia Aquarium keepers mean well, but these deaths are just three more examples of the spectacular cruelty that you humans continue to inflict on the whales and dolphins you keep in captivity. They live confined, mind-numbing and meaningless existences in your liquid prisons, and die long before their time: all for your entertainment. Do you really think it is worth it?
I will be traveling for the next ten days and there will not be another blog post until I return. But quite frankly, I do not feel like talking to you any more right now. Good-bye, Nico. God bless.