Lately on the news the "rudder-attacking-orcas" have gathered some fame. I have been following the situation for a few months now, as it's actually something that has been going on since 2020. It's scary, especially if you are planning to take to the high seas. But you know what's scarier? People comments on the situation. "Let's go shoot them!", "Let's put spikes on our rudder", "drag a poisoned rag behind the boat", "let's go put some explosives"...
I want to cry. Especially because scientists are finding out that (maybe) one of the reason for this behaviour is a previous collision, maybe an accidental one. This orca family is traumatised. Do we really want to just add to the trauma? Would you do that to a fellow human? And okay, we are not that great to one another either, see wars. We don't even have to go to the past and we just need to look at the present situation, to our newspapers, between Ukraine and Russia, South Sudan, Syria, Afganistan (the complete map here shows you just the direness of the current situation), But regardless. Common sense would tell us it's bad and at dinner table we are all quick to label these as "atrocities". But we would be happy to kill an orca. That, by the way, is not trying to kill us direclty or eat us. Maybe it will sink the boat but that is a side accident. It is not an attack. Is a trauma defense mechanism. If it was a human nowadays we will direct her to therapy. Throwback to just a few months ago, Another ecosystem, some meters above sea level, and another animal had her fame. The bear JJ4, who apparently attacked and killed a runner. She likely had cubs and was protecting them, perceived the runner as a threat. As a response the debate as to whether kill all of the """problematic""" bears was reopened (see this recent guardian article on bears in the Trentino region for more context). Should bear really be killed or should other ways of coexistence be found? What about wolves (that annoy sheperds by killing their sheep) or dolphins stealing food from nets, also often being poisoned or otherwise killed? What about stopping to consider ourselves as omnipotent owners of the world and stepping back down to our place, which is just there as a piece of that puzzle called nature? UNEP and WWF call for a plan of coexistence and set out some ideas. We really need to think outside the box, and stopping the dichotomy between humans and nature but also that between "animalists" and "omnipotents", it's time to start a dialogue, but a real one, not one hiding behind computer screens and comments..
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