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Hi,
I apologize that this comment has nothing to do with endurance, but
years ago, there was one of these more-grant-money-than-brains people
studying intelligence in dolphins at Marineland, where I was a trainer
at the time. He insisted that while dolphins are "clever" in learning
"tricks", they had no real emotions or feelings as humans did. So I
took him upstairs to the top deck, where our female orca Corky was.
Corky had given birth to a calf two weeks before, but just didn't know
how to nurse it (it is NOT all instinct) and so in an effort to save the
calf's life, we had taken the calf to try and bottle raise it in another
tank on the other side of the park. A week later, despite best efforts,
the calf died. Even though Corky was almost a quarter mile away, the
minute her calf died, she starting crying and didn't stop for days and
days. Believe me, you haven't heard sorrow and loss until you've heard
a whale crying (I got to hear it again at the Miami Seaquarium two
years later, when one of the orcas died of a brain embolism, leaving his
mate behind). The sound is impossible to describe, but no one who heard
it and seen the accompanying behavior had any doubt that Corky was
mourning her baby and Tokatai her mate. I don't know how this episode
ultimately affected this animals-have-no-feelings guy in the future, but
I'll bet he didn't try insisting anymore that animals have no emotions.
Just my .02.
Susan Evans
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