Comments

1

This criminally insane Err of Mein Trumpfy and the gluttonous fossil fuel industry have gone too far.

2

"a baby she hardly even knew (it only lived for 30 minutes)"

Charles, orcas have an average gestation period of 17 months.

3

@2, im sure pro-lifers will like this kind of talk.

4

I don’t find meaning in it, but I do find it achingly sad.

5

@3 I don't think anyone on either side of the abortion debate--excluding you, of course--disputes that mammalian mothers develop bonds with offspring prior to birth. It's not really a pro-life talking point, it's just plan old science: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764844/

6

Scientists caution against ascribing human emotions and motives to other animals, even smart cetaceans like orcas. It's likely we're seeing the instinctual behavior of a mother orca keeping its apparently disabled offspring afloat. To describe the orca as being "deeply grieving" is to project onto her our human behaviors. We really don't know what her motivation is.

7

...And anyone who has bonded with an animal knows fully well the range of emotions they possess.

I read in the past six months or so that some incredible scientists made the discovery that dogs have emotions.

I also have this memory of a group of birds falling from the sky and dying in like Kansas or something.

After much in-depth research, it was determined that the birds died of blunt-force trauma.

Thurgood in Half Baked, really.

What the she-orca is doing is irrational. She’s still in denial, and no one seems to be able to orca-squeal her down.

Yes, people do understand me.

8

She is a cautionary tale. Avarice & Greed have helped bring her and her pod to this desperate state.

9

@6 Are you a robot? You sure sound like one.

10

@9 Ha! No, just somebody who uses his head for more than a hat rack. Try using yours sometime.

11

I'm sure if our societal norms allowed for it some women who have experienced miscarriages and stillbirths would cling to their babies in intense grief. But instead we shame them for what they might have done or not done to cause such an unspeakable loss. And we hold them to arbitrary timelines for how long they are allowed to feel such powerful emotions because it makes us feel uncomfortable. And we force them and their partners into silent and private suffering. The public outpouring of emotion for this whale is somehow OK because it's not our species. And yet it's uncomfortable because it reminds us of this private grief. It also reminds us that what we've thought of as our humanness is actually just a part of what it means to be a living being on this planet. And it really puts some people off because it calls into question how we're living in relation to other species.

12

The current species extinction rate is likely more than 100 times greater than normal. It's just a coincidence, keep shopping.

13

@7
+1

14

Google "reborn dolls".

From the Wikipedia entry:

"Some consumers of reborn dolls use them to replace a child they once lost, or a child that has grown up."

We're far stranger than any whale could ever hope to be.

16

Out of touch, again, Mudede. The story's been picked up and running nationally and internationally,

It's not just seen as a local tragedy, but as a metaphor for what the human race is doing to this planet. For some, it's also a warning from the biosphere that we are inexorably killing off everything we share the planet with (including each other with growing and alarming frequency).

It ain't at all about the Showbox, dude.

One more time, you've got it all wrong.

17

To think that any mother barely knows her baby because it loved only a short time is to ignore everything we know about gestation. The father may barely know the baby who lived for only days. The mother knows this baby as part of herself. Maybe as a male you’re not capable of understanding that, but please - before you mansplain to us how a mother knows her child - maybe talk to a few human women who have had the experience of losing a child soon after birth.


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