#howard garrett

[orcinus-ocean]

Beluga Living with Dolphins Swaps Her Calls for Theirs

In November 2013, a four-year-old captive beluga whale moved to a new home. She had been living in a facility with other belugas. But in her new pool, the Koktebel dolphinarium in Crimea, her only companions were dolphins. The whale adapted quickly: she started imitating the unique whistles of the dolphins, and stopped making a signature beluga call altogether.

...

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/inkfish/2017/10/20/beluga-living-with-dolphins-swaps-her-calls-for-theirs/#.WeuHFlklm1y

While I would prefer if social animals could live with their own species, I have to say this is really adorable.

And it's even more proof against the antis who say different ecotypes within the same species (looking at you, Howard Garrett) "can't understand each other", is complete and utter bogus. This beluga stopped all beluga vocalizations completely and began "speaking dolphin" instead. Similar to how Ulises and Shouka learned dolphin calls, but more extreme.

I heard in a Russian documentary about belugas in the White Sea (as well as speaking about belugas at Russian dolphinariums), that belugas are supposedly much more intelligent than bottlenose dolphins. I'll get you the full, proper translation of that later.

[cetacean-content]

apparently Howard Garrett is totally fine anthropomorphising animals. and so are his followers because “animals experience pain and emotions”. they totally forget that a lot of animals do in such a different way than we that our emotions and that our view of emotions doesn’t apply to animals.

[thesaddlepatch]

Howard Garrett of Orca Network describes historical events and recent developments in the public's perception of the practice of holding orcas in captivity for entertainment revenue.

[orcinus-ocean]

Howard Garrett the freak

So, I’m reading Killing Keiko and up shows a person I’m already familiar with; familiar with being a complete, lying maniac with no scruples or sense of honor or decency, that’s what. (He’s the biggest liar in Blackfish for christ’s sake, and that’s kinda like being the looniest person in the loony bin...)

A long time anticaptivity activist and vigorous proponent for the release of Lolita, Howard Garrett had published the claim that SeaWorld trainers were in Iceland intent on sabotaging the release effort. In his posting he alleged that Robin and I were agents only interested in the project to secure Keiko for the zoological community. Failing in his first attempt, he went on to insinuate that any success would be credited to SeaWorld via our participation.

(Not a single one of the team were working for SeaWorld at the time.)

Had we recognized the gravity of Howard Garrett’s accusation, it’s doubtful that either Robin or I would have continued on with our arrangement.

The fact was that Howard Garrett had not been the only one harboring a deep hatred and distrust toward us. Even within the board of directors, there were those that shared Garrett’s sentiments.

We would not know until later, the real antagonist that threatened our ability to succeed was neither the harsh environment nor the behavioral obstacles that stood in Keiko’s path; it was ignorance, dissention, and foul play behind-the-scenes working to erode everything we represented. It was the human element.

By the way, calling him a “freak” wasn’t my choice of words, nor that of Mark Simmons... but those of Mark’s wife, in the book; “realize that these are solid trepidations that freaks like Howard Garrett are reinforcing”.

Can’t say I disagree completely, though.

[itswhalelovernation]

[theorcas]

"Each community has a completely different set of behaviours. Each has a complete repertoire of vocalizations, with no overlap. You could call them languages. The scientific community is reluctant to say any other animal but humans uses languages but there is every indication that they use languages." - Howard Garrett, Orca Researcher.