Imprisoned for 25 years and completely insane, the most tragic serial killer whale in history, the killer whale Tilikum

In 1995, at the age of twenty-six, Dawn officially became a beast trainer at Orlando Marine Park in Florida. Orlando Ocean Park is in the top 10 theme parks in the United States, and its main business includes not only traditional rides, but also a lot of cute marine animal shows. As a child who likes to drag his parents to Ocean Park since he was a child, the gorgeous performances and excited crowds make Dawn full of yearning for this place. The most important thing was a childhood experience of seeing his mother up close, which made him think that this was the best job in the world.

There were a total of seven killer whales in the Marine Park at that time, the largest of which was called Tilikum. This is a male whale that has been with humans since the age of two. Because killer whales are typically matriarchal societies, Qom and other killer whales in the park are not native groups, so they often get out of place in the group and appear very lonely. Out of his innate love of animals, Dawn paid special attention to the killer whale, and he spent a lot of time with Tilikum, interacting with him and establishing a relationship of trust with him wholeheartedly. As time passed, Dawn and Tiricombe participated in countless performances, and in Dawn's own words, every time she faced these majestic and beautiful creatures, she could feel that the other party was also responding to her wholeheartedly.

On February 24, 2021, Cornell and his wife prepared a special gift for their son Bobby's tenth birthday, and the two booked a well-located lunch table in Orlando Marine Park where a family of three could watch killer whales perform while eating. The Cornells happily eat their burgers as they watch a giant killer whale with its back bent on the edge of the pool, and a female trainer kisses his head, the star of Ocean Park, Tiricomb, and his trainer, Dawn. His son, Bobby, is a kid who loves killer whales and used to take pictures with Dawn, so he was particularly excited. Father Cornell recorded the scene of the event, ready to make a permanent memorial. However, he had no idea that the video he had recorded would soon sensationalize the whole world.

At noon on Feb. 24, Dawn and Tirikum performed to the visitors as usual, when suddenly the smile on Dawn's face seemed unnatural, looking a little flustered. Immediately after that, someone shouted around him, and it was bitten. Before the tourists could react, they saw Dawn and Tirikum disappear from the water.

At about 1 p.m. on Feb. 24, local police heard that a killer whale in SeaWorld had killed a female animal trainer. The killer whale first dragged the victim to the edge of the pool, made several impacts, and then pulled him around like a rag doll, and it took the staff thirty minutes to fish Dawn out of the pool, and by the time she was dragged out, her spine was broken, and part of her hair sank to the bottom of the water with her scalp. Because Tilikum was reluctant to let go, one of his arms was swallowed up by the killer whale, leaving only a mutilated S body. Tirikum floated on the surface of the water, sticking his head out of the water every once in a while, quietly gazing at Dawn, who was paralyzed on the ground.

After the media exposure, it was surprising that this was not the first time that Tilikum had an accident. Since 1991, there have been three killings on him, all starting from twenty-seven years ago.

One day in 1983, several whaling boats received a high-priced business in Iceland, catching several killer whale cubs for performances at the Marine Zoo. During the capture process, the mother of the group will take the cubs to dive to avoid the boat, and the adult male whale will sacrifice himself to find a way to lead the fishing boat to other directions, so there must be a seaplane to track the state of the mother whale, and then avoid the misleading of the male whale, and force the mother whale to the beach before it is possible to catch the cub. Because of the cruelty of the methods used, the capture process occasionally leads to the death of some juvenile whales. At this time, people usually separate the dead whales first, throw away their stomachs, load them into large heavy stones, and sink them into the sea. The other surviving juvenile whales are quickly transported back to land, leaving only the mother who cannot accept separation, constantly hitting the fishing net and making desperate cries. It was on this day that two-year-old Tirikum was brought into the human world.

Killer whales are the largest species of the toothed whale in the family Ofophopods, usually in a year or so, and are an emotionally rich animal like humans, who can easily pass the self-awareness test, and even surpass humans in some ways, far smarter than ordinary pets, so with a little training can make a very wonderful performance.

Tirikum's earliest place to stay was in a Canadian marine park called Ocean Land, which mainly used a sit-in system to train new killer whales. They would place baby killer whales in several female killer whales who had learned to move, and let them help the young whales learn to perform movements, and if the performance went well, several whales could get food. But if the new killer whales don't finish the action, then all the whales will starve.

Killer whales are matriarchal societies, and baby whales that are kept together belong to different groups, so when they are hungry, they will mercilessly use their teeth to punish new and unknown young whales to correct their movements. In this way, Tilikum was bitten and wounded all over his body.

In the Land of the Seas, there is a range of about 20 * 30 meters for these behemoths to swim during the day, but due to the exclusion of their kind, the movable space of Tilikum is only about a few positions. At night, in order to prevent thieves or his kind from continuing to harm him, Tilikum would spend the night locked in a large tin box, which was equivalent to a person's range of motion in the bathtub, and would not be released until the next morning. Under the constant pressure of repetitive performances and claustrophobic spaces, Tilikum began to have problems when he was about four years old, he first became withdrawn, made a very urgent sound, extremely unstable, followed by unwillingness to train, and even floated motionless on the water for a long time, and the beast trainers of the Ocean Land could only inject him with psychotropic drugs on a regular basis to ensure that he could continue to perform.

In February 1991, a trainer named Kelty fell into a pool of three killer whales, including Tilikum, and the whole person flipped between the three killer whales like pieces of paper, and finally drowned alive. This was Tilikum's first killing. After this incident, the Ocean Land was forced to close its doors, and Tilikum was sold for a million dollars to the current Orlando Sea World, and in a new environment, his activity space expanded a lot and he was better cared for.

As the largest captive killer whale in the world at that time, Tilikum's performances suddenly doubled. Every day he would repeat the circle, swim, and then paddle out of the water, pose and return to the water, seven days a week, eight times a day, and repeat the cycle, except for the performance. He was also discovered for a new use: breeding. From the first day of buying Tirikum, SeaWorld had its breeding plans in place. In addition to daily training, they regularly extract Tiriqum's sperm and sell them at high prices to conceive female killer whales in various marine parks. By 2021, 54 percent of SeaWorld's killer whales have children with Tilikum. Even so, Tirikum's more than two decades at SeaWorld have been ostracized by other killer whale populations, most of the time floating motionless in the water.

In the 1990s, Tilikum often had some strange and repetitive behaviors, repeatedly hitting walls, chewing concrete, chewing on the gates and other mental states, but as a star who would create hundreds of millions of dollars in profits every year, in addition to regular examination and treatment for him, how could capital let go of such a cash cow?

In 1999, a man with a criminal history of Kodorn was found dead naked on Tilikum's back early the next morning after sneaking into a pool of killer whales at night. Suspected that he was trying to steal a killer whale, the accident was treated as an accident. Eleven years later, with Dawn's murder, Tirikum completely caused a sensation in the world. After a later analysis of the footage, experts speculated that the reason for Dawn's murder was probably because Tirikum missed the praise that Dawn gave him after doing the wave, making him mistakenly think that he was not recognized. Under the psychological shadow of grievances and previous starvation, he suddenly became mentally ill and killed his own animal trainer.

Wild killer whales do not leave their mothers after birth and spend almost their entire lives with their family members. Killer whales are widely distributed and solid, and in addition to regular foods such as sea fish and sea lions, even great white sharks and sperm whales are in their diets. But interestingly, as the top predators on the great seabed, killer whales are exceptionally friendly to humans in their natural environment, and there has not been a single incident of wild killer whales deliberately injuring people, and there have even been several records of killer whales driving away sharks for humans and helping people who have fallen ashore.

On the other hand, there have been more than seventy cases of killer whale injuries in the park, repeating movements every day, having no room to swim freely, being imprisoned all their lives, and having to live with other groups of people with different languages and habitats, and the thin side is often excluded in various ways. In fact, the wider the natural habitat of a mammal, the more difficult it is to grow healthily in captivity. Wild killer whales can be as old as eighty or even a hundred years old, but in captivity, their average lifespan is only ten to forty-five years. In this case, many killer whales will bend their dorsal fins, severely or even completely collapse, resulting in psychological trauma that cannot be recovered for life. But these phenomena rarely occur in the wild. After the Dawn incident, the business of Sea World has been greatly affected, the living environment and various animal training methods in the park have been gradually exposed to the public, and many employees who have left ocean park have stood up and heard what they have seen, hoping to change the entire industry. Like Dawn, many of them found the job out of love for whales, and then because they developed a relationship with killer whales, fearing that strangers would abuse the whales, they chose to stay in their posts, believing that love was enough to make up for the suffering of these whales.

Unfortunately, killer whales were doomed from the start to be unable to live with humans for long. Orlando Ocean Park suspended Tilikum's performance, moving him to a pool with few spectators, so small that his head and tail could almost touch the edge. After a year of isolation, the killer whale killing storm gradually dissipated, and he soon resumed the performance.

In 2013, the TV documentary "Blackfish" was released, and the story of the rare killer whale that killed three people caused a huge impact around the world, forcing Tiricomb to withdraw from the stage again and promising the public that it would gradually reduce such business in the future. As a result of his long imprisonment, Tilikum's behavioral disorder has gradually intensified since this year, and chronic diseases such as stomach ulcers and lung infections have tormented him every day. Because of his habit of nibbling on concrete, most of his teeth were necrotic and needed to be rinsed every day. In January 2017, at the age of thirty-six, Tirikum died of a lung infection in marine park, which was the time when he was free.