On the afternoon of February 24, 2010, the audience at the Orlando Marine Zoo was already full of people. They whistle excitedly as the finale performer is about to arrive – a huge "star killer whale".
After a few minutes, however, the cheers turned to piercing screams.
The finale killer whale suddenly grabbed the trainer's arm and dragged it into the water, and after a while the blood stained the pool red.
The killer whale, named Tilikum, had been living alone in the human world for 30 years, and the animal trainer it had killed, named Dawn, had not given birth since joining the Orlando Zoo in 1994 because she wanted to devote all her energy to Tilikum, and she had to take care of it as if she were her own child.
Unexpectedly, 16 years later, in 2010, the child he had raised for many years actually dragged her into the water and bit off her arm.
For this incident, the organizers said that it was because Dawn made a mistake and whipped Tirikum, which angered it and led to the tragedy, but was this really the case?
Let's go back half a century and see what happened along the way.
In 1965, a man named Griffin bought a 7-ton killer whale in Colombia for $8,000 and named it Namu.
After Being Sent to Seattle, Nam made his appearance in the Aquarium, which attracted many audiences and generated huge profits, and a year later the film of the same name was released, and the protagonist was None.
In this way, the story of Griffin and the killer whale has formed this industrial chain, from the capture of the killer whale to the trading, domestication, and then to the performance, step by step program, turning this creature that should be swimming in the sea into a tool for profit. Of course, this has also attracted the attention of the government.
In 1976, a U.S. court ordered the aquarium not to go to Washington to hunt whales, and if someone illegally poached, they would face decades in prison.
But at the time, a wild killer whale was worth tens of thousands of dollars, and such huge profits drove some people to disregard the law and embark on a journey to move the hunting ground to Iceland.
On November 16, 1980, in the beautiful North Atlantic Coast of Iceland, a two-year-old killer whale was playing freely in the sea with its herd, and it was curious about everything.
On this day, however, a poaching team crept up to them, and several adult killer whales in the family soon realized the danger and took the initiative to enter the trap of the poachers themselves.
When poachers thought they had succeeded, they suddenly realized that it was a group of adult killer whales.
Seeing this you might ask an adult killer whale can't do it?
In fact, adult whales are expensive to transport for poachers and are not as expensive as small killer whales. Adult killer whales are difficult to domesticate and dangerous for marine zoos.
The hunting ships soon sent news of their deception to a helicopter in the sky, letting them observe the situation.
Helicopters hovered over the surface of the sea, and a few minutes later they suddenly noticed a small killer whale floating out of the water not far away to breathe. After being instructed, the hunting vessels began to move again.
Because the first plan failed, the hunters were so angry at the clever killer whales that they thought they would teach the adult killer whale a lesson.
The hunting boats forced them into a trap, and this time they did not escape, capturing an adult killer whale and a small killer whale, and since the adult killer whale had no commercial value, they cut open its stomach and threw it into the water.
Some of the new crew members cried, and they asked why they killed the adult killer whale, but the answer was "because it has no value".
Decades later, the crying crew told reporters, "That capture was inhumane, I was like a robber, taking the child away from his mother."
After the capture mission, the hunting ship sailed joyfully to the United States, but what they did was that everything they did was seen by the little killer whale, who saw his mother killed.
At that moment, the seeds of revenge took root.
This baby killer whale also had its own name after entering the human world, Tirikum (translated as "friend" in The Indian language)
Tirikum was transported to the Pacific Aquarium in Canada, a place that was then home to a large killer whale show. Seven killer whales were reportedly killed here before Tirikum arrived.
But the boss doesn't care about this, he only focuses on profits, and if a killer whale earns itself back the cost while it is alive, then how long it will live is pure profit.
Unfamiliar environment, unfamiliar group, the arrival of Tilikum made the killer whales around them begin to be vigilant, and in the face of such a large new friend, they did not show their friendliness, but began to bully it.
Tirikum was forced into a narrow corner by their partnership, with no family or friends, and even the beast trainers lashed out at him.
Tilikum is reluctant to perform, and the trainer has his own method, he puts the other killer whales and Tilikum together and adopts the punishment method of "sitting together", as long as Tilikum is unwilling to perform or performs wrongly, the other killer whales will be punished one after another.
This way made the other killer whales more and more disgusted with Tilikum, they constantly bullied Tilikum, biting Tirikum all over the body, and Tilikum also became a good child in the eyes of the animal trainer in this persecution, gradually learning those difficult moves, and becoming the star of the local aquarium.
In fact, killer whales are not part of the whale subject, it belongs to the dolphin subject, has a super high IQ, memory and learning ability, which is also the danger of Tilikum.
According to staff, Tirikum rushed to the tamers several times, even into the water, but many people did not care about it until 1985.
When Tilikum was 7 years old and trained him as a part-timer in the Aquarium, Kyle was suddenly pulled into the water by Tilikum while training, and never came up again.
The matter was sealed off at the time, and finally it became apparent that the matter could not be hidden, and the staff in the aquarium casually said a reason, they said that Tilikum just wanted to play with the beast trainer, but unfortunately there was an accident.
Such reasons were apparently not recognized by the audience, and eventually they secretly sold the killer whale to another unknown aquarium, and Tilikum was exchanged for the final profit.
But is it okay to change a field? No, it's not over, the dangers of Tilikum continue.
On July 7, 1999, a 27-year-old naked male was found on Tilikum's back. The man had bite marks all over his body, and Tilikum had bitten off his genitals.
Local authorities said it was unclear why the man stayed inside the zoo after it closed.
According to forensic identification, the man's cause of death was being bitten by a killer whale after drowning, because no one was present and there were no cameras at the time. No one could prove whether he died of drowning or Tilikum, so everyone listened to the forensic doctor.
Although everyone knew that these wounds were left by Tilikum, because there was not enough evidence, this second life was lost, and the aquarium lost money hastily.
This time, Tilikum was also transferred to the last aquarium of his life, the Orlando Aquarium.
After arriving in Orlando, although the training program was different from before, Tilikum learned quickly and became a star here within a few months.
Tilikum, who has a star aura, is favored by humans and should be particularly happy. But this is not the case, tourists can often see Tilikum swimming around the corner alone, and when they ask the staff why, the staff half-jokingly said: "It pretends to be cool, it usually likes to date the female killer whale."
When it comes to female killer whales, it's even sadder. Because Tilikum was old enough to start a family, but his size was too large for the authorities to put him with other killer whales of the opposite sex, in 2001 people helped Tilikum give birth to many children by artificially giving jing.
This incident was later recorded: "Casatka" was artificially fertilized, giving birth to the first killer whale Nakai, whose father was Tilikum. In 2003, another female killer whale, Takkara, was also artificially given birth to Kohana, whose father was also Tirikum.
This is what makes Tyricum sad, because he has never seen his own child, not even his other half, and he has inadvertently become a tool for people to seek profit, with no choice.
This, too, deepened its anger, to the point that an innocent staff member became a burial for Tirikum to express his anger.
The innocent man's name is Dawn Blanchche, we'll call her Dawn for the time being, she joined SeaWorld Orlando in 1994 and has been with Tilikum since she arrived, she knows that Tilikum is lonely, so she tries her best to take care of Tilikum and give him more fish. Even in order to take care of Tilikum chose celibacy and has never had children.
In the eyes of outsiders, one person and one whale get along very well, but even in such a harmonious relationship, Dawn does not know what Tilikum has experienced, and she thinks that her constant care can make Tilikum become cheerful.
But for Tilicom, what it really needs is something that Dawn can't give.
It was the afternoon of February 24, 2010, at about two o'clock, and it was the finale stage of the performance, and Tilikum and Dawn performed together.
During the performance, Dawn was suddenly dragged into the water by the 30-year-old Tiricombe, and soon people saw that the water began to red, and people screamed, they knew that the beast trainer had been killed, although it was very incredible.
After the incident, they salvaged Dawn's body, she was no longer breathing, and one of her arms was torn off by Tilikum. No one thought about it, not even Dawn's mother, because Dawn often mentioned Tilikum to his mother, and their relationship was very good.
But that's the way it is, Tilikum is saddled with a third life. In the face of such a tragedy, the aquarium's curator, Jim Solomons, declared: "I know that one of our trainers was killed, but it is clear that she accidentally slipped into the pool." ”
This result is not recognized, because there were many witnesses at the time, and the forensic doctor and investigator in charge of the case gave the identification report that Dawn was attacked by a killer whale while working, with multiple fractures and fractures all over his body, one arm could not be found, and the cause of death: drowning and trauma
Faced with a growing rebuttal, The Aquarium changed its claim that Dawn's ponytail had whipped up Tirikum, angering it. This is even more ridiculous, because almost all of the female trainers in the aquarium are ponytails, and Tilikum is so big that even if Dawn throws his head away, he will not be able to smoke it.
On May 30, 2012, the court ruled in the Orlando Ocean Zoo case: the court banned the aquarium from performing man-whale co-performances.
Later, the Orlando Marine Zoo did forbid the co-performance of man and whale, but only for Tilikum, and the other killer whales continued as usual. This undoubtedly made Tilikum even more lonely.
And Chalk Tonpris, a director of the Orlando Marine Zoo, said that despite Tilikum's crimes, they would not release it, because Tilikum grew up in such an environment, and if he released it, it would undoubtedly sentence Tilikum to death.
In this way, Tilikum lived alone in the Orlando Aquarium until his death two years later. Its days of true freedom are only two years after birth, and for the next 30 years, it deals with humans every day, and is ruthlessly hurt by humans every day.
Locally, Orlando World tickets are $78 a fee, which accepts about 12 million visitors a year, and killer whales have brought them huge profits and worn down the humanity of some people.
The real cause of Dawn's murder was the great pain that Tirikum had buried deep in his heart for thirty years, when humanity had hurt its mother and taken away his freedom and his children.
And interestingly, just a few months before the crime, an investigator from an occupational safety and health organization predicted a startling fact, saying that "I have been waiting, someone was killed by Tirikum".
But no one paid any attention to him.
Killer whales are fierce animals, but they pay attention to feelings and family. They like to help each other and cooperate to hunt, among them the females are often of a high status, and the mother-child relationship is very close, unless it is exceptional, they will live with their mothers for the rest of their lives.
Today, in the Haro Strait, 4,800 kilometers from Orlando, there is still a group of killer whales sneaking in the waves, and they have no idea about the story of Tilikum thousands of kilometers away, nor do they know the rules of survival in the marine zoo, for which Tilikum is undoubtedly lucky.