He was an orca kept at Sea World Orlando. He was taken from the wild outside of Iceland. He was horrifically abused by Marineland in Canada. Starved. Kept in a tiny tiny pool in a shed. The two other orcas beat the shit out of him all the time.
Eventually sea world bought him and brought him down to Orlando. At some point a man climbed into the orca tank with him to go skinny dip in the middle of the night. His body was found with bite marks and it appeared he had drowned. It's scandalous because Tilkium removed the man's penis.
Then Tilkium was the infamous whale who grabbed a sea world trainer during a show and killed her by biting her arm and pulling her under the water until she drowned. There's been some debate whether he initially grabbed her pony tail and pulled her in that way but her body did have bite marks.
Afterwards there was a lot of anger that Sea world "kept him in isolation to suffer"
But that orca had serious mental health issues and did not enjoy the company of other orcas. Most likely from his past of getting the shit beat out of him by the two older orcas at Marineland in Canada and he was taken from the wild at a very young age.
Orcas in the wild have an extremely structured social system that is primarily run by an older female whale.
He did seem to enjoy the company of one of his daughters and would hang out with her.
Btw if you care about whales in captivity. Put pressure on Russia to stop trying to capture whales from the wild. And put pressure on China to stop trying to buy wild caught whales and to stop breeding orcas.
Parks in Japan also still do water work where they have trainers in the water with the orcas.
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u/4ever4eigner 2d ago
I don’t want to unmute what happened?