Wikie 'The Talking Orca' News: Cause-Oriented Groups Call for Release of Killer Whale
Cause-oriented groups are calling for the release of the so-called talking killer whale that has charmed social media users recently.
While Wikie, the 16-year-old female orca, has fascinated the netizens with its apparent ability to mimic words, such as "hello" and "bye," cause-oriented groups have called on the release of the creature to its natural habitat.
"She is certainly further proof that these are highly intelligent mammals whose captivity in marine parks in the 21st century should come to an end," Claire Bass, UK director of the Humane Society International, said in an interview with Sky News.
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According to Bass, Wikie is a painful reminder that, while animals can swim free in the wild and communicate with one another using their complex language and or group-specific dialects, they are denied of their natural communication because of their captivity.
It is not only the Humane Society International that thinks animals like Wikie have been deprived of their own "culture and a unique group dialect," though. For PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), subjecting Wikie and other animals to a research is simply wrong on many accounts and is made for the wrong reasons.
"They're imprisoned and denied everything that's natural and important to them in order to make money from tourists. If we had the intelligence to understand her own sophisticated language, we would hear her calling to be free," PETA director Elisa Allen said.
Wikie is considered to be the first killer whale to have displayed the ability to imitate human words. The killer whale is trained to perform at the Marineland Aquarium in Antibes, southern France, where a group of scientists study orcas' ability to copy new words.
According to researcher Jose Abramson of the Complutense University of Madrid, one of the scientists experimenting on Wikie, while the orca's ability to mimic words does not suggest that she understands what she is saying, it is another proof that killer whales are smart animals, indeed, as such a skill is a sign of animal intelligence.
