# The Revenge of the Whales

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 7 Jun 2024, 38 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/5e555529-f099-4812-8b3f-b170011b77bf/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in 1819, Owen Chase is standing on a slowly sinking ship. It's just been headbutted by an 85 foot whale. It's taking in water. And now the creature is coming back for another go. This is a whaling ship, and Chase is convinced that he observes "fury and vengeance" in the animal. In 2010, an orca is performing for a crowd at SeaWorld - but he misses his mark and so he doesn't get his reward. That's when he grabs hold of his trainer, Dawn Brancheau, and pulls her under water. By the time he's finished, her savaged body has multiple fractures and dislocations. And her scalp has been ripped off. To some observers, these whales were surely out for revenge. But how much is what we think we understand about the natural world shaped by human guilt? For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin eighteen nineteen. The Pacific Ocean. The Pacific is pretty big,
[0:29] Speaker 1: so let's narrow it down. We're close to the equator.
[0:33] Speaker 1: Three thousand miles one way lies Ecuador, seven thousand miles
[0:38] Speaker 1: the other way Papua New Guinea. Your nearest land is
[0:42] Speaker 1: a small volcano in what's now French Polynesia. And when
[0:46] Speaker 1: I say nearest, I'm talking fifteen one hundred miles. You
[0:51] Speaker 1: get the idea. We're a very long way from anywhere.
[0:58] Speaker 1: Twenty men are on a wooden ship, perched at the
[1:01] Speaker 1: top of the mast. One man is scanning the horizon
[1:05] Speaker 1: for the tell tales spout of water from a whale's blowhole.
[1:10] Speaker 1: When he spots one, he'll shout, there she blows. The
[1:14] Speaker 1: men will split up into smaller, lighter boats and row
[1:18] Speaker 1: towards the whales. They'll throw a harpoon kind of barbed
[1:23] Speaker 1: spear attached to a rope. The harpooned whale will thrash
[1:28] Speaker 1: or dive or swim away, dragging the boat behind it.
[1:32] Speaker 1: The men will keep hold of the rope until the
[1:34] Speaker 1: whale exhausts itself. Then they'll stab the whale to death
[1:40] Speaker 1: and take its body back to the ship, where they'll
[1:43] Speaker 1: strip it of its blubber that gets boiled down to
[1:46] Speaker 1: make oil, which is used in lamps. Whaling is big business,
[1:53] Speaker 1: one of the largest sectors of the US economy. There
[1:59] Speaker 1: she blows whales, a whole pod of them. The men
[2:04] Speaker 1: got into the smaller boats. They rowed closer. The first mate,
[2:08] Speaker 1: owin Chain, threw his harpoon at one of the whales
[2:12] Speaker 1: in agony, he later described, The whale threw himself up
[2:16] Speaker 1: over towards the boat. The whales thrashing tail knocked a
[2:21] Speaker 1: hole in the little wooden boat. As water gushed in.
[2:25] Speaker 1: Chase quickly cut the road. He didn't want to be
[2:28] Speaker 1: dragged away. One man bailed out water as the others
[2:33] Speaker 1: rowed back to the ship. They climbed on board and
[2:36] Speaker 1: hoisted up their damaged boat. Chase and the men were
[2:39] Speaker 1: starting to repair it when.
[2:42] Speaker 2: I observed a very large whale, about eighty five feet
[2:47] Speaker 2: in length. He spouted two or three times and then
[2:51] Speaker 2: made directly for us with full speed. Had struck the
[2:56] Speaker 2: ship with his head.
[2:59] Speaker 1: The men had never known anything like it. They looked
[3:03] Speaker 1: at each other, Chase said, with perfect amazement. The whale
[3:09] Speaker 1: swam away, then stopped.
[3:13] Speaker 2: I could distinctly see him smite his jars together, as
[3:18] Speaker 2: if distracted with rage and fury.
[3:22] Speaker 1: The whale turned around and came straight back at them.
[3:30] Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales about whales.
[4:05] Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty three, off the coast of Iceland, another boat
[4:09] Speaker 1: is hunting whales, though not this time to make oil
[4:14] Speaker 1: for lamps. They want to make money from them in
[4:17] Speaker 1: another way. The aim is to grab young whales that
[4:21] Speaker 1: can be trained to perform for tourists in marine amusement parks.
[4:26] Speaker 1: They capture a two year old orca, also known as
[4:30] Speaker 1: a killer whale, the Black and White ones. The captured
[4:35] Speaker 1: whale is transported to Seaaland in Victoria, Canada. He's given
[4:40] Speaker 1: the name Tillicumb. Tillicomb's story is told in the twenty
[4:46] Speaker 1: thirteen documentary Blackfish. Marine park trainers who used to work
[4:51] Speaker 1: with orcas describe how intelligent they are. When you look
[4:56] Speaker 1: into their eyes, says one, you know somebody is home.
[5:01] Speaker 1: The filmmakers talk to one man who recalls what happened
[5:05] Speaker 1: when he was hired to work on a boat that
[5:07] Speaker 1: captured orcas like Tiller. A plane flew above them, keeping
[5:12] Speaker 1: track of the whales and directing the hunt. They used
[5:18] Speaker 1: explosives to herd the whales into a bay where they
[5:22] Speaker 1: could enclose them in the net. They picked out the
[5:25] Speaker 1: baby orcas and hoisted them up out of the water.
[5:29] Speaker 1: Then they took away the net so the other whales
[5:32] Speaker 1: could leave. But the other whales didn't leave. They stayed
[5:37] Speaker 1: making loud noises. The boatman had a vivid sense of
[5:43] Speaker 1: the almost human pain he witnessed.
[5:49] Speaker 3: You understand then, what you're doing. You know, I lost it.
[6:00] Speaker 3: I mean I just started crying, you know, just couldn't
[6:05] Speaker 3: handle it, Just like napping a little kid away from
[6:10] Speaker 3: a mother. You know, I can't think of it worse
[6:13] Speaker 3: than that.
[6:17] Speaker 1: At Seaaland, the young orca Tillicumb is pared for training
[6:21] Speaker 1: with an older whale who's an experienced performer. If either
[6:26] Speaker 1: whale does something wrong, both whales are punished. They don't
[6:31] Speaker 1: get fed. The older whale responds by raking Tillicumb with
[6:36] Speaker 1: her teeth, and Tillicumb learns to perform, you know, the
[6:41] Speaker 1: kind of performance, waving at the crowd with a thin
[6:45] Speaker 1: giving a trainer in a wet suit a ride around
[6:47] Speaker 1: the pool, jumping up to make a big splash that
[6:50] Speaker 1: soaks all the squealing children sitting at the front at night.
[6:57] Speaker 4: The whale is a.
[6:57] Speaker 1: Shut away in a small, dark steel tank. Twenty year
[7:11] Speaker 1: old Kelty Lee Byrne is a student and championship swimmer
[7:16] Speaker 1: who has a part time job at sealand after a show,
[7:20] Speaker 1: Kelty slips and falls into the pool. The whales grab
[7:24] Speaker 1: Kelty by the foot and drag her under the water.
[7:29] Speaker 1: They bring her back to the surface. Help me, Kelty
[7:32] Speaker 1: else or the whales drag her down again and again.
[7:37] Speaker 1: I don't want to die, but she does die. The
[7:41] Speaker 1: killer whales keep her down for too long and she drowns.
[7:49] Speaker 1: After the death, Sealand closes down, Tillicumb is sold to
[7:53] Speaker 1: sea World, another marine amusement park in Orlando, Florida. When
[7:59] Speaker 1: Tillicumb arrives at SeaWorld, he's attacked by the other whales,
[8:03] Speaker 1: so he has to be kept apart from them. In
[8:06] Speaker 1: the movie Blackfish, a former trainer. He was always happy
[8:10] Speaker 1: to see you in the morning, Maybe because he was alone,
[8:13] Speaker 1: maybe because he was hungry, maybe because he just liked you.
[8:17] Speaker 1: Who knows what was going on in his head? Who
[8:21] Speaker 1: knows what was going on in his head. In twenty ten,
[8:25] Speaker 1: trainer Dawn Brancho is bringing the show to a close.
[8:30] Speaker 1: Dawn is forty years old. She's one of SeaWorld's most
[8:34] Speaker 1: experienced orca handlers. She's lying down at the edge of
[8:38] Speaker 1: the pool giving Tillicomb a pat on the head. What
[8:42] Speaker 1: is going on in Tillicomb's head? In Blackfish? Some former
[8:48] Speaker 1: Sea World trainers analyzed the video of Dawn's last show
[8:54] Speaker 1: to start with, they say, all seems well. Tillicom's doing
[8:58] Speaker 1: just what Dawn asks him. He rises out of the
[9:01] Speaker 1: water and twirls around as Dawn, standing by the side
[9:05] Speaker 1: of the broad twirls around in synchrony. Audience cooh and clap.
[9:11] Speaker 1: Tillicumb gets his reward. Dawn throws him a fish from
[9:14] Speaker 1: a bucket. She asks him to do a perimeter peck wave.
[9:19] Speaker 1: Tillicumb swims all round the edge of the pool, waving
[9:22] Speaker 1: to the audience with his pectoral fin. Dawn blows a whistle.
[9:27] Speaker 1: He should stop and get his fish, but he doesn't stop,
[9:31] Speaker 1: perhaps because he didn't hear the whistle. He does another
[9:34] Speaker 1: round of the pool, still waving his fin, but because
[9:38] Speaker 1: he didn't stop at the whistle, he doesn't get his reward. Instead,
[9:43] Speaker 1: he gets what the trainers call a three second neutral response.
[9:48] Speaker 1: That wasn't what we wanted. No fish for you, I believe.
[9:53] Speaker 1: At this point he gets frustrated, says one of the trainers.
[9:57] Speaker 1: As Dawn lies down by the side of the pool.
[10:00] Speaker 1: At the end of the show, Tilicom grabs her and
[10:03] Speaker 1: pulls her underwater. He doesn't let her soon. The sensational
[10:08] Speaker 1: story was all over the network news.
[10:12] Speaker 3: First to night.
[10:12] Speaker 2: A six ton killer whale has lived up to his name,
[10:15] Speaker 2: killing an experienced trainer at SeaWorld Orlando.
[10:18] Speaker 1: Today, eyewitnesses are saying that an employee there at sea
[10:21] Speaker 1: World died.
[10:22] Speaker 3: After being attacked by one of the killer whales that
[10:26] Speaker 3: are part of a show there.
[10:27] Speaker 1: Tragedy at SeaWorld.
[10:29] Speaker 4: It happened without warning.
[10:30] Speaker 1: A killer whale grabbed a trainer who had always dreamed
[10:33] Speaker 1: of working with orcas and pulled her underwater. By the
[10:37] Speaker 1: time Tillicom's done with Dawn, her body is savaged. It
[10:42] Speaker 1: has multiple fractures and dislocations. He's ripped a scalpoff frustration aggression.
[10:50] Speaker 1: Did its start as play? Was it revenge for doing
[10:53] Speaker 1: two perfect perimeter peck waves and not getting a single
[10:56] Speaker 1: fish from a bucket. Who knows what was going on
[11:00] Speaker 1: in his head? Perhaps, as animal rights activists argued, the
[11:06] Speaker 1: explanation was straightforward.
[11:08] Speaker 2: If you weren't about to for twenty five years, don't
[11:10] Speaker 2: you think you'd get a little irritated, aggravated, maybe a
[11:13] Speaker 2: little psychotic.
[11:15] Speaker 1: Had Tillicum simply gone off the deep end in the
[11:23] Speaker 1: middle of the Pacific in eighteen nineteen, First Mate Owen
[11:28] Speaker 1: Chase is standing on a slowly sinking ship. The ship
[11:33] Speaker 1: has just been headbutted by an eighty five foot whale.
[11:37] Speaker 1: It's taking in water, and now the whale is coming
[11:40] Speaker 1: back for another go. He came at us, Chase.
[11:43] Speaker 2: Says, apparently with twice his ordinary speed, and to me
[11:48] Speaker 2: at that moment it appeared with tenfold fury and vengeance
[11:52] Speaker 2: in his aspect.
[11:53] Speaker 1: The whales smashed into the ship for a second time,
[11:59] Speaker 1: then it swam away. Chase tried to gather his wits.
[12:06] Speaker 1: The ship was damaged beyond repair. They wouldn't have long
[12:09] Speaker 1: before it toppled sidewards had better salvage what they could.
[12:14] Speaker 1: A quadrant, a compass, nautical charts, the captain's trunk. They
[12:20] Speaker 1: tossed it all into the smaller boats, then clambered in themselves.
[12:24] Speaker 1: The captain himself, George Pollard, was out on a small
[12:28] Speaker 1: boat chasing another whale. His voice came floating over the water.
[12:33] Speaker 4: My god, where is the ship?
[12:37] Speaker 1: The men in Captain Pollard's boat rowed back to join
[12:41] Speaker 1: Owen Chase and the others. Together the crew sat in
[12:45] Speaker 1: their little boats and surveyed the remains of their ship,
[12:49] Speaker 1: lolling on its side in the ocean.
[12:51] Speaker 4: My god, mister Chase, what is the matter?
[12:55] Speaker 1: We have been.
[12:55] Speaker 2: Stowed by a whale.
[12:58] Speaker 1: Twenty men, three small rowing boats, fifteen hundred miles to
[13:04] Speaker 1: the nearest tiny island. Cautionary tails will return after the break.
[13:21] Speaker 1: In the movie Blackfish, a former trainer at the SeaWorld
[13:25] Speaker 1: recalls how one young orca born in captivity was taken
[13:30] Speaker 1: away to be transported to a different park. That night.
[13:34] Speaker 1: Says the trainer, the mother whale stayed in the corner
[13:38] Speaker 1: of the pool like literally just shaking and screaming, screeching, crying.
[13:43] Speaker 1: I've never seen her do anything like that. Who knows
[13:46] Speaker 1: what was going on in her head. The trainer is
[13:50] Speaker 1: in no doubt there was nothing you could call that,
[13:53] Speaker 1: She says, besides grief, not so fast, says an article
[13:59] Speaker 1: on a website called awesomeocean dot Com, a website set
[14:04] Speaker 1: up with funding from SeaWorld. The article complains that black
[14:09] Speaker 1: Fish uses anthropomorphism to manipulate viewers. The word anthropomorphism comes
[14:16] Speaker 1: from the Greek for human form. It means using human
[14:20] Speaker 1: ideas to interpret the behavior of things that aren't human
[14:24] Speaker 1: gods or cars or whales. It's long been controversial among
[14:30] Speaker 1: scientists who study animal behavior. The article on awesomeocean dot
[14:35] Speaker 1: Com points out that the documentary makers accompany the trainer's
[14:39] Speaker 1: words about grief with footage of a whale mouth wide open,
[14:44] Speaker 1: looking well grief stricken.
[14:47] Speaker 4: But orcas have no connection to their lungs through their mouth.
[14:51] Speaker 1: The article explains, nor do they have vocal cords.
[14:55] Speaker 4: All sound is created through the blowhole. It is physically
[14:59] Speaker 4: impossible for an orca to produce sound by opening their mouth,
[15:04] Speaker 4: But it seems.
[15:04] Speaker 1: We find it hard not to anthropomorphize even when we're trying.
[15:09] Speaker 1: The very same article tries to reassure readers about the
[15:13] Speaker 1: welfare of Tillicomb.
[15:15] Speaker 4: Tillicomb is semi retired, has access to several of SeaWorld's
[15:20] Speaker 4: enormous pools and spends a lot of time with his
[15:23] Speaker 4: grandson Trua on a daily basis.
[15:27] Speaker 1: Which sounds lovely, but only if we see it through
[15:30] Speaker 1: a human lens. It conjures up the pleasing mental image
[15:35] Speaker 1: of a contented old man taking a small boy to
[15:37] Speaker 1: the park, pushing him on the swings, and buying him
[15:41] Speaker 1: an ice cream. That tells us nothing, of course, about
[15:44] Speaker 1: what life might be like for Tillicomb. We'll come back
[15:50] Speaker 1: to the article on awesomeocean dot com. But what about
[15:54] Speaker 1: another human emotion? We tend to anthropomorphize vengeance. Remember how
[16:02] Speaker 1: Owen Chase described the whale that sank his boat.
[16:06] Speaker 2: I could distinctly see him smite his jars together, as
[16:11] Speaker 2: if distracted with rage and fury.
[16:15] Speaker 1: We seem to love stories about terrifying sea creatures with
[16:18] Speaker 1: an apparent thirst for revenge or justice. Think of the
[16:23] Speaker 1: scene in the classic movie Jaws where the shark attacks
[16:27] Speaker 1: the hunter's boat and eats him. Or the eighteen fifties
[16:31] Speaker 1: novel Moby Dick, about the whale and whaling ship captain
[16:36] Speaker 1: who pursue each other across the seas. Moby Dick was
[16:41] Speaker 1: inspired by a true story. The story told by Owen Chase,
[16:47] Speaker 1: but I think there's something more we can take from
[16:50] Speaker 1: hearing Chase's tail. In the middle of the Pacific first mate,
[16:58] Speaker 1: Owen Chase and his captain are contemplating what remains of
[17:02] Speaker 1: their whaling ship. They have three small rowing boats, with
[17:07] Speaker 1: six or seven men in each. Chase is in one,
[17:11] Speaker 1: Captain Pollard in another, with his eighteen year old cousin.
[17:15] Speaker 1: Don't worry, Pollard had told the boy's mother back at home,
[17:19] Speaker 1: I'll look out for him. These boats are small and light.
[17:24] Speaker 1: They're designed for chasing and harpooning whales. They're not built
[17:28] Speaker 1: to traverse thousands of miles of open ocean, but that's
[17:32] Speaker 1: what they're going to have to do. The ship hasn't
[17:36] Speaker 1: yet fully sunk. The men can still clamber aboard the
[17:41] Speaker 1: wreckage and see what else they can salvage. They hack
[17:45] Speaker 1: off the masts and make smaller masts and sails for
[17:48] Speaker 1: their little boats. They find some food that's still above
[17:52] Speaker 1: the sea, hard dried bread, water, some turtles. They're useful turtles.
[18:00] Speaker 1: They survive for a long time without eating, so you
[18:03] Speaker 1: can take them on your ship and kill them when
[18:06] Speaker 1: you want fresh meat. Still, they only have a few,
[18:10] Speaker 1: and how long is it going to take them to
[18:12] Speaker 1: meet another ship or get to land. They portion up
[18:16] Speaker 1: the food and water between the boats, two turtles each,
[18:20] Speaker 1: and discuss their options. None of them are good. Aim
[18:25] Speaker 1: for the south, they decide, and hope to find westerly
[18:28] Speaker 1: winds that will blow them towards Chile or Peru, and
[18:32] Speaker 1: do some sums with a fair wind, they might hope
[18:36] Speaker 1: to reach land in a couple of months. They sleep,
[18:41] Speaker 1: or try to. In the morning, they set their sails
[18:45] Speaker 1: for the south. They've agreed that each man will have
[18:48] Speaker 1: a daily ration of about a pound of bread and
[18:51] Speaker 1: half a pint of water. Chase as a pistol. Try
[18:56] Speaker 1: to take more than your share, he says to his
[18:58] Speaker 1: boat mates, and I'll shoot you. But nobody does. They
[19:03] Speaker 1: all know they have to make their food and water
[19:05] Speaker 1: last if they're to have any chance of survival. A
[19:09] Speaker 1: day goes by, and another the wind gets up, The
[19:13] Speaker 1: sea swells away, crashes over the boat and soaks some
[19:19] Speaker 1: of the bread. When the sun comes out, they managed
[19:23] Speaker 1: to dry it again. They'd better eat that bread first,
[19:26] Speaker 1: as it'll spoil more quickly now it's so salty. The
[19:31] Speaker 1: thirst half a pint of water a day, they're allowed
[19:35] Speaker 1: no more. In a storm, they try to use the
[19:38] Speaker 1: sail to catch some rain water catt work. The sails
[19:44] Speaker 1: absorbed so much salt from being splashed by the sea
[19:48] Speaker 1: it makes the rain water salty too. They decide to
[19:52] Speaker 1: kill their first turtle and drink its blood. Some of
[19:56] Speaker 1: the men find it too revolting to swallow.
[19:59] Speaker 5: Not oh, in Chase, I took it like a medicine,
[20:02] Speaker 5: he said, to relieve the extreme dryness of my palate,
[20:07] Speaker 5: and stopped nat to inquire a weather where it was
[20:09] Speaker 5: anything else than a liquid.
[20:12] Speaker 1: They light a fire in the turtle shell to cook
[20:14] Speaker 1: its flesh. Tastes good days past. They lose the other
[20:21] Speaker 1: two boats in a storm, then find them again. A
[20:25] Speaker 1: shoal of tiny flying fish soar over the boat. Some
[20:30] Speaker 1: knock themselves out on the mast, and the men eat
[20:33] Speaker 1: them whole, scales, wings and all. Finally they finished the
[20:39] Speaker 1: salty bread. They're glad to start again on the bread
[20:42] Speaker 1: that didn't get a soaking. But then three weeks in
[20:46] Speaker 1: the weather turns calm, the sky blue the ocean still.
[20:53] Speaker 2: Chase says, we were exposed to the full force of
[20:58] Speaker 2: a meridian sun without any covering to shield us from
[21:01] Speaker 2: its burning influence, or the least breath of air to
[21:05] Speaker 2: cool its parching rays.
[21:08] Speaker 1: The heat makes the thirst unbearable again. They try drinking
[21:14] Speaker 1: their urine. It doesn't seem to help. They dangle themselves
[21:18] Speaker 1: over the edge of the boat to cool their bodies
[21:21] Speaker 1: in the sea. And what's this clams on the outside
[21:27] Speaker 1: of the boat. Who knew they were there? They rip
[21:30] Speaker 1: them off and eat them. In half an hour, they're
[21:33] Speaker 1: all gone. Day after day, the sea is calm. No
[21:39] Speaker 1: wind means no progress for the three small boats. They
[21:44] Speaker 1: try to row, but they don't have the strength. On
[21:48] Speaker 1: Chase's boat, they kill their second turtle. The bread and
[21:52] Speaker 1: the water are running out too quickly. They decide to
[21:56] Speaker 1: halve their rations. What other option is there? And then,
[22:02] Speaker 1: four weeks since the whale round their ship. A miracle,
[22:07] Speaker 1: or so it seems. From one of the boats comes
[22:10] Speaker 1: a shout, There is land. But what land is it?
[22:15] Speaker 1: Chase and the captain look in their nautical charts. It
[22:18] Speaker 1: must be one of the pit Cairns, a tiny island
[22:21] Speaker 1: just six miles across. They've sailed seventeen hundred miles from
[22:27] Speaker 1: where their ship sank. There's still three thousand miles from
[22:32] Speaker 1: South America. But they'll worry about that later. They sail
[22:37] Speaker 1: to the shore and land on the beach. There are crabs,
[22:41] Speaker 1: they eat them. There are fish. Chase knocks one out
[22:45] Speaker 1: with the butt of his gun. But eating just makes
[22:48] Speaker 1: them want to drink. Does this island not have any water?
[22:52] Speaker 2: Such an excessive and cruel thirst was created, says Chase.
[22:57] Speaker 2: The lips became cracked and swollen, and a sort of
[23:02] Speaker 2: glutenous saliva collected in the mouth, intolerable beyond expression.
[23:09] Speaker 1: Then they find a spring, gallons and gallons of water.
[23:13] Speaker 1: The men drink and drink. There are tropical birds on
[23:17] Speaker 1: this island. They've never seen humans, so they aren't afraid.
[23:21] Speaker 1: The men can walk right up and grab them. They
[23:24] Speaker 1: make a fire on the beach to roast them. They're delicious,
[23:28] Speaker 1: so are the birds.
[23:29] Speaker 3: Eggs.
[23:30] Speaker 1: With food and water, they can surely live here and
[23:33] Speaker 1: wait for another ship to pass, or can they. After
[23:38] Speaker 1: just a couple of days, the men realize they've already
[23:42] Speaker 1: eaten every bird on the island and every egg, so
[23:47] Speaker 1: there won't be any more birds. He might ask if
[23:51] Speaker 1: this is the story of humans and nature in microcosms,
[23:55] Speaker 1: But for the crew of the whaling ship. There's a
[23:57] Speaker 1: more urgent question, stay and hope to be rescued or
[24:03] Speaker 1: get back in the boats. Three of the men decide
[24:06] Speaker 1: to take their chances on the island. Others set sail
[24:10] Speaker 1: once more into the last Pacific cautionary tails or return.
[24:31] Speaker 1: Twenty twenty three, One night in May, off the Strait
[24:35] Speaker 1: of Gibraltar, a Swiss yacht called Champagne is sailing along
[24:40] Speaker 1: when suddenly there's a loud rumble.
[24:44] Speaker 4: I thought we'd hit something.
[24:46] Speaker 1: Says the skipper, But no, it was whales, one big
[24:53] Speaker 1: Orca and two little orcas. The attacks were brutal, says
[24:59] Speaker 1: the skipper.
[25:00] Speaker 4: The two little ones shook the rudder well. The big
[25:02] Speaker 4: one kept running and then rammed the ship from the
[25:05] Speaker 4: side with full force.
[25:08] Speaker 1: To killer whale snap off the Champagne bludder, making a
[25:12] Speaker 1: hole at the boat. It sinks. And it's not the
[25:16] Speaker 1: only time this has happened. In just a couple of years,
[25:20] Speaker 1: the Orcas near Gibraltar have slammed into hundreds of passing yachts.
[25:25] Speaker 1: This is completely new behavior. What's going on in the
[25:29] Speaker 1: heads of those whales. Users of the platform, then called
[25:35] Speaker 1: Twitter put forward a theory. It's an organized uprising socialist
[25:42] Speaker 1: whales attacking the yacht owning classes. They're joking, of course,
[25:46] Speaker 1: but the joke has an edge. It seems that a
[25:49] Speaker 1: lot of us feel so much guilt about what humans
[25:52] Speaker 1: have done to nature. We like the idea of killer
[25:56] Speaker 1: whales fighting back. The New Scientist felt the need to
[26:01] Speaker 1: report with a straight face that experts say there is
[26:05] Speaker 1: no evidence they are seeking vengeance. The Atlantic published a
[26:10] Speaker 1: think piece titled killer whales are not our friends. Stop
[26:15] Speaker 1: rooting for the orcas ramming boats. One popular tweet in response,
[26:21] Speaker 1: we deserve to have our boats round. Frankly, scientists who
[26:27] Speaker 1: study whales have other theories. Maybe one orca was hurt
[26:32] Speaker 1: once by a rudder and fought back. Orcas are social,
[26:36] Speaker 1: They learn from each other. They're curious too. Maybe they've
[26:40] Speaker 1: discovered that rudders are fun to play with. Or maybe
[26:44] Speaker 1: it's a cultural fad. Orcas have them. Years ago. One
[26:48] Speaker 1: pod in the Pacific briefly took to carrying around dead
[26:52] Speaker 1: salmon on their heads like a hat. Or are we
[26:57] Speaker 1: anthropomorphizing again? Not all scientists think anthropomorphism is always a
[27:04] Speaker 1: bad thing. The primatologist Franz de While says that what
[27:08] Speaker 1: we want to have a void is anthroper centric anthropomorphism.
[27:13] Speaker 1: That's a bit of a mouthful. What he means is
[27:15] Speaker 1: starting from a human viewpoint when seeing similarities between ourselves
[27:20] Speaker 1: and other animals. That's the kind of thinking that gets
[27:23] Speaker 1: us socialist whales attacking the rich. In contrast, says de
[27:28] Speaker 1: while animal centric anthropomorphism can generate useful research ideas. That's
[27:34] Speaker 1: when we start with the animal's viewpoint. We try to
[27:37] Speaker 1: put ourselves in their position as best we can and
[27:41] Speaker 1: ask ourselves if our human experiences might help us understand
[27:45] Speaker 1: what their life is like. We know what it means
[27:48] Speaker 1: as humans to be curious and playful. It's reasonable to
[27:52] Speaker 1: think that might shed some light on the whales behavior too.
[27:57] Speaker 1: We need to find a balance. Too much anthropomorphizing can
[28:01] Speaker 1: lead us astray, but so can its opposite, dogmatically refusing
[28:07] Speaker 1: to see any commonality between ourselves and other animals. There
[28:11] Speaker 1: was no word for that mistake, says Deuarle, so he
[28:14] Speaker 1: made one up athropo denial. We've already seen an example.
[28:20] Speaker 1: Remember the article in Awesomeocean dot com that criticized the
[28:25] Speaker 1: makers of the movie Blackfish for showing footage of an
[28:29] Speaker 1: open mouthed whale, as a former trainer described the grief
[28:33] Speaker 1: of a mother whale whose baby had been taken away.
[28:36] Speaker 1: That whale wasn't crying through her mouth, says the article.
[28:40] Speaker 1: All sound is created through the blowhole, which is fair
[28:45] Speaker 1: enough as far as it goes. We can't conclude anything
[28:48] Speaker 1: from the footage of the whale's mouth, but that doesn't
[28:51] Speaker 1: take away the trainer's description. She stayed in the corner
[28:56] Speaker 1: of the pool like literally just shaking and screaming, screeching high.
[29:01] Speaker 1: There was nothing you could call it besides grief. The
[29:07] Speaker 1: whale's reaction to her baby being taken looks very similar
[29:11] Speaker 1: to how a human mother would react. Closing our minds
[29:15] Speaker 1: to that parallel seems like anthropo denial. Two weeks after
[29:28] Speaker 1: the three boats leave the island, the first man dies.
[29:33] Speaker 1: They bring all three boats together and with solemn words,
[29:37] Speaker 1: they cast his body into the ocean. They're still very
[29:42] Speaker 1: far from land. The bread's running low, so they agree
[29:46] Speaker 1: to cut their rations again, just an ounce and a
[29:50] Speaker 1: half of bread per man per day. The sun is
[29:54] Speaker 1: so fierce, says Chase.
[29:58] Speaker 2: We would lie down at the bottom of the boat
[30:01] Speaker 2: and cover ourselves over with the sails and abandon her
[30:04] Speaker 2: to the mercy of the waves. Upon attempting to rise again,
[30:09] Speaker 2: the blood would rush into the head, and an intoxicating
[30:12] Speaker 2: blindness come over us.
[30:16] Speaker 1: Another day and another a storm, the boats get separated again,
[30:22] Speaker 1: and this time he can't find each other when the
[30:24] Speaker 1: storm clears. Now, oh In, Chase and his four companions
[30:30] Speaker 1: are on their own. One day, a shark circles their boat,
[30:35] Speaker 1: bumping up against it. They try to stab it, but
[30:39] Speaker 1: they don't have the strength to pierce its skin. Another
[30:44] Speaker 1: day brings a shoal of porpoises and frolic around them.
[30:48] Speaker 1: He can't stab any of those either. One of Chase's
[30:53] Speaker 1: boat mates calmly says, no bread for me. I've decided
[30:58] Speaker 1: to die, and so he does, quickly and peacefully. The
[31:04] Speaker 1: others solemnly throw his body to the waves.
[31:09] Speaker 2: Sufferings who were now drawing to a close. It seemed
[31:12] Speaker 2: to Chase a terrible death appeared shortly to await us.
[31:17] Speaker 2: Hunger became violent and outrageous, Our speech and reason were
[31:23] Speaker 2: both considerably impaired.
[31:27] Speaker 1: Then they hear a noise that seems to sharpen their thoughts.
[31:32] Speaker 1: The thrashing of tails, the spouting of blow holes, whales,
[31:39] Speaker 1: the men are gripped with fear as their vengeful attackers
[31:44] Speaker 1: somehow tracked them down. We must row, they say, to
[31:47] Speaker 1: get away. They try, but none can lift it all.
[31:57] Speaker 1: When Blackfish aired on CNN in twenty thirteen, it caused
[32:02] Speaker 1: a sensation. Twenty one million people viewed it within a month,
[32:08] Speaker 1: an extraordinary figure for a documentary. Three years later, SeaWorld
[32:14] Speaker 1: announced that it would no longer breed orcas in captivity.
[32:20] Speaker 1: Still there's no international ban. Dozens of orcas still perform
[32:26] Speaker 1: for tourists in theme parks around the world, including Tillicum's
[32:31] Speaker 1: grandson Truer. Granddad. Tillicum himself passed away in twenty seventeen
[32:38] Speaker 1: at the age of thirty five. In science, the debate
[32:42] Speaker 1: about anthropomorphism rumbles on. It's clearly hard to resist the
[32:48] Speaker 1: kind of lazy thinking that brings us the communist orcas
[32:51] Speaker 1: in Gibraltar and the reaka of vengeance Moby Dick. So
[32:56] Speaker 1: how can we keep our anthropomorphism animal centric? I think
[33:02] Speaker 1: Owen Chase's story points us towards the answer. It shows
[33:07] Speaker 1: us the power of human empathy. Very few of us
[33:10] Speaker 1: have ever experienced anything as extreme as Chase. But when
[33:14] Speaker 1: we hear his story. We're there in the boat with him.
[33:18] Speaker 1: We get what he went through. We need to try
[33:21] Speaker 1: to extend some of the same empathy to intelligent animals
[33:26] Speaker 1: such as wales. But Chase's story also shows us why
[33:31] Speaker 1: we find that hard. We consense that wales are smart,
[33:36] Speaker 1: As the former trainer on Blackfish said, when you look
[33:39] Speaker 1: into their eyes, you know somebody's home. But their intelligence
[33:44] Speaker 1: evolved in the vastness of the ocean, a place that's
[33:49] Speaker 1: so utterly inhospitable for us, it may as well be
[33:54] Speaker 1: an alien intelligence from another planet. Empathy comes easily with
[34:00] Speaker 1: other humans with other kinds of intelligence. We really have
[34:05] Speaker 1: to work at it. The passing whales had no interest
[34:12] Speaker 1: in owen Chase's boat. Why would they? For The next
[34:17] Speaker 1: death on board is gruesome. It takes hours, the dying
[34:22] Speaker 1: man convulsing and groaning in pain. Just three men left now,
[34:29] Speaker 1: and this time none of them suggest respectfully consigning the
[34:34] Speaker 1: newly dead body to the sea.
[34:38] Speaker 2: We eagerly devoured the heart Chase recalls and ate a
[34:45] Speaker 2: few pieces of the flesh, after which we hung up
[34:49] Speaker 2: the remainder, cut in thin strips about the boat to
[34:54] Speaker 2: dry in the sun.
[34:57] Speaker 1: The next day, the strips of human flesh are turning green.
[35:02] Speaker 1: They make a fire and cook it to preserve it.
[35:06] Speaker 1: Chase doesn't know it. But elsewhere on the ocean, Captain Pollard,
[35:12] Speaker 1: his eighteen year old cousin, and the other two remaining
[35:15] Speaker 1: men on their boat face an even more wrenching predicament.
[35:20] Speaker 1: They're all starving, but all still stubbornly alive. They agreed
[35:27] Speaker 1: to draw lots to decide who will be shot so
[35:31] Speaker 1: the others can eat him. Owen Chase survived, of course,
[35:42] Speaker 1: to tell his story. Still hundreds of miles from the coast,
[35:47] Speaker 1: their tiny boat chanced across another ship. They must have
[35:52] Speaker 1: looked a piteous sight, says Chase.
[35:56] Speaker 2: Our cadaverous countenances sunken highs, the ragged remnants of clothes
[36:04] Speaker 2: stuck about our sunburnt bodies.
[36:07] Speaker 1: Incredibly, the captain's boat also encountered a ship. He got
[36:13] Speaker 1: to go back home and test the limits of human
[36:16] Speaker 1: empathy by explaining to his family how he'd come to
[36:22] Speaker 1: eat his cousin. This episode of Cautionary Tales was inspired
[36:36] Speaker 1: in part by Blackfish, which is currently available on Netflix.
[36:41] Speaker 1: Owen Chase's book is called The Narrative of the Most
[36:44] Speaker 1: extraordinary and distressing shipwreck of the whale Ship Essex. For
[36:49] Speaker 1: a full list of our sources, please see the show
[36:51] Speaker 1: notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by
[37:02] Speaker 1: me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice
[37:06] Speaker 1: Fines with support from Marilyn Rust. Sound design and original
[37:10] Speaker 1: music is the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited
[37:14] Speaker 1: the scripts. It features the voice talents of Ben Crowe,
[37:18] Speaker 1: Melanie Gushridge, Stella Harford, Jemma Saunders and rufus Wright. The
[37:23] Speaker 1: show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of
[37:26] Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, Diteal Millard, John Schnaz,
[37:31] Speaker 1: Eric's handler, Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary Tales is
[37:36] Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at ward Or
[37:40] Speaker 1: Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show,
[37:45] Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate and review, tell your friends
[37:50] Speaker 1: and if you want to hear the show ad free
[37:52] Speaker 1: sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in
[37:55] Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot fm, slash plus

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