Free Willy 4: Escape From Pirates Cove new DTV DVD in 2010

[ajmrowland]

A review! And, from the looks of it, a good one!

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/3045/fr ... scove.html

[Lazario]

That person was clearly on drugs at the time they did that review.

[ajmrowland]

By reading it, one gets a different vibe than the effects of having too much isol.

[Siren]

If they're fully healthy why aren't they released? I wouldn't imagine the animals are "happy".

That's the thing. We DON'T know. We can only go by their behavior and health. Tilly was a wild caught whale and orcas have long memories, its plausible he remembers his life in the wild. So its more understandable, he isn't really happy there. But we just don't know.

I remember when a supposed "pet psychic" saw Keiko and said he "told" him, he didn't want to leave and go back to the ocean. He liked the people who cared for him and he wanted to stay in the Oregon aquarium. I thought it was total BS. I assumed as soon as they opened that cove up, Keiko would have saw to it he took off like a shot and enjoyed his life back in the wild. But instead, he went into harbors, bays, and coves, filled with boats. Followed people around. Now, at that point, he was hunting fish on his own, so it wasn't for food. He wasn't starving. He was feeding on his own. There were pods near enough for him to hear, but he ignored them. This was originally a wild caught whale, released back into the wild. He didn't need us. But he wanted us. He wanted to be with people more than whales. He followed boats around for days. Stayed in harbors for weeks. Eventually, he developed pneumonia and died.

While he was in captivity, he never developed pneumonia. He never got very sick. He certainly never came close to dying. I can't say if the psychic really has a gift, because I am skeptical in that area, but perhaps it was more in reading the whale's behavior. Its pretty clear to me...Keiko was NOT happy in the wild. If he was, he would have found a pod. He was released in the vicinity of his home pod, the family he came from. And there were some times he could have rejoined them. He got close enough to his family pod. And the people assigned to observing him in his weeks and months after release stated no other pod attacked or chased him away. He simply did not have the interest in being with his own kind.

So I think its safe to say, he was happier in captivity. He was better off staying in Oregon or the cove. I wouldn't doubt Tilly would be any different. These aren't some pigeons or turtles. Animals who have lower intelligence and social behavior. These are highly intelligent animals who form strong bonds with their families. And sometimes, their families so happen to include humans.

And to answer your question....let's say, we take all the healthy and happy captive animals and release them into the wild. You have just released 5,000 tigers into the wild. Let's forget the fact that the distribution is a fraction of what it was 50 years ago. Forget the fact there is still encroachment by civilization, logging. Forget the fact that the established wild population of tigers is going to end up having to deal with more tigers and less space, less water, less food. What will we see then? First, we'll see more tigers in villages, urban areas, more tigers killing people. We'll also see more tigers killing other tigers, because they will have a lot to lose. More tigers mean they need more food, which means the game that tigers, other predators, and local tribes hunt will be depleted, even cause it to go extinct. Then you have a massive starvation run of tigers, which means tigers will start eating people, even turn to cannibalism.

Yes, let's release all the captive tigers. [/sarcasm]

In a few parts of the USA, a similar problem is going on right now, only its reversed. Because we don't have the predators we use to, such as wolves, bear and cougars, prey populations have sky rocketed, especially with deer. Georgia has this problem a lot. The deer population has exploded so much so that it has caused massive waves of disease and starvation in the deer population, but its still not enough to beat it back. Hunting licenses started allowing hunters to take more deer than in previous years to help cut down on this problem and keep the herds genetically strong. Sometimes too much of a good thing, is a bad thing.

Unless we go place to place and tell people to pack up and leave and replenish the forests, there simply isn't enough space for all the captive animals to be released. Like I said, zoos are a necessarily evil. Without them, we'd have lost a lot more species. Zoos are working on reintroduction, but such things are not on a massive scale because the space and resources just isn't there. A few years ago, they released a handful of wolves. Thank goodness it was so few wolves they released, because their population has tripled. They are doing very well. BUT if they released many more wolves, the project would have failed, there wouldn't have been enough. At this point, the wolf population is at level where it should be. That's call research. They had plenty of wolves they could have released at once, they didn't. They got an idea of how many wolves was safe to release, estimated the growth rate and checked that the prey would have have enough numbers to sustain a growing pack of wolves and they did good on it. You just can't throw a bunch of animals out into the wild and expect it to be a happy ending.

I am 100% against capturing anymore wild animals for captivity, unless the species is in dire straights, such as the California Condor. But to just automatically assume every animal in captivity is living a miserable existence is stretching it. I've worked with a variety of wild animals in captivity. I can tell you many of them act happy and are healthy. I won't go far as to say I know 100% sure they are happy or are not happy. I can ask them till I am blue in the face, they won't tell me out right. The only way we can know is by their behavior. And since all the orcas at Sea World haven't taken to killing all the trainers and trying to kill themselves or jump out of their tanks onto the crowd watching the, I think its safe to say, that many captive animals, especially captive bred ones, are happy and satisfied living in captivity.

Now back to the movie....

On that review, I haven't seen the flick, but I think that was a fair review. He certainly did list its flaws. He went into it like a critic should go into that kind of film, not expecting it to be Oscar material. I'll be the judge on the realism of the whale, the trailer's CGI was much to be desired, but often trailers used clips that aren't quite finished. But even if that's how the CGI looks for the film, its not like I'm expecting Avatar quality here.