Our long, troubled relationship with whales—the largest, oldest, most mysterious creatures on the planet. - By Philip Hoare - Slate Magazine

Whales We owe them an apology.

By Philip HoarePosted Friday, March 5, 2010, at 10:00 AM ET

Also in Slate: Can animals like whales really develop "a taste for human blood"?

I saw my first whale in a safari park outside London—a captive orca named Ramu—back in the early 1970s. As it ran through its routine, it was clear to me, even then, that this wasn't the right way to keep a wild animal. That much was clear from the way the whale's huge six foot dorsal fin had flopped over—a detumescent symbol of its emasculated state.

Since the 1960s, 200 killer whales have died in captivity. As the recent death of an orca trainer in Seaworld shows, our interface with whales seems destined to be troubled, and certainly exploitative—sometimes in unusual ways. In Australia in the early 20^th century, shore whalers at Eden, on the coast of New South Wales, co-operated with a pod of orca led by a bull male named Old Tom. The killer whales—so-called by early hunters because they saw these whales killing their own kind—would herd humpbacks passing