28 October 2011

Killer whales 1 Humans 0

Back to the city, and a good woodland run on a clear chilly morning.
Last night we watched an excellent documentary film about life in the even chillier Arctic & Antarctic. One of the most dramatic scenes was of a group of orca preying on seals in a very synchronised and intelligent way, almost to Olympic standards. The villainous and cruel orca were shown in contrast to the poor helpless seal with its big brown eyes and cute whiskers. Except that, before the orca arrived, the seal was sitting on an ice flow with blood on its own muzzle, clearly having recently preyed on some other hapless creature further down the food chain. And both deaths will have been relatively quick and painless compared to that of the millions of fish and crustaceans trawled from the sea in vast nets for human consumption, or indeed that of those prisoners of war abused and tortured to death by their captors.

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