fling93 loves fishies

Keiko Is Dead

No, not O’Brien’s wife from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but the star of Free Willy. No, I’ve never seen the films, but for a guy who likes fishies, this is sad news:

For kids, Keiko the killer whale was the charming hero of “Free Willy.” For biologists, he was the focus of fierce debate on whether captive animals could be returned to the wild. Keiko, who died of pneumonia this week, never strayed far from humans, keeping company with them in a Norwegian fjord to the end.

Keiko’s apparent love of human company — and his popularity — frustrated handlers’ dreams that he would one day leave them in search of food on his own. Millions of dollars were spent trying to teach him to survive, but he didn’t bond with other whales, apparently feared swimming under ice and died less than two years after he was freed.
…
Keiko’s handlers noticed on Thursday he had become listless, and the six-ton orca died Friday afternoon despite veterinarians’ efforts to save him.

“It was pretty sudden,” his animal care specialist, Dane Richards, told The Associated Press. He said Keiko’s handlers went out to check on him during a late afternoon blizzard and he was still alive. Two hours later, he had died.

The whole article tells a pretty interesting story of Keiko’s life. Anyway, killer whales aren’t actually fishies; they eat fishies. So maybe I should be happy, instead? Of course, I eat sushi myself. Can’t bring myself to give it up. :( And I love kitty cats, and they eat fishies, too. Ditto with dolphins.

Oh, what a confusing time for me. Yeah, I’m a quasi-vegetarian (sushi isn’t exactly a vegetable), but for health reasons, not because I love animals. And I know it’s irrational for me to feel such sadness at the death of an animal when animals eat each other in the wild all the time. Yes, I understand what Maynard’s saying in Tool’s “Disgustipated”:

This. Is. Necessary.
This. Is. Necessary.
Life. Feeds on life. Feeds on life. Feeds on life.

Yet I wonder why that’s the way it is. Why can’t life feed on something else? Are there any life forms that feed on inorganic material? I can’t think of any offhand. While plants get some of their energy from sunlight, but they also get nutrients from organic material in the soil. I recall some on Star Trek: The Next Generation, for example “A Matter of Honor,” the one where Riker, in an exchange program, serves on a Klingon Bird of Prey which somehow gets infected with a strain of bacteria that eats away at the ship’s hull.

But I can’t think of any in the real world. Why? It’s just a matter of obtaining energy. Why can’t lifeforms obtain their energy without killing other lifeforms (or waiting for others to die)? It seems dubious that it’s because of efficiency, because the food chain loses gobs of energy at every step of the way. So is there some higher purpose served by this? Was Agent Smith correct, and that “the purpose of life is to end”? Just thoughts to ponder.

(Okay, then. In a post about a killer whale, I manage to fit in two references to Star Trek and one to Matrix Revolutions. I guess there’s no way anyone’s believing I actually scored only a 28.40237% — Total Geek — on The Geek Test, huh?)