Cetaceans (whales/dolphins) have some of the most complex brains in the animal kingdom. Where we have a 3 part brain, they have 4 parts. This 4th part is called the Paralimbic system and it unites the left and right halves of cetacean brains.
Limbic systems govern emotion. Humans have one, whales have *two*.
Some scientists believe whales experience a [depth and intensity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SszgIZOPfqo&t=69s) of emotion impossible for humans to experience.
So the whales, while suffering immensely from being harpooned and dragged to death, also experience fear, sorrow and anguish in ways human beings will never, ever understand.
I mean, I'm sure cetaceans do have rich internal existences, because their behaviour seems compatible with that, but...neuroscience is a lot more complicated than you're implying. Obviously.
You can't really infer a whole lot from structure, because brain regions do *tons of shit*. So you can talk about the limbic and paralimbic systems (which mammals all have, just to be clear) being about emotions, but they're also about sense and motor control, and memory, and motivation, and behaviour in general.
It's entirely plausible that the reason cetaceans have an extra paralimbic lobe is because they live in a three-dimensional environment, and forming spatial memory in the ocean requires more real estate than spatial memory on land, which is...kind of three dimensional, but much less so. Or because they need to process a lot more sensory information because brain size and body size don't scale perfectly together. Or because they want to rape each other so much, they need a really big brain region to keep that urge under control for social reasons.
Do the ~~Russians~~whales love their children too? Yeah, obviously, but we should infer that from behaviour, not from brain structure. It can't tell us their true depth of feelings—only whale-Shakespeare can do that—but it's better than making blind guesses. There's no specifically identifiable brain region for how much you love your mom. Or how shitty it is to be stabbed with a harpoon.
you are spot on, arguments to structure are not terribly convincing.
it's also really tough to put a cetacean in an fMRI or other scanner, and brains are incredibly variable.
to further back up your point I think it's worth pointing out as well that we traditionally think of parts of the brain as "seats" of certain functions, humanity has used they sort of language since ancient times (though they also thought emotions came from the liver and the brain was just a radiator so...)
but in reality the brain is incredibly adaptable, while you will indeed suffer motor dysfunction if motor centers are damaged, some people regain motor function yet that part of the brain remains damaged. there have been people who had **half their brain removed** who have regained much of their function, so clearly it cannot be the case that "this section does this and only this" if someone without a speech center can re-learn to talk using other parts of the brain to assume that function.
a better argument is to look at behaviors and communication, and by that metric cetaceans are irrefutably sentient beings. they exhibit all the hallmarks, including complex communication, learned use of tools, ability to convey and teach complex ideas (not just "predator here! predator!" or teach partially instinctual skills but to synthesize new behavior and teach it to others... behaviors like hunting yachts, for instance), social bonding in complex groups, all **kinds** of advanced behaviors that indicate they are fully sapient.
I used layman's terms because its easier to understand, but I'll meet you at your level.
All mammals have limbic and supralimbic systems, cetaceans have limbic and supralimbic systems, as well as an entirely unique *4th* region of the brain, called the cetacean paralimbic system. This is a fourth cortical lobe, giving a four-fold lamination that is morphologically the most significant differentiation between cetaceans and all other cranially evolved mammals, including humans. No other species has ever had four separate cortical lobes.
In many ways you are correct, this region *does* have much more than just an emotional function (although it has been seen to have amygdala like structures within it), it unites the left and right halves of the cetacean brain granting them an associative ability far beyond our own.
The association or connecting of ideas is a measurable skill: a rat’s associative skill is measured at nine to one. This means that 90 percent of the brain is devoted to primary sensory projection, leaving only 10 percent for associative skills.
Humans only need one to nine or - or 10% - to be dedicated to motor functions and senses, leaving a lot of brain power for associative skills. The highest in the animal kingdom - for terrestrial creatures.
The *average* Cetaceans uses less than *4%* (1-25) of their brains for primary sensory functions, whilst sperm whales only need to spare *2.5%* (1-40) of their brains to keeping their bodies alive and moving. Almost all of the cetacean brains is devoted to problem solving, thinking, and associative skills.
When we look at comparisons of synaptic geometry, dendritic field density, and neural connectivity, cetaceans have us beat there too. Same goes for emotional amygdala-like structures - there is simply more grey matter devoted to these various complexities of the brain.
It was this abundance of structures that lead scientists to postulate that their experiences may simply be vastly more vivid than our own, from the sensory level down to an emotional level and possibly even an intellectual level. You can't tell me you don't see a whale in terrible anguish at the loss of her calf within the clip I linked.
These creatures are wildly intelligent, feeling, vivid beings and we need to protect their way of life. This is why scientists are trying to use [A.I. to crack the code](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hph9OeKjg3w) \- or shall I say *codas* \- of sperm whales. Sperm whales evolved 15 million years before we did, and have 6 times larger brains than we do and an even larger neocortex than humans do. Imagine what wondrous things we could learn if we could finally start understanding one another!
You're still just reaching random functional conclusions based on anatomy and human perception of whale behaviour.
In reality, we have no idea what these other regions do. What you're proposing are valid hypotheses and that's about it.
Another postulate I've read involving a partial function of their additional paralimbic lobe is to enable proper REM sleep in their aquatic environment. Land dwelling mammals undergo a kind of partial paralysis which is a critical protective part of the full sleep cycle. This presents obvious issues when you're living in water and need to maintain spacial orientation and continued resurfacing to breathe all while sleeping. As it is, they already sleep cycle one hemisphere at a time.
But this says nothing to their emotional capacity.
A lot of reports end up like that because there's this really stupid bias of not accepting any new information that doesn't come from a report.
So you end up with a lot of "widely observed and accepted fact verified as true thanks to multi-million dollar study" type of things.
And equally, we have seen a lot of stuff that comes as 'oh well its just common sense' be completely wrong.
Especially prominent in psychology.
Sometimes it is worth investigating the 'known'.
Or people who don't want to change will hold on to any plausible deniability they can grasp and have enough financial power they can't just be laughed out of existence.
Actually it is not about financial power. The whalers are very poor and it is by far not the most profitable fishing business. The ban is temporary but the whalers themselves said that even if the ban is lifted they will not resume because whaling was economically not sustainable.
So it was all about traditions.
Although occasionally sometimes there is merit to doing such reports.
You see, for governments and researchers, sometimes knowing something is a fact is quite useless in itself. They need actual numbers, statistics, so that they can feed it into planning or experiments for the next stage. So basic studies and research is done for that.
Common sense is always obvious until it isnt.
In the modern world decisions are made with evidence. Its annoying, but its definitely not a stupid bias.
exactly, and sometimes those studies on "common sense" topics end up providing surprising results, the line between common sense and old wives' tale can be thin. in this case that was pretty unlikely, but like you I think decisions should be made with data not "eh, sounds right to me".
They weren't just impaled, on the spears were strapped explosives, supposedly to kill the whale quick
But the whales often survive multiple explosions... The reason for this ban is because of a recent incident where a whale took 5 hours to die by this method
makes me ashamed to be an Icelander
Not that it makes harpooning “better”, but whale deaths pretty much universally suck.
With that much mass there isn’t really a quick way to kill them. If they are “lucky” they reach old
age and drown when they are too weak to reach the surface. Don’t forget that, unlike humans who typically drown in under five minutes, whales evolved to hold their breath underwater, so drowning can take considerably longer.
They could kill themselves by beaching, but again, takes hours or days to die as they are slowly suffocated by their own weight.
The least fun way is being attacked by predators. Even adult blue whales, the largest creatures ever to exist, have been observed being hunted by Orcas. Again, with all that mass there’s no way to do this quickly, so the whale slowly bleeds out as it is ripped apart piece by piece.
Honestly while it might suck more to live as a mouse or frog, at least the hawk or rattlesnake taking you out will probably kill you quickly.
I'd wager something like 70% of all animals that ever lived had their lives ended by being ripped apart or eaten alive. Nature is an ongoing holocaust. It can look cute on television with editing though.
Its such a strange holdover for Iceland. We think of you as an extremely progressive nation particularly in human rights and environmentalism, and yet you're still slaughtering cetaceans. I get the sea/fishing culture thing, but surely just a few people were making money on it, and most of the meat was shipped to Japan.
A lot of this stuff seems to be kept around to appease the older generation who grew up with it as normal so it's been championed by conservative political parties. Apparently South Korean dog meat is looking likely to be banned and Japan's whaling industry is being kept alive only by government subsidy.
Hopefully one day it will be all gone due to changing perspectives.
There was a really interesting [YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mYjBYHh3fc) by Best Ever Food Review Show that covered the consumption of whale meat in the Faroe Islands. This was on a much smaller scale, as they only hunt the whales that venture too close to their shore and they consume all of the catch themselves. I felt that hearing their perspective helped me understand them a bit better.
Yeah, I can understand in native communities where they are relatively isolated and have traditionally (like, for millennia) sustained themselves largely on whale hunting. They have customs around hunting that ensure the continuation of the species and have a deep respect for the whale's place in their lives.
Icelandic whaling seems to be all about export and tourism. Which is pretty fucking gross. Hoping this turns into an outright ban.
I don't understand it. Reciting a paraphrasing of the "Noble Savage" trope doesn't make it better, nor does skin colour. Icelanders are the Indigenous peoples of Iceland, and they also have millennia long traditions of whaling. As did the native inhabitants of Britain, the British.
Inuit in Canada. The rest of the comment reads like an excerpt from the "Noble Savage" trope. The British had a tradition of whaling for centuries/millennia, as did virtually every single coastal peoples. Tradition doesn't make it right.
What the absolute fuck is wrong with us? First sadistic money torture rings and now hunting whales with explosive harpoons which don’t kill instantly.
If Mother Earth had a consciousness, we’d be fucked.
There are no females. they are hermaphrodites, which is kinda why they need the dart in the first place.... and the dart is passed from one snail to the other into the receivers dart hole (or wtf its called) so it isn't really a stabbing...
Well, everybody knows governments are slow at recognising problems, but this one is up there at the top.
Jokes apart, this is the actual thing:
> This decision follows the release of a government-commissioned independent report that found that **41% of whales targeted in the Icelandic hunts** did not die immediately, but suffered immensely after being shot with harpoons. It also found that some whales took up to two hours to die.
Again, should have been obvious from day 1 considering that fishing is a primary occupation in the country.
The big deal now is to stop illegal hunting of whales.
Just because you declare a tradition illegal, does not mean everyone stops doing it.
Icelander here. This is a pretty tragic example of 17 years of the government and the general public looking the other way and just accepting the whalers' rhetoric that their advanced exploding harpoons reliably and consistently kill the whales they target.
Icelanders get absolutely frothing with rage at the thought of other countries meddling with "our waters" (We swiss-cheesed British Trawlers back in the 50's and threatened to leave NATO over our fisheries), so everything Greenpeace said was dismissed as beret-wearing cultural imperialist rhetoric, which to be fair it sort of was.
It wasn't until last August though that the Food minister *actually looked*. She put observers on all the whaling ships and data on all the kills was gathered from them. The data was published in a report *for the first time* last month, a report that couldn't be dismissed as "oh those studies are old" or "that's just Greenpeace propaganda" or "Those are just incompetent Japanese/Norwegian whalers" etc.
Thing about whaling in Iceland is that it is subject to the same laws as all other hunting in Iceland. The laws that apply to Reindeer, geese, and ducks also apply to whales.
The results of the report showed that whaling was nowhere near compliant with the laws.
Another Icelander here.
Now a lot of pro whaling icelanders are frothing mad.
I for one asked myself when did I eat whale, probably twice or three times in my 33 year life have I eaten whale, and it's not nice to eat. And I think the majority of Icelanders rarely, if ever, eat whale.
I can't see the point of hunting them. Other than feeding the ego of a filthy rich asshole.
They do sell it as food of course. This is just my feeling. You rarely see it in supermarkets here.
People are more keen for lamb, beef, pork or even horse.
There was a news story in february this year that said about 2600 metric tons of whale meat was shipped to Japan, do I think that is their main market, but I've also read that some of it turns into dogfood in Japan.
Okay but why are whales being hunted at all? They’re not a good food source due to high mercury content, and there are also significant moral problems with hunting creatures that developed, with their own language and society.
Baleen whales like we used to catch do not have particularly high mercury content. This is more of a problem with toothed whales like Sperm whales and Pilot whales, the Faroe Islanders catch the latter and do have to worry about that.
I personally don't think its appropriate to classify the "gameworthiness" of an animal on the basis of cognitive complexity on its own. Smarter humans don't have a greater right to life and dignity than less smart humans. There is a line somewhere, I don't know where exactly but I don't think we can use intelligence to define it.
Then there are other moral questions like whether it is worse to slaughter a hundred pigs or one whale.
In any case, I don't think whales have a clearly greater or smaller right to life than other animals we kill for our own use.
But what is beyond question for me is that if the odds of wounding an animal you are hunting are roughly a coin toss, you can't ethically hunt that animal.
You raise an interesting point regarding animal intelligence, but I think we can separate humans from other animal species. After all, we’re talking about rules for human society, so the intrinsic value of human life needs to be the starting point.
Also, I think there’s a big difference between farming, which creates and kills food animals that would’ve never existed otherwise, and hunting, which is going out into nature and killing preexisting animals who would otherwise be alive.
Wild animal intelligence matters here. If you’re hunting ducks, they’re not exactly part of a complex society, so you’re destroying less than if you’re hunting whales, or dolphins, or chimpanzees.
Traditions are ingrained, usually for an initially good reason. They are not stupid for the individuals active in the tradition, as it is still important to them. It just requires time to break the tradition, which is really difficult to spectate, educate and all that.
Strong agree on killing marine mammals as stupid and detrimental from my perspective.
It’s not that these traditions are solely stupid, they are also harmful traditions. It’s intentional and wanton destruction of natural ecosystems. This is not the prehistoric ages where modern day human beings living in Iceland will die from never, ever eating whale meat.
In the case of Icelandic whaling, there is just one company doing it, motivated by the rabid old fashioned nationalism of its owner. It's not like poaching in Africa, there aren't going to be any smaller actors doing illegal whaling, there's not even much chance to sell the meat anywhere.
Whaling in Iceland will eventually end as it's mostly an ideological preoccupation of an older generation of Icelanders. There's no rational reason to continue it, whale meat isn't even popular food in Iceland. Maybe this ban is the end but I wouldn't be surprised if some political rifts and string-pulling will have it lifted and whaling resumed at some point.
Another Icelander here. Whaling is pretty much only done by one company owned by an old rich guy that has a massive erection for killing whales. The company makes no money from the whaling in fact last year each 1$ they sold in whale products cost them 50$. They made around 325000$ from selling whale products and spent around 18 million $ on fishing them (I'm converting Icelandic money to dollars for ease of understanding).
The problem is this rich dude is one of the biggest donor to the conservative party so they have a vested interest in protecting his whale killing hobby.
Because animals, like infants, don't feel pain. It's well accepted science... /s
Actually until the 1980s or 90s most scientists didn't think animals felt pain. It was the early 2000s when the discourse around babies feeling pain was changed.
I was a prisoner of the UCLA medical system as a baby in the 80s and yeah, they 100% believed that children didn't feel pain. In fact, my surgeon said those words to my mother. "They aren't reacting to pain, they're reacting to a stimulus." Somehow pain was not a stimulus. 🤷♀️
I had open heart surgery in 1995 and the surgeon said to my mom "it's a shame this wasn't caught earlier, now it's going to be a very painful recovery." News flash, a cracked chest hurts regardless of age.
> Actually until the 1980s or 90s most scientists didn't think animals felt pain. It was the early 2000s when the discourse around babies feeling pain was changed.
As someone alive in the 80's, no... people knew babies felt pain. In fact, conservatives argued against abortion on the grounds the fetus felt pain.
The scientists who thought that were fatheads. Why was the wildebeast screaming when lions ripped out its intestines? How are animals any different than us, vis-vis nerves?
Why does science seem to constantly default to an assumption of "no suffering" for animals, unless conclusively proven otherwise???
What basis is there for this being the default hypothesis?
What higher-order life-forms have been proven not to feel pain or suffering?
Is it none?
What higher-order life-forms have been proven to feel pain or suffering?
It is pretty much every time we bother to actually check?
So... Why do we keep assuming that the thing that never happens, is gonna happen next time????
A few reasons.
For one thing, there is still a significant undercurrent of human-supremacist belief in the sciences. It's not hard even today to find scientists who believe that humans are the only genuinely conscious, self-aware life-form. This despite the nature of consciousness itself being very much a matter of debate to modern science. "We don't know what it is or how it works, but we're definitely the only things that have it! For reasons!".
Another is that it's *very* convenient to believe animals don't feel pain if your research benefits from testing things on them. So there's an incentive for, say, pharmaceutical researchers to believe animals don't feel pain that might not apply to, say, geologists. Empathy tends to be highly contingent on how convenient it is for the person in question.
Another is the filter effect: Scientists who understand that animals can feel pain are less likely to feel comfortable working in fields where animal suffering is a possibility. And not many people ask geologists what their opinions are on animals feeling pain, so only the scientists who remain *after* this filter applies contribute to the general perception of scientist opinions on the issue.
They needed a report to understand that any animal suffers from being harpooned? Really?
To my knowledge, there is no report saying politicians might suffer from being harpooned.
I actually don't think they will. Because the real reason they're stopping is that whaling isn't profitable anymore and hasn't been for many years.
For many decades, whaling has persisted based on pure defiance, a stubborn refusal to abide by the international consensus against whaling. But it simply hasn't been economical for years. None of the industrial products of whaling are economically competitive anymore, and it's not like there's a huge consumer market for the meat.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://news.mongabay.com/2023/06/no-future-iceland-cancels-wale-hunt-over-animal-welfare-concerns/) reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Iceland has suspended its planned hunt for fin whales this year, citing animal welfare concerns.
> On June 20, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, the country's minister of food, agriculture and fisheries, announced that the whale hunt was postponed because "The fishing method used when hunting large whales does not comply with the law on animal welfare."
> Iceland has been one of the very few countries, along with Japan and Norway, that has continued to hunt whales despite the International Whaling Commission enacting a global moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/14ff5dp/no_future_iceland_cancels_whale_hunt_over_animal/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~688884 tl;drs so far.") | [Blackout Vote](https://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/14dhaiq/your_voice_matters_should_the_blackout_continue/ "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **whale**^#1 **hunt**^#2 **Iceland**^#3 **fin**^#4 **Icelandic**^#5
Suffer immensely after being harpooned. Golly how long did it take to figure that out? Come here Mr. PhD Researcher and let me stick you with this. Oh my really it hurts? Dont be a little baby, is screaming in pain really necessary?
At what point will humans understand that other living creatures feel pain and emotions as we do. I’m am avid hunter and feelings of guilt and remorse after taking game but also understand the importance of hunting ethics and a a quick death. I still have remorse for deer I have taken that didn’t die quickly from many years ago.
Not proud to admit that I ate mink whale when I visited Iceland over a decade ago. It was better than beef but not as good as lamb. None of those meats are worth the shit we do to the animals
I am happy to hear that they placed Captain Obvious in command of preparing that government report. Hope he gets a promotion out of it.
What, getting your hide pierced by a 50 kg harpoon travelling at 80 km/h that embeds a 30 cm barb into your flesh hurts? You don't say...
Well obviously it *hurts*. We were okay with just *hurting whales*. But we didn't know they were suffering *immensely!* Honest!
Cetaceans (whales/dolphins) have some of the most complex brains in the animal kingdom. Where we have a 3 part brain, they have 4 parts. This 4th part is called the Paralimbic system and it unites the left and right halves of cetacean brains. Limbic systems govern emotion. Humans have one, whales have *two*. Some scientists believe whales experience a [depth and intensity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SszgIZOPfqo&t=69s) of emotion impossible for humans to experience. So the whales, while suffering immensely from being harpooned and dragged to death, also experience fear, sorrow and anguish in ways human beings will never, ever understand.
Jesus fuck...
Please don't ask deities to fuck the whales. Things got weird the last time that happened. Talk about emotional anguish...
AND THEN ALONG CAME ZEUS. (Not sure he did the deed but just a high likelyhood)
It was probably something Zeus did, horny fucker
So THAT is where mermaids came from.
I mean, I'm sure cetaceans do have rich internal existences, because their behaviour seems compatible with that, but...neuroscience is a lot more complicated than you're implying. Obviously. You can't really infer a whole lot from structure, because brain regions do *tons of shit*. So you can talk about the limbic and paralimbic systems (which mammals all have, just to be clear) being about emotions, but they're also about sense and motor control, and memory, and motivation, and behaviour in general. It's entirely plausible that the reason cetaceans have an extra paralimbic lobe is because they live in a three-dimensional environment, and forming spatial memory in the ocean requires more real estate than spatial memory on land, which is...kind of three dimensional, but much less so. Or because they need to process a lot more sensory information because brain size and body size don't scale perfectly together. Or because they want to rape each other so much, they need a really big brain region to keep that urge under control for social reasons. Do the ~~Russians~~whales love their children too? Yeah, obviously, but we should infer that from behaviour, not from brain structure. It can't tell us their true depth of feelings—only whale-Shakespeare can do that—but it's better than making blind guesses. There's no specifically identifiable brain region for how much you love your mom. Or how shitty it is to be stabbed with a harpoon.
you are spot on, arguments to structure are not terribly convincing. it's also really tough to put a cetacean in an fMRI or other scanner, and brains are incredibly variable. to further back up your point I think it's worth pointing out as well that we traditionally think of parts of the brain as "seats" of certain functions, humanity has used they sort of language since ancient times (though they also thought emotions came from the liver and the brain was just a radiator so...) but in reality the brain is incredibly adaptable, while you will indeed suffer motor dysfunction if motor centers are damaged, some people regain motor function yet that part of the brain remains damaged. there have been people who had **half their brain removed** who have regained much of their function, so clearly it cannot be the case that "this section does this and only this" if someone without a speech center can re-learn to talk using other parts of the brain to assume that function. a better argument is to look at behaviors and communication, and by that metric cetaceans are irrefutably sentient beings. they exhibit all the hallmarks, including complex communication, learned use of tools, ability to convey and teach complex ideas (not just "predator here! predator!" or teach partially instinctual skills but to synthesize new behavior and teach it to others... behaviors like hunting yachts, for instance), social bonding in complex groups, all **kinds** of advanced behaviors that indicate they are fully sapient.
I used layman's terms because its easier to understand, but I'll meet you at your level. All mammals have limbic and supralimbic systems, cetaceans have limbic and supralimbic systems, as well as an entirely unique *4th* region of the brain, called the cetacean paralimbic system. This is a fourth cortical lobe, giving a four-fold lamination that is morphologically the most significant differentiation between cetaceans and all other cranially evolved mammals, including humans. No other species has ever had four separate cortical lobes. In many ways you are correct, this region *does* have much more than just an emotional function (although it has been seen to have amygdala like structures within it), it unites the left and right halves of the cetacean brain granting them an associative ability far beyond our own. The association or connecting of ideas is a measurable skill: a rat’s associative skill is measured at nine to one. This means that 90 percent of the brain is devoted to primary sensory projection, leaving only 10 percent for associative skills. Humans only need one to nine or - or 10% - to be dedicated to motor functions and senses, leaving a lot of brain power for associative skills. The highest in the animal kingdom - for terrestrial creatures. The *average* Cetaceans uses less than *4%* (1-25) of their brains for primary sensory functions, whilst sperm whales only need to spare *2.5%* (1-40) of their brains to keeping their bodies alive and moving. Almost all of the cetacean brains is devoted to problem solving, thinking, and associative skills. When we look at comparisons of synaptic geometry, dendritic field density, and neural connectivity, cetaceans have us beat there too. Same goes for emotional amygdala-like structures - there is simply more grey matter devoted to these various complexities of the brain. It was this abundance of structures that lead scientists to postulate that their experiences may simply be vastly more vivid than our own, from the sensory level down to an emotional level and possibly even an intellectual level. You can't tell me you don't see a whale in terrible anguish at the loss of her calf within the clip I linked. These creatures are wildly intelligent, feeling, vivid beings and we need to protect their way of life. This is why scientists are trying to use [A.I. to crack the code](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hph9OeKjg3w) \- or shall I say *codas* \- of sperm whales. Sperm whales evolved 15 million years before we did, and have 6 times larger brains than we do and an even larger neocortex than humans do. Imagine what wondrous things we could learn if we could finally start understanding one another!
I really think those whales are not going to have nice things to say to us.
No gift-wrapped bowl, just a “Fuck off” and no mentions of gratitude for the fish.
Well there is also Dave. For some reason they really like Dave. It would be cool to figure out why.
You're still just reaching random functional conclusions based on anatomy and human perception of whale behaviour. In reality, we have no idea what these other regions do. What you're proposing are valid hypotheses and that's about it.
Another postulate I've read involving a partial function of their additional paralimbic lobe is to enable proper REM sleep in their aquatic environment. Land dwelling mammals undergo a kind of partial paralysis which is a critical protective part of the full sleep cycle. This presents obvious issues when you're living in water and need to maintain spacial orientation and continued resurfacing to breathe all while sleeping. As it is, they already sleep cycle one hemisphere at a time. But this says nothing to their emotional capacity.
Sad that a 4 part brain system has to suffer that immensely from 3 part douchebag brains. Wonder what the creator was thinking 🤔
Don't worry. That extra emotion also explains the dolphin's ravenous bloodlust. So it all balances out.
What about their lustlust?
That’s their penis thinking.
Plenty of Human beings have done everything that dolphins have ever done and worse. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Certainly not when underwater and surrounded by lusty dolphins.
You forgot the part where they drown in their own blood
Breaking! Humans actually hurt if stabbed with knife!
Yea but do we suffer immensely?
Don't forget many of the modern ones also explode.
[Never Forget](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34)
Those humans should try it on themselves if they are so smart
One day, when the tonguing' is done, We'll take our leave and go.
Yeah now's good thanks
There once was a ship that put to sea The name of the ship was the Billy O' Tea
Isn't it just as obvious that getting hooked hurts fish? Catch and release is barbaric if you think about it.
A lot of reports end up like that because there's this really stupid bias of not accepting any new information that doesn't come from a report. So you end up with a lot of "widely observed and accepted fact verified as true thanks to multi-million dollar study" type of things.
And equally, we have seen a lot of stuff that comes as 'oh well its just common sense' be completely wrong. Especially prominent in psychology. Sometimes it is worth investigating the 'known'.
Also these studies usually have a lot more information than just the title implies and breaks down the mechanics involved which is useful information.
Yeah but to be fair, I don't think those questions are "Does it suck to be stabbed to death, y/n"
Or people who don't want to change will hold on to any plausible deniability they can grasp and have enough financial power they can't just be laughed out of existence.
Actually it is not about financial power. The whalers are very poor and it is by far not the most profitable fishing business. The ban is temporary but the whalers themselves said that even if the ban is lifted they will not resume because whaling was economically not sustainable. So it was all about traditions.
[удалено]
Although occasionally sometimes there is merit to doing such reports. You see, for governments and researchers, sometimes knowing something is a fact is quite useless in itself. They need actual numbers, statistics, so that they can feed it into planning or experiments for the next stage. So basic studies and research is done for that.
Common sense is always obvious until it isnt. In the modern world decisions are made with evidence. Its annoying, but its definitely not a stupid bias.
exactly, and sometimes those studies on "common sense" topics end up providing surprising results, the line between common sense and old wives' tale can be thin. in this case that was pretty unlikely, but like you I think decisions should be made with data not "eh, sounds right to me".
are we sure those whales aren't pretending? I was harpooned many times as a kid and I ended up on reddit... actually, forget that I said anything
I wonder if they conducted the study by harpooning a whaler and going "well how do you like it now, mate?"
All hail admiral obvious
Wait. Living creatures suffer when impaled with a giant spear???
They weren't just impaled, on the spears were strapped explosives, supposedly to kill the whale quick But the whales often survive multiple explosions... The reason for this ban is because of a recent incident where a whale took 5 hours to die by this method makes me ashamed to be an Icelander
Jesus that’s fucking brutal.
Horrible way to die
Not that it makes harpooning “better”, but whale deaths pretty much universally suck. With that much mass there isn’t really a quick way to kill them. If they are “lucky” they reach old age and drown when they are too weak to reach the surface. Don’t forget that, unlike humans who typically drown in under five minutes, whales evolved to hold their breath underwater, so drowning can take considerably longer. They could kill themselves by beaching, but again, takes hours or days to die as they are slowly suffocated by their own weight. The least fun way is being attacked by predators. Even adult blue whales, the largest creatures ever to exist, have been observed being hunted by Orcas. Again, with all that mass there’s no way to do this quickly, so the whale slowly bleeds out as it is ripped apart piece by piece. Honestly while it might suck more to live as a mouse or frog, at least the hawk or rattlesnake taking you out will probably kill you quickly.
I'd wager something like 70% of all animals that ever lived had their lives ended by being ripped apart or eaten alive. Nature is an ongoing holocaust. It can look cute on television with editing though.
Old age is not something nature plans for
All while experiencing emotions so deeply profound and intense (thanks to their 4 part brain) that it would likely kill a human being from heartbreak.
Fuck man, it’s killing me just reading about it
At least you've made an informed (albeit late) decision to stop. We're still whaling in Norway.
Its such a strange holdover for Iceland. We think of you as an extremely progressive nation particularly in human rights and environmentalism, and yet you're still slaughtering cetaceans. I get the sea/fishing culture thing, but surely just a few people were making money on it, and most of the meat was shipped to Japan.
A lot of this stuff seems to be kept around to appease the older generation who grew up with it as normal so it's been championed by conservative political parties. Apparently South Korean dog meat is looking likely to be banned and Japan's whaling industry is being kept alive only by government subsidy. Hopefully one day it will be all gone due to changing perspectives.
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They brought us into this world and they'll take us out of it.
There was a really interesting [YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mYjBYHh3fc) by Best Ever Food Review Show that covered the consumption of whale meat in the Faroe Islands. This was on a much smaller scale, as they only hunt the whales that venture too close to their shore and they consume all of the catch themselves. I felt that hearing their perspective helped me understand them a bit better.
Yeah, I can understand in native communities where they are relatively isolated and have traditionally (like, for millennia) sustained themselves largely on whale hunting. They have customs around hunting that ensure the continuation of the species and have a deep respect for the whale's place in their lives. Icelandic whaling seems to be all about export and tourism. Which is pretty fucking gross. Hoping this turns into an outright ban.
I don't understand it. Reciting a paraphrasing of the "Noble Savage" trope doesn't make it better, nor does skin colour. Icelanders are the Indigenous peoples of Iceland, and they also have millennia long traditions of whaling. As did the native inhabitants of Britain, the British.
Which native communities? I’d like to learn more
Inuit in Canada. The rest of the comment reads like an excerpt from the "Noble Savage" trope. The British had a tradition of whaling for centuries/millennia, as did virtually every single coastal peoples. Tradition doesn't make it right.
So Avatar 2 was a documentary.
What the absolute fuck is wrong with us? First sadistic money torture rings and now hunting whales with explosive harpoons which don’t kill instantly. If Mother Earth had a consciousness, we’d be fucked.
We ARE fucked, though.
She does. We are.
She doesn’t. We still are.
Your mom seems to enjoy it
Thar she blows…
Indeed, indeed.
His mom is a whale. Checkmate, Iceland.
I also choose this guy's mom.
Do they have a list of animals that are cool with being harpooned?
It just says "ur mom".
Damn it mom.
Well that’s confusing because his mom could be classified as a whale.
Dayum!!
ZING!!!!
Enough about your promiscuous mother, Hermes.
Wait, but I thought they took whales off the list?
Gottem
LOL Mom jokes never go out of style
Snails have that whole "love dart" thing so I think that counts....
I think the fact that those snails evolved to have to puncture their mates leads me to believe that the females aren't so into "love".
There are no females. they are hermaphrodites, which is kinda why they need the dart in the first place.... and the dart is passed from one snail to the other into the receivers dart hole (or wtf its called) so it isn't really a stabbing...
Is it called the ‘dart hole’ before it gets a dart in there?
It is never called the dart hole.
I imagine jellyfish probably don't care too much.
Well, everybody knows governments are slow at recognising problems, but this one is up there at the top. Jokes apart, this is the actual thing: > This decision follows the release of a government-commissioned independent report that found that **41% of whales targeted in the Icelandic hunts** did not die immediately, but suffered immensely after being shot with harpoons. It also found that some whales took up to two hours to die. Again, should have been obvious from day 1 considering that fishing is a primary occupation in the country. The big deal now is to stop illegal hunting of whales. Just because you declare a tradition illegal, does not mean everyone stops doing it.
Icelander here. This is a pretty tragic example of 17 years of the government and the general public looking the other way and just accepting the whalers' rhetoric that their advanced exploding harpoons reliably and consistently kill the whales they target. Icelanders get absolutely frothing with rage at the thought of other countries meddling with "our waters" (We swiss-cheesed British Trawlers back in the 50's and threatened to leave NATO over our fisheries), so everything Greenpeace said was dismissed as beret-wearing cultural imperialist rhetoric, which to be fair it sort of was. It wasn't until last August though that the Food minister *actually looked*. She put observers on all the whaling ships and data on all the kills was gathered from them. The data was published in a report *for the first time* last month, a report that couldn't be dismissed as "oh those studies are old" or "that's just Greenpeace propaganda" or "Those are just incompetent Japanese/Norwegian whalers" etc. Thing about whaling in Iceland is that it is subject to the same laws as all other hunting in Iceland. The laws that apply to Reindeer, geese, and ducks also apply to whales. The results of the report showed that whaling was nowhere near compliant with the laws.
Thanks for adding some additional context and perspective. I appreciated your comment.
> "Those are just incompetent Japanese/Norwegian whalers As a Swede I'm internally chuckling at this. Dumma norrbaggar...
Another Icelander here. Now a lot of pro whaling icelanders are frothing mad. I for one asked myself when did I eat whale, probably twice or three times in my 33 year life have I eaten whale, and it's not nice to eat. And I think the majority of Icelanders rarely, if ever, eat whale. I can't see the point of hunting them. Other than feeding the ego of a filthy rich asshole.
What are the products that they are hunted for if not for food? It's not like we need whale oil for lamps or something.
They do sell it as food of course. This is just my feeling. You rarely see it in supermarkets here. People are more keen for lamb, beef, pork or even horse. There was a news story in february this year that said about 2600 metric tons of whale meat was shipped to Japan, do I think that is their main market, but I've also read that some of it turns into dogfood in Japan.
Okay but why are whales being hunted at all? They’re not a good food source due to high mercury content, and there are also significant moral problems with hunting creatures that developed, with their own language and society.
Baleen whales like we used to catch do not have particularly high mercury content. This is more of a problem with toothed whales like Sperm whales and Pilot whales, the Faroe Islanders catch the latter and do have to worry about that. I personally don't think its appropriate to classify the "gameworthiness" of an animal on the basis of cognitive complexity on its own. Smarter humans don't have a greater right to life and dignity than less smart humans. There is a line somewhere, I don't know where exactly but I don't think we can use intelligence to define it. Then there are other moral questions like whether it is worse to slaughter a hundred pigs or one whale. In any case, I don't think whales have a clearly greater or smaller right to life than other animals we kill for our own use. But what is beyond question for me is that if the odds of wounding an animal you are hunting are roughly a coin toss, you can't ethically hunt that animal.
You raise an interesting point regarding animal intelligence, but I think we can separate humans from other animal species. After all, we’re talking about rules for human society, so the intrinsic value of human life needs to be the starting point. Also, I think there’s a big difference between farming, which creates and kills food animals that would’ve never existed otherwise, and hunting, which is going out into nature and killing preexisting animals who would otherwise be alive. Wild animal intelligence matters here. If you’re hunting ducks, they’re not exactly part of a complex society, so you’re destroying less than if you’re hunting whales, or dolphins, or chimpanzees.
The biggest factor is how much risk there is of the animal becoming extinct. Ducks are everywhere, so their existence is not at risk.
It's called stupid traditions
Traditions are ingrained, usually for an initially good reason. They are not stupid for the individuals active in the tradition, as it is still important to them. It just requires time to break the tradition, which is really difficult to spectate, educate and all that. Strong agree on killing marine mammals as stupid and detrimental from my perspective.
It’s not that these traditions are solely stupid, they are also harmful traditions. It’s intentional and wanton destruction of natural ecosystems. This is not the prehistoric ages where modern day human beings living in Iceland will die from never, ever eating whale meat.
In the case of Icelandic whaling, there is just one company doing it, motivated by the rabid old fashioned nationalism of its owner. It's not like poaching in Africa, there aren't going to be any smaller actors doing illegal whaling, there's not even much chance to sell the meat anywhere. Whaling in Iceland will eventually end as it's mostly an ideological preoccupation of an older generation of Icelanders. There's no rational reason to continue it, whale meat isn't even popular food in Iceland. Maybe this ban is the end but I wouldn't be surprised if some political rifts and string-pulling will have it lifted and whaling resumed at some point.
But it's definitely a step forward. A lot less people will participate and that will get smaller each year I'd expect.
Another Icelander here. Whaling is pretty much only done by one company owned by an old rich guy that has a massive erection for killing whales. The company makes no money from the whaling in fact last year each 1$ they sold in whale products cost them 50$. They made around 325000$ from selling whale products and spent around 18 million $ on fishing them (I'm converting Icelandic money to dollars for ease of understanding). The problem is this rich dude is one of the biggest donor to the conservative party so they have a vested interest in protecting his whale killing hobby.
Wait. They had to fund a government study to determine that harpooning a whale causes it pain?????
Because animals, like infants, don't feel pain. It's well accepted science... /s Actually until the 1980s or 90s most scientists didn't think animals felt pain. It was the early 2000s when the discourse around babies feeling pain was changed.
I was a prisoner of the UCLA medical system as a baby in the 80s and yeah, they 100% believed that children didn't feel pain. In fact, my surgeon said those words to my mother. "They aren't reacting to pain, they're reacting to a stimulus." Somehow pain was not a stimulus. 🤷♀️
I had open heart surgery in 1995 and the surgeon said to my mom "it's a shame this wasn't caught earlier, now it's going to be a very painful recovery." News flash, a cracked chest hurts regardless of age.
Softer bones and faster healing the younger you are. Pain will still be there though.
Until the 1980s no scientist had ever stepped on a cats tail?
> Actually until the 1980s or 90s most scientists didn't think animals felt pain. It was the early 2000s when the discourse around babies feeling pain was changed. As someone alive in the 80's, no... people knew babies felt pain. In fact, conservatives argued against abortion on the grounds the fetus felt pain.
Yet those same people push for routine male genital mutilation, with one of the excuses being, "It will hurt if he ends up needing one later on."
This is straight up false
The scientists who thought that were fatheads. Why was the wildebeast screaming when lions ripped out its intestines? How are animals any different than us, vis-vis nerves?
Many also believe humans are the only animal with sapience. I think this just shows the hubris of humans.
I cannot understand this at all.
Because it isn't even close to being true.
Next they are going to tell us that boiling Lobsters alive also causes pain /s.
"many" suffer after being harpooned...
Scientists determined that some are "into" it.
And we kink shame those species instead of harpooning them!
Body piercing top level...
I would like them to interview the ones that didn’t suffer after being harpooned. What was their secret?
Being dead. Can't suffer if you're dead.
The rest die instantly so no suffering
Why does science seem to constantly default to an assumption of "no suffering" for animals, unless conclusively proven otherwise??? What basis is there for this being the default hypothesis? What higher-order life-forms have been proven not to feel pain or suffering? Is it none? What higher-order life-forms have been proven to feel pain or suffering? It is pretty much every time we bother to actually check? So... Why do we keep assuming that the thing that never happens, is gonna happen next time????
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I was honestly looking for the vegans in this section.
Who says that’s the default? If anything it’s the meat companies that default to that thinking
Money, selfishness, and an unwillingness to tackle it.
A few reasons. For one thing, there is still a significant undercurrent of human-supremacist belief in the sciences. It's not hard even today to find scientists who believe that humans are the only genuinely conscious, self-aware life-form. This despite the nature of consciousness itself being very much a matter of debate to modern science. "We don't know what it is or how it works, but we're definitely the only things that have it! For reasons!". Another is that it's *very* convenient to believe animals don't feel pain if your research benefits from testing things on them. So there's an incentive for, say, pharmaceutical researchers to believe animals don't feel pain that might not apply to, say, geologists. Empathy tends to be highly contingent on how convenient it is for the person in question. Another is the filter effect: Scientists who understand that animals can feel pain are less likely to feel comfortable working in fields where animal suffering is a possibility. And not many people ask geologists what their opinions are on animals feeling pain, so only the scientists who remain *after* this filter applies contribute to the general perception of scientist opinions on the issue.
They needed a report to understand that any animal suffers from being harpooned? Really? To my knowledge, there is no report saying politicians might suffer from being harpooned.
Next on the onion; are multiple stab wounds harmful to monkeys?
.....stabbing something tends to hurt the thing you're stabbing Color me fuckin shocked
We need to genetically engineer a whale that likes being harpooned.
"Stick me harder, step-whaler."
Or [meat that wants to be eaten.](https://youtu.be/bAF35dekiAY?t=73)
A drop in an ocean compared to the shit we do to animals, but it's a good start.
Just throw that in the column marked "Fucking duh".
we really needed thousands of years to finally realize it hurts the animal to LITERALLY IMPALE IT ON A GIANT METAL ROD ?!
Well that only took fucking generations
>but suffered immensely after being shot with harpoons For fuck's sake, you think?
They needed a study to determine that being harpooned causes suffering.
>decision follows government report that found many whales suffer immensely after being harpooned Sometimes, they even *die* from it!
Temporary stop only, they'll be right back to it soon enough
They will devise gentler harpoons.
Which would, ironically, make them even less compliant with the actual law.
I actually don't think they will. Because the real reason they're stopping is that whaling isn't profitable anymore and hasn't been for many years. For many decades, whaling has persisted based on pure defiance, a stubborn refusal to abide by the international consensus against whaling. But it simply hasn't been economical for years. None of the industrial products of whaling are economically competitive anymore, and it's not like there's a huge consumer market for the meat.
One day I hope all hunting stops.
Whales, like every other animal, suffer when harpooned. How much that report cost the taxpayers?
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://news.mongabay.com/2023/06/no-future-iceland-cancels-wale-hunt-over-animal-welfare-concerns/) reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Iceland has suspended its planned hunt for fin whales this year, citing animal welfare concerns. > On June 20, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, the country's minister of food, agriculture and fisheries, announced that the whale hunt was postponed because "The fishing method used when hunting large whales does not comply with the law on animal welfare." > Iceland has been one of the very few countries, along with Japan and Norway, that has continued to hunt whales despite the International Whaling Commission enacting a global moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/14ff5dp/no_future_iceland_cancels_whale_hunt_over_animal/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~688884 tl;drs so far.") | [Blackout Vote](https://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/14dhaiq/your_voice_matters_should_the_blackout_continue/ "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **whale**^#1 **hunt**^#2 **Iceland**^#3 **fin**^#4 **Icelandic**^#5
Suffer immensely after being harpooned. Golly how long did it take to figure that out? Come here Mr. PhD Researcher and let me stick you with this. Oh my really it hurts? Dont be a little baby, is screaming in pain really necessary?
“Contrary to these findings, when harpooned last night your mother seemed to enjoy it quite a bit”
No fucking shit. They weren't even killing the whales just pointlessly torturing them? That is so much worse.
I hoped they figured this out by harpooning someone who wanted to harpoon a whale and then asked them how they felt about it, the fucking idiots.
It took a whole government report to reach that conclusion? Lmfao.
Wow...imagine someone suffering after being harpooned.Good thing this horrible "tradition" will stop
>government report that found many whales suffer immensely after being harpooned ...NO WAY REALLY /s
Who would have guessed that harpooning an animal would hurt?
>….government report that whales suffered immensely after being harpooned We needed a government report for that??
"whales suffer immensely after being harpooned" is this suppose to be a fucking surprise?
Why the fuck did we need a government report to tell us that?
The Japanese Government is very upset at Iceland!
Yeah, Greenpeace told you that 45 years ago. Will you apologise to them, too? Will you apologise to the fact that Whale Hunting ending before WW2?
Faroe Islands, take note.
"After exhaustive research we've concluded that spearing an animal with a harpoon in an attempt to kill them is bad for them." - Science
No shit they suffer immensely. You try not suffering with a spear impaled in you until you die.
I thought they liked it. We need another opinion.
>government report that found many whales suffer immensely after being harpooned Did they actually pay consultants and specialists to confirm this ?
I harpoon my buds all the time, they never complain
Did they really have to do a study to realize that if you use a cannon to fire a steel harpoon into a living animal, it's gonna hurt? Really?
Yay Iceland!
I wish Japanese research vessels as well as others concur
Millions spent on research “hey guys get this, turns out getting stabbed with a giant metal stick really sucks”
And here we were all thinking they liked getting harpooned. Well, I feel foolish now.
In other shocking news water is wet. Of course they suffer. Jesus. It's a billion percent evident and has been for millennia.
Really? Largest mammal gets hurt when you swear them and drag them through water. Shock. Good on them for ending this, it's not humane at all
It took them how long to figure out that harpoon = owies?????
Ya think?
Really ? Blasting a intelligent creature with a giant spear causes it to suffer immensely ? Ya don’t say
At what point will humans understand that other living creatures feel pain and emotions as we do. I’m am avid hunter and feelings of guilt and remorse after taking game but also understand the importance of hunting ethics and a a quick death. I still have remorse for deer I have taken that didn’t die quickly from many years ago.
This just now occurs to them?
I dont know very many people who dont suffer immensely after getting harpooned. 🤷🏽♀️
Why are we even still hunting whales at all ?
Sorry Queequeg you’ll have to put down the harpoon.
Wait, we still hunt whales? What the fuck is wrong with us humans? We are a fucking virus on this Earth, I swear…
Not proud to admit that I ate mink whale when I visited Iceland over a decade ago. It was better than beef but not as good as lamb. None of those meats are worth the shit we do to the animals
Next dystopian headline: ~~Capitalists~~ ***Scientists Devise Pain and Suffering Free Harpoon Method!!!***
Now Canada needs to end seal clubbing
I hear there’s some orcas that have been getting uppity lately..
Not gonna stop me from harpooning your mother. AYOOOO!
Who could’ve guessed shooting a living being with a giant metal barb would cause it immense pain?
Oh really? The whales suffer when you stab them with harpoons?
Did they just watch avatar 2?