The View co-hosts finally addressed the death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau during Monday morning's Hot Topics session.
The co-hosts' varied widely in their opinions on whether or not a killer whale like Tilikum should be kept in captivity and made to entertain an audience for it's food.
"By nature it is a killer whale," said co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck. "This is how it was designed to be so it was actually doing what it's meant to do."
The View co-host Sherri Shepherd agreed heartily with Hasselbeck's assessment, stating: "It's like in their genetics and their DNA...You put your head in their mouth, they're supposed to bite you."
National Geographic says that the term "killer whale" is something of a misnomer. Killer whales are actually large dolphins, and while they are known as one of the world' greatest predators, they hunt for fish, seals and other whales, not people.
Then Hasselbeck made a fragmented statement about why the whale that killed Dawn Brancheau should no longer be a moneymaker for SeaWorld. "I would hope that they wouldn't make anyone coming to look at this whale, make a spectacle out of it. This is something that was a pure tragedy...They should not have this whale visible to anyone at the time."
Joy Behar countered Hasselbeck's assertion with an irrefutable statistic: "The day that the whale killed the girl, there were 20 people in the audience. The other day that they resumed, there were 2,000 people in the audience in the cold rain. What does that tell you?"
Behar likened the killer whale show at SeaWorld to past entertainment practices that are now considered barbaric and immoral: "It may go away, these kind of events. They used to have freak shows in circuses years ago."
Barbara Walters said that the death of Brancheau, while tragic, is one of the reasons that spectators are attracted to places like SeaWorld in the first place: "Part of the thrill is, as awful as it sounds, will this person have his head [makes a motion like a person's head being bitten off] part of it is the excitement and the danger."
Watch the full Hot Topics discussion of the SeaWorld tragedy below
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Comments
Free Willy and put the banks in tanks and cages.
Wow--didn't know that about the change in audience size. People are sick.
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