Killer whale was treated differently, handler admits

By Martin Evans Published: 7:46AM GMT twenty-six February 2010

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Chuck Tompkins, arch animal tutor for SeaWorld Orlando in Florida, pronounced the 12,300 bruise orca"s perfect distance and story of prior attacks meant handlers had to take special precautions.

Tilikum was one of 3 torpedo whales blamed for the drowning of a prior tutor in Canada in 1991. Eight years after a late night play ground antagonist was found passed in his pool.

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The ultimate tragedy struck when the 30-year-old animal grabbed maestro tutor Dawn Brancheau"s ponytail and dragged her underneath the H2O drowning her.

Mr Tomkins, who outlayed five years precision Tilikum, described him as a "good animal" but certified there were opposite manners when doing him compared to alternative torpedo whales at the attraction.

He said: "We treated with colour Tilikum differently. We knew since of his distance and since of prior incidents, we did not get in to the H2O with him. We had really specific manners of how we interacted with him. He"s large, masculine outrageous and we reputable his size."

He added: "We"re operative with wild animals, they"re not tame. If there"s passionate wake up in the pool, or may be they"re socially interacting with each other, we"re really supportive to those things.

"You don"t house pet your dog in the center of a dog fight. We sight the staff to comply these things. We"re lerned for those situations. We can envision 99.9 per cent of the time what they"re going to do.

"We know what to do with these animals. We know how to correlate with them. If something doesn"t feel right, we get out of the water. We know when to step behind and let them be animals. We"ve had millions of certain interactions."

Despite the tragedy SeaWorld have pronounced they will not be destroying Tilikum and have additionally deserted calls to recover him in to the wild.

Brancheau"s comparison sister, Diane Gross, pronounced the trainer, who was tied together with no children, would not wish anything to occur to the whale and the family regarded her genocide as a comfortless accident.

"Dawn desired the whales similar to her children, she desired all of them," her sister said. "They all had personalities, great days and bad days."