This recent article on the ABC website generated a lot of comment, not all of it agreeing that the ethical issues posed by whales sharing many characteristics and abilities with humans means that they should no longer be kept in captivity for entertainment or research purposes.

http://www.abc.net.au/environment/artic ... 406990.htm

What are your views?

The meat tastes all right as does dolphin.

I read the article and all the scientific reasoning is flawed by one inescapable fact.
Despite their supposed intelligence dolphins and whales are stupid and do not seem to learn from experience.

Despite having been hunted for hundreds of years they still loll along on the surface near whaling ships and within the range of primitive short range guns firing captive harpoons.

One has only to hunt pigs to find that in an area where they have not been previously hunted that they soon learn to fear man, they learn from experience. The lowly rabbit is the same, go into an area where they have never heard a gunshot and they are easy to kill. They will hop about a bit when one is killed but will stay above ground, after a few days of hunting they will be down the burrows at the sound of the first shot.

Foxes and wild dogs are very smart, ask anyone who hunts them

They learn fast, not so it would appear with whales and dolphins.
Every year we see the same sad process, whales swimming peacefully along being overtaken by a whaling vessel and harpooned.

If they were not stupid then at the first sound of engines they would dive deep and surface to breathe when they needed to, behind the ship or well out of range to either side, but despite years of bitter experience they seem to have learned nothing.

On second thoughts they may share some human attributes after all; the ability to be stupid as well as intelligent being one.