The Not-So-Gentle Whale

Illustration from an early edition of Moby-Dick

Genesis 1:26
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

Like dinosaurs, whales are huge and wondrous creatures whose sheer size and majesty glorify the Creator. Some whales are even larger than were any of the dinosaurs.

Whales were hunted for generations for processing into a variety of products. It was not until they were hunted to near extinction that governments began to work to prevent this from happening. Much of the hunting was justified on the grounds that whales were ruthless killers. After that perception of whales was proven wrong, the pendulum swung the other way. As a result, the public, and even many scientists, began to romanticize whales. They were presented to the public as gentle, benevolent giants. It became stylish to talk about the whale as an intelligent creature, rivaling and perhaps surpassing humans. Now more objective research into whale behavior shows that whales, while magnificent creatures, are nothing more than wild animals.

Researchers have learned that while whales can be gentle, they can also be terribly violent. They have documented males in vicious battles for the attentions of females. Sometimes as many as ten males will be involved in a free-for-all. Their fighting tactics include ramming each other at full force with their 40-ton bodies. Whales are not very loyal, either. Males will mate with several females. Worse, they will attack females to force them to mate.

Unlike humans, whales are animals, and only humans were created to have an intimate relationship with their Creator.

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