The Bent Fin

Keiko was the orca who starred in Free Willy. Like most male orcas held in captivity, he developed a bent, collapsed dorsal fin, something seen only rarely in the wild.

Researchers have never claimed the fin had stopped working; they viewed it as a visible sign of an altered life. The proposed reasons are: less deep diving and long-distance swimming, more time near the surface, less water pressure supporting the fin from below, and changes in the collagen of the tissue itself, with stress, age, and genetics likely playing their part too. The animal’s shape changed because its life-its environment-changed.

The fin is not the disease. The fin is the flag.

And is it the same for us? We are toolmakers and innovators without equal. We are also creatures who love comfort and who grow quietly addicted to it. We have built ourselves a warm habitat with easy food, and we may be beginning to bend in ways the wild never bent us.