Wednesday, March 18, 2009
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A Blog designed for discussion of topics related to, but not limited to, Circus, Zoos, Animal Training, and Animal Welfare/Husbandry. Sometimes opening up the dialog is the best starting point of all. And if for nothing else when people who agree and don't agree, get together and start discussing it, it will open up a lot of peoples minds. Debate and discussion even amongst themselves opens a window where there wasn't one before.
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4 comments:
An interesting (for me) to follow viewing circus sea lion posters: Pre 1900 they featured catching hats, blowing horns, and going down slides. About 1900 Joseph Woodward taught a sea lion to balance a ball on it's nose. After 1900 balancing tricks were featured.
Woodward was an English trainer who's family operated an aquarium. He developed a pinniped act that first appeared in music halls and then circuses. During WWI he trained sea lions to locate German submarines -- long before the US Navy's marine mammal program.
Jim,
Good stuff. It is interesting to note, that with exception not much changed from the 1900's. I have noted that with land mammals. There was a point a few years after the start, of a few cat's in a square cage that some jumps and pyramids started. But 100 years later not much had changed. I think that had a lot to do with the present lack of interest.
Wade
Maybe there's a cycle:
At the 1988 IMATA Conference at Sea World San Antonio I watched the new sea lion show with some coleagues. It was done well but as we were leaving the arena I noted there was no balancing behavior (we are marine mammal people). That was against the rules for sea lions. Since Sea World set a standard, a lot of people dropped the balancing tricks. Hey, they're time consuming to training and you could claim they were old fashion.
About 15 years later at the Long Beach Conference they showed some old films from Marineland of the Pacific with Capt. Winston and Art Thomas and their sea lions. Young trainers saw sea lions stand on one front flipper spinning on a pedestal and all kinds of balancing tricks (that's what Art and Capt. Winston called them). You could hear the "wows" in the room. Balancing behaviors became stylish again and a few old timers quietly thought, "where the **** have they been?"
rchie.
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