Wednesday, October 21, 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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6 comments:
Wade
have you read this article below about the noah's arc zoo ho breeds animals for Martin Laceys Great British Circus.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/somerset/8310757.stm
Bjorn
Wade,
Saw a movie tonight called "Ghosts in the Darkness". It is about the Tsavo lions of 1898 who killed about 14o people in Tsavo, East Africa. The lions in the movie were both males, however the pictures from the Field Museum in Chicago look like females. Wondering if you know anything about this and can clarify the sex of the original two lions.
Thanks Wade!
Amy Scott
Amy,
The Tsavo lions were most assuredly males, with no manes, or remnant manes as is characteristic of all lions in the Tsavo region. The reason for the unusually aggressiveness/man eating tendencies of the Tsavo area lions has been speculated on for years, ranging from disease outbreak which depleted their normal prey, to availability of alternative/human nutrition given the slaves that died and were left at the Tsavo river running through the area, to the Hindu(main source of labor in building the railroad) custom of partially cremating the dead leaving a steady supply of "food", to broken teeth, and not being able to hunt normally. Take your pick. New more reliable scientific studies, are pointing to a genetic "aberrant" testosterone level, explaining the lack of mane's in the males, and may also explain the aggressiveness of the Tsavo lions. I find them interesting in that studied further and more intensely, we may discover a "missing link" between prehistoric saber-toothed felines, or more exciting possibly be witness to the evolutionary change of an existing regional species. Structurally they are about the ugliest conformational odd lions in existence, being big, tall, and rangy. Bruce D. Patterson has authored some great works on the subject, including a piece in the Journal of Mammology, co-authored by E.J. Neiburger and S. M. Kasiki dealing with tooth breakage and/or dental disease as causes of man eating or "carnivore-human conflict", to be less "hollywood."
Wade
Amy/Wade,
As aside note to Amy's post - many years ago, when this movie was first released, my son went to see it. He had been bought up all his life in the circus with Big Cats of several species always in sight and sound.
This movie showed him, in Hollywood style of course, a side to lions that he had never imagined and he confesses to having been scared of roaring lions for the first and only time in his life for many months after seeing the movie.
Incidentally, I believe that the principal lion "actors" in the movie came from Mr Mike Hackenberg at Bowmanville Zoo in Canada.
Steve,
Hackenberger.
Wade
Wade,
Thank you for the clarification on the sex of the lions. I had a feeling that there was some abnormality in their hormones or genetic makeup that answered the question for the aggressive behavior they exhibitied. I am guessing these two were young and without a pride and therefore joined together as a hunting coalition?
Was a fascinating movie and even more fascinating to find out it was based on a true story. Thanks again for your insights on this subject. I am thinking of picking up the original book by John Henry Patterson.
Amy Scott
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