Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Example 2--Fact or Fiction--The old time trainers only used, "jungle bred killers," and never used "captive born" animals in their acts.

Often times folks will say, "the old school only used and trained "jungle bred killers" in their act's as a way of casting aspersions on Trainers like GGW, Bauman, or modern trainers. You have to wonder, when seeing pictures like these, if it is a fact/fiction, or just " self serving jackpots like, "look at the paralized beaks on the European/American elephants", " he/she is a European Style Trainer," "he/she is a good animal person because they keep the truck's oiled up." You also have to wonder what they did with these cubs, beings they were real trainers and didn't use the "candy ass" captive born ones like we do today. Did they dispose of them? Did they trade them for some 5/6 year old "jungle bred killers" that Buck had just imported? Did they put them in the menagerie/zoo where they spent their life as exhibit animals, given they needed those "jungle bred killers" for the real training? LOL

Why even breed for baby felines if you had no intention of using them? Maybe "these" were some that were caught and imported. Maybe "this" is what the "self serving paper" is referencing when they say, GGW/Baumann had to use hand raised animals, he couldn't train that "jungle bred" stuff like Beatty, Stark, Roth, Jacobs did. LOL

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Think we can assume "jungle-bred" owes something to the press agents silver tongue. Seriously though, the era of Stark or Beatty the turnover in cats appearing in an act was much higher. Acts like Beatty's required a constant infusion of new animals. Guy like Beatty had no time for young animals to mature, so by and large they wanted adult animals that were immediately available. Some of those cats came out of zoo surplus and were almost certainly captive born, some came from importers. Doubt that any real trainers bought into the hype that animals from the wild were always superior, so long as a captive born animal hadn't acquired a laundry list of bad habits.

Wade G. Burck said...

Ben,
Don't fool yourself on how many trainers bought/buy into the hype that wild animals were superior. It is actually stunning. Most of it being the lions are tougher then tigers syndrome. I have said many times all felines are basically the same, but that I found lions to be pickup trucks and tigers to be Ferrari's. Makes a lot of people hot. On the "history channel" today, Rudolf Matisse is quoted as saying, "lions are boring." Let's see how many of those "by God old school" folks rip into him. LOL
Pictures do not lie, as a rule. We can assume a lot has to do with "silver tongues." Not just press agent's either.
Wade