How Lion Taming Works

Bossing a lion around in front of a crowd at a circus has been an attraction for 200 years, but exactly how lion tamers get their captive wild animals to comply has evolved over time. Take a peek in the jaws of this odd profession with Josh and Chuck.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Pritt. Uh. This is Stuff you
should Know. Yeah. Uh, this Josh is another episode of

(00:23):
the Summer of Sam. Are are Oh this kid is good? Yeah?
Our friend Sama t Garden is programming our show here
and there, Hey and Samson and haw Lian Taming Works,
which is also written by Debbie Ronca my buddy, Yeah
from New Jersey roller Derby Debbie as I call her,

(00:43):
I don't call her that, No, you don't. I call
her deb friend if calor roller Derber Debby. You did
it perfectly the first yea roller Derby Debby, that would
just get difficult. Yeah, um, well, right on, this one's
just gonna be great then because there's a good article too.
That's right, and you can read Debbie's also flog at
freak Girl dot com. That's quite a plug. Um. And

(01:06):
then where are we at with Saam? So Sam has
now selected how lion Taming works? What was the first one?
I can't remember. It was a couple of weeks ago.
He's done too. Man, it was awesome, but we actually
recorded a couple that he had not heard yet that
he also had on his list just by chance. We're
gonna attribute those to him, just just the ones that
we saw afterwards. But anyway, thanks Sam, this is a

(01:27):
good one. We'll put chuck. Um. Well, let's see. Uh,
I have a bit of an intro. Have you ever
heard the idea that the Simpsons have a tendency to
predict the future? Uh no, okay, Well let me enlighten you. Um.
There was an episode called Um Homer h O m r.

(01:50):
Season twelve, Episode nine, excellent episode. It's where Homer Um.
Basically they find out that Homer is a crayons stuck
in his brain, a crayon crayon, Yeah, from childhood, and
they were They removed it, and his i Q just
immediately doubles classic. In two thousand seven years after Homer Um,
a German lady age fifty nine, Um was going to

(02:10):
get surgery to cure her chronic headaches. They found a
pencil that was stuck up there from childhood. Did she
stuck up there? Yeah, when she was a kid and
apparently forgot they found they removed the pencil. She's fine.
People are wacky, Yeah, but isn't that weird? Yeah? Sure, okay, UM,
here's another one. Let me see what you think about this.

(02:32):
Um Homer uh in the Treehouse of Horror nineteen who
definitely didn't see that one. Really? I quit watching it
after that season twenty UM, he goes to vote for
Obama on election Day and the UM well, it's it's
a takeoff of Dive de Bold, the the UM voting

(02:53):
machines that had so many problems. He goes to vote
for UM Obama and instead it starts owning a bunch
of times for McCain. Okay, so the next I guess
that year, a woman from West Virginia said that she
checked the box next to Obaba and it just automatically
switched over to McCain. This is after this thing came out, okay,

(03:15):
which would mean it's predicting. Probably most chilling is UM
comes from Springfield with the S spelled is a dollar sign.
The subtitle is or How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love Legalized Gambling. Season five, episode ten, Springfield gets
a casino, Mr Burns Casino Great One, and in it
are two characters who are obviously based on Siegfried and

(03:37):
Roy and they're with their white tiger, Anastasia. She loves
the city. Yeah, um and uh anastalgia. Um flashes back
to when she was caught in the wild by Siegfried
and Roy shot her with the trick Lizer gun, and
Um spits out her little bubble pipe and her little
beanie and attacks one of them. Yeah. This is a

(04:01):
full ten years before the attack of Roy. Horn In
two is Outan three during a show at the Mirage
in Las Vegas, where Um one of their white tigers
attacked him. Monte Core attacked Roy and basically just ended
their career, right then. Yeah, I think on that one, like,
if you're gonna write a Simpsons episode aping sick Green, right,

(04:24):
what else are they gonna do? You're gonna have the
line need him or the tiger. I'm sorry, you raise
an excellent point here, but it's still it is. But
you raise a very good point, and the point is, Um,
I think everybody who sees someone interacting with the tamest
wild animal you could possibly imagine still will not be
surprised if that animal kills the person. Yeah, because, as

(04:48):
Jack Hannah put it, very um appropriately, I think and
Jack Hanna he was the original Steve Irwin. Right, uh, yeah, sure. Um.
He said you can train a while animal, but you
could never tame a wild animal. And that's a really
big important point in the world of I guess lion taming. Yeah,

(05:09):
and another famous lion trainer, slash Tamer. We're going to
probably interchange those words. Said you can't tame a lion
because if you did that, there would be no act. Yeah, okay.
Part of the part of the act and part of
the thrill of this for people is the fact that
these are wild beasts and if it was just it
was a penguin, it wouldn't be very exciting. No, it wouldn't.

(05:31):
I'd like to see that a train penguin. Well, yeah,
I'm putting your mouth in it, head in its mouth
and cracking of wi fun. Yeah, it would be. Um,
it would be really mind blowing if the penguin was
dressed like a lion tamer and you were treating it
like a lion. Okay, I've got another lion tamer quote
for you, then, smart guy, all right, Gunther Gebble Williams. Yeah,

(05:52):
he was the one I saw growing up at the
Wrinkling Brothers. He said, a wild animal is like a
loaded gun. It can go off at any time. So
let's end the intro with that. Okay, let's talk about
lion taming. You you brought up a really good point,
Chuck Um. The if you are in this world these days,
it's not lion tamer, it's lion trainer or wild animals trainer. Yes,

(06:14):
because none of these people think that they have a
tame animal on their hands. Now. It's sort of the
hubris of some of these early jerks. Um that we'll
talk about right now. Uh. Eighteen nineteen was kind of
when it all got going. Frenchman named Ari Martine Um, Yeah,
hey to our French listener. He was a retired horse

(06:34):
trainer and he thought, you know what, I'm gonna try
and work with a tiger, which is very different than
what anyone's ever seen before. And he had a method
where he worked himself into the cage little by little,
like just my presence. Then I'll stick an arm in,
then I'll stick my head in. Take a couple of scratches,
yeah here and there, and then eventually he found himself

(06:57):
earning the trust of the big cats over time, and
he would find himself completely in the cage. So he
was the first first dude period. I think first American.
He was the first known what you would call lion tam. Yeah,
the first American was a guy named Isaac van Amburke
and he was around in eighteen thirty three, and he

(07:19):
was what I meant when I said jerks, because he
would apparently like beat these cats with crowbars and use
very violent tactics. Yeah, and he he had a pretty
good um excuse for it or um justification? Is that sarcasm? Yeah, okay, Yeah,
he was. He was a biblical guy and he would

(07:40):
actually act out Biblical scenes with these animals. And his
big defense was Genesis One, and God said, let us
make man in our image after our likeness, and let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the
vowel of the air, over the cattle, and over all
the earth and over everything. Creeping that creep us upon

(08:03):
the earth creep And I just like the Bible saying
creep us. Yeah, it's pretty cool, and it just kind
of goes on. It's like, really it's one big, one
run on sentence and you can't help but wonder, um
if Van Amberg would say the whole thing or just
be like just read generous this one. Yeah, his big
His finishing move was sort of insult to injury. After

(08:24):
he would do all this stuff. And of course he's
not beating them with a crowbar in front of people,
but apparently that's how he trained them to begin with
out of fear and injury. And he would finish his
shows by making the lines lick his boots. Oh man,
what a sure I know after all that after suffering
at his hands. You know, it would be awesome would
be to see the steam Man of the Prairie beat

(08:46):
the tar out of Van Amberg. You can reference our
exoskeleton cast for that one, right, yeah, all right, Um,
have you seen Fast, Cheap and out of Control? Uh? No,
is that about robots? You gotta see that. It's Errol
Morris documentary and it was about a topier gardner, a
robot scientist, and a lion tamer and how all these

(09:11):
things sort of intertwined. There was one more, a mole
rat specialist. And in the movie, Dave Hoover was the
lion tamer and Errol Morris also worked in because Hoover
was a huge fan of Clyde Beattie. Uh. And Errol
Morris worked in this old black and white footage and
Clyde Beatie was almost the fifth character of that documentary.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's really really great. Okay, I have

(09:31):
a really good, um wild Animal Tamer documentary. All right,
let's here. Um you introduced me to this one. It's
called Cat Dancers. Have you heard of it now? Oh?
My gosh, it is. It's so heartbreaking, it's ridiculous. It's
about this group of people who like have their own
thing going on and um, love one another and love

(09:52):
their big cats, and then just things keep going wrong. Really,
it's a really great documentary. It's one of the best
I've ever seen in my entire of life. Yeah, I'll
see this one out there too. Was one of my favorites. No,
Fast Cheaping out of Control. Okay, well there it's both
on the table. It's crazy though, that this podcast features
two of our favorite documentaries, Fast Cheaping out of Control

(10:14):
and Cat Dancers. Look for a quiz question on that one.
You can get those on Netflix. So Clyde Batty, who
was Dave Whoever's hero, was around in the nineteen twenties. Um,
he used a pistol and a whip. Yeah, to keep
things in line and I think the pistol was like
a sound scare less than like a threatening thing. You

(10:35):
go through a lot of lions shooting him in the
chest that it gets expensive. But he was performing at
this um at this the peak of this um lion tamers,
you think of an old timey lion tamer um the
peak of the appreciation from the public. Sure, because a

(10:55):
lot of these guys they shaped the public expectations, but
they were also responding to him, and the public has
had a role in shaping how lion tamers lion trainers
um interact with their cats. And Beattie was kind of
the last of the pistol shooting whip crack in chair guys,

(11:17):
the old guy, Yeah, Hooever actually explains the chair and
Debbie's right on the money. Um, if you've ever wondered
why they point a chair at a lion, it's because
apparently these big cats have a have a one track
mine or they're single minded, and so the four points
uh of the chair legs confuse it. And uh, that's
what Hoover said, So I believe it. Well, that's awesome. Yeah. Um,

(11:40):
So you've got on Remartine who starts everything out very
gently using trust yeah, um, and basically just exposing himself
to these large cats. He did trust falls right and
the cat would catch him. Um. And uh. Then you
have um van Amberg come and along Isaac van Amberg. Uh,

(12:02):
basically just beating the tar out of these things and
using a very different method fear and clide. Batty kind
of carries that torch. And then after Beatty things change
and you have modern lion trainers like Siegfried and Roy
Gunther Gebel Williams. Is that how you say his name? Yeah,
you're the German speaker going to billions. This just my

(12:27):
eye blied. Yeah, he uh, like I said, he was
the one like that was very big in like the
seventies and eighties when I was growing up, right, And
apparently he was in an American Express commercial. Yeah yeah,
with a leopard hanging over him, the Duneley fomb without
at days probably I would imagine. Um. But so you
you have the then you have this kind of transition

(12:48):
to the modern lion trainer, which was actually a circle
back to the beginning a little more genteel. Well, that's
just that it's like using trust, not using beatings. Um
and basically just spending time with your animal to let
it get to know you. Yeah, and the whip they use.
Even if you see a whip these days, they're not

(13:08):
whipping the animal. The whip is to just to sort
of like, hey, this is my space, this is your space. Yeah,
my spaces over your exactly spaces over there. Uh. So

(13:42):
let's talk about the psychology of all this stuff. Yeah,
animal psychology and people psychology, because it's really not that
much different. Be of Skinner as a person psychologist, very
famous one. Yeah, he created the Skinner Box, that's right,
and his children in it. Oh is that what's his face?
I don't know. I thought you're talking about the kid
that was kept in isolation Arthur. Oh, um baby Albert Albert. No, No, No,

(14:07):
that's totally different. That was fear extinction that they were studying.
This is conditioning that Skinner was all about. Um. So,
operant conditioning is what we're talking about. And that's basically, ah,
connecting a behavior with a signal um and giving the
animal a reward. Yeah. It's like it's pretty much a
one to three cycle. Yeah, it's it's basically saying like, um,

(14:30):
you did something that's any even remotely close to what
I want you to do. So here's some food, and
now you can have the animals attention. Yeah, like, oh
where did that come from? Right now? Um, you kind
of shape that behavior where it's like, come on, let's
let's try turning to the right, and then if they
move to the right, they get a little bit of food,

(14:50):
and maybe if they turn all the way the right,
they get a bunch of food. Um. And then you have,
say you're leading him with a stick. Um, so eventually
you remove the stick and replace it with something like
a snap or a clap or hey, yes, you hear
a lot of that, and all of a sudden you
have an animal that can turn into circle when you

(15:12):
do what you just That's right, and that's called classical conditioning. Well,
it starts with opera and moves into classical conditions. Operate
than capturing, than shaping than classical condition and capturing and
shaping are part of opera. Exactly. Uh should we talk
about Christian the line? I guess I don't see how
we can. It is real people, if you've seen this

(15:34):
on the YouTube, it is not made up. Are you
sure like you realize what you're saying here? Man? Dude,
it's as real as like anything in history that happened.
Like I've seen the documentary about it well, and I
don't think it was Christopher Guests who directed it. Uh,
I can't remember the name of it. Christian the Lion,

(15:56):
something like that. Um, you've seen it on YouTube. In
nineteen the nineteen sixty nine, late sixties, Um, a couple
of Aussies, John Rindell and Ace Bork, bought a lion
from a department store in London. Harrod's didn't know they
sold lions back then, Harrods does. It was sort of

(16:17):
the head of London at the time. It was like
the swinging sixties and these dudes were known for having
this lion and like throwing parties and stuff. It was
like pretty cool. And uh, the lion got bigger, of course,
and they had to release into the wild with the
help of the born Free people. And then there's of
course the famous video where they went um to visit
this lion. Like it was it years later. It was

(16:42):
seventy three or two, I think two. I'm not sure
when they released him, but it was. It was quite
a while later, and there was a few years the
line jumps up in like hugs the guys. It was amazing.
It was pretty amazing. Are you sure it's real? I'm
as sure that that's real as that you're real. Huh.
Otherwise that the biggest hoax has been pulled over the world,

(17:05):
I don't know about that. I think the Howard Hughes
biography is tops Christians. That was pretty good. Um, But
as Debbie points out, for every Christian the Lion, there's
a sig Freed and Roy, yes, which we already kind
of covered, but I think we should go a little
more into it. Yeah, there's some different theories out there.
So in two thousand and three, they were, um, Siegfried
and Roy were doing their thing and apparently they had

(17:27):
like I think three thousand of these performances under their
belts already. Yeah, they were working with Manticre or Monta
Core sorry, who was one of their tigers, um, who
they'd raised from a cub and he was now seven
years old. Um, so they knew this this tiger intimately,
like they were its parents for all intensive purposes. Yeah,

(17:50):
and that's one of the keys to with line taming
is that you raised them from a cub. They're not
going on and getting these tigers from the savannah that
are grown and then taming them. So the Simpsons were
wrong in their respect. But um so during this performance, uh,
something happened. Um, montcor grabbed Roy Um by his wind

(18:13):
pipe and dragged him off stage from the outset. Um. Roy,
by the way, is now partially paralyzed and as a
crushed trachea because of this. But from the outset, from
the moment he regained consciousness, Roy said, do not destroy Monticore.
He was like he something happened. He wasn't trying to

(18:34):
hurt me, he was trying to protect me, and he
was just dragging me away from whatever it was. Roy
suggested that possibly he had a stroke and that freaked
out the tiger. Tiger picked up on it. Um. It's
also been theorized that a woman This is almost like
the lone gunman theory. Actually, this is the one. I
believe a woman with a beehive hair do, sitting towards

(18:56):
the front row or possibly in the front row, was
like the stretched it and confused the tiger. Yeah, um,
which I guess maybe the tiger was trying to get
Roy away from the beehive. Well what happened? The accounts
I read is that this tiger became transfixed on this
lady and like started walking towards the lady, and so

(19:16):
Roy jumped in between them, and uh, the tiger grabbed
ahold of his wrist at this point and Roy bopped
him on the nose with the microphone was going release, release,
and he released him and he fell backward at that point,
and I think that's when the tiger, the tiger you
want to say, lying, that's when he thought that Roy

(19:39):
was in trouble because it was a big brujah all
of a sudden with him falling over. People rushed out
there in the confusion. They think that he grabbed him
like you would grab a baby kitten around the neck
to pull it off stage. So that's I believe that
that sounds sensible. But he didn't let go like they
sprayed him when this fire extinguisher and they beat him
with the fire extinguisher until he let go, and UM

(20:03):
cut his uh what do you call it the wind pipe? Yeah, no,
but the bleeder the jugular. Yeah. Well, Roy is still alive.
He survived UM and they actually UM had a final
performance in two thousand nine, six years later with Monticor
with mont Core because he's still alive. Yep Um, and
he was at the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat. I've

(20:27):
been there. It's pretty awesome. Where is this It's in Vegas.
I can't remember what hotel it's at, but well, the
Mirrage is where they performed, but I feel like they
if it's it may be at the rush Um. I
can't remember. It's also possible it was at another place.
But anyway, they have like their lions and a couple

(20:48):
of tigers. They have a bunch of stuff. And it's
sad because it's a small zoo, but I'm sure these
animals are treated better than the average animal at a zoo.
But I mean they're in these enclosed habitats. Well, they
get investigated just like modern circuses do. I think their
routine checks by which government agency? Is it the U

(21:09):
s d A. U s DA does that they do circuses, zoos,
that kind of thing. Um. The thing is is, if
you're an animal welfare group, you probably don't think the U.
S d A is doing enough. And even if they
are following the letter of the law, you probably think
the letter of the law isn't strong enough. And supposedly
every single major circus in the United States has been
cited for violating the Animal Welfare Act. Um. So I

(21:33):
think the whole concept behind lying, taming, and lining training
is fascinating for most people. But then you take another
step further and you're like, these are wild animals and captivity,
Like what are you doing? Yeah? Why is your head
in its mouth? Exactly? And I'm glad you brought that
up because then in the introduction there's a pretty good
description of what a lion can do. A lion's mouth

(21:55):
can open up wider than your head is tall a
foot every centimeters. It's also, um, capable of crushing a
bull spine. I love that reference that that just sounds tough.
It is to spine of a bull. Yeah, um and
uh the clause are about three inches long. Pretty serious stuff.
So I mean, yeah, this is very serious stuff if

(22:17):
you're a lion trainer. But at the same time, it's like,
you know, how do you justify having this act? What's
the act for? What's it doing? Yeah? Is it is
it protecting? Is it conserving? What is it raising awareness?
I think people are demanding more explanation than they did,
and say the time of Clyde Beattie. Well, yeah, because
back then it was fun to poke in pride things

(22:39):
that you thought were unusual and exotic, and there wasn't
a lot of respect for it. Like the initial circuses
before they were these acts were I think they had
horse acts, but it was mainly like, look at these
animals and cages that you've never seen before, and look
there's a pigmy, yeah, a bearded lady and that guy
stinks so um And I think Isaac van Jerk was

(23:02):
the first guy to put his head in the mouth too, right, right,
he was. Unfortunately the lion didn't finish that job, right man.

(23:31):
We have like a whole suite of circus arts stuff
human cannonball yeah, um man, we've got to. We have
several others circus arts. Yeah, that's what it's called. If
you even look on the channel, it's an entertainment house
stuff first dot com slash arts, slash circus Arts. It
has a sub channel circus arts subchannel at how to first,

(23:53):
because that's the kind of site it is. And if
you go to that subchannel, you don't even need to
do that. You can go to the search bar on
the homepage at house Star dot com and type in
lion Taming and it'll bring up this article. Yeah, I
think we know we talked about something else because I
mentioned that I go to the Big Apple Circus when
it comes through town. Yeah, I remember talking about that.
And that's the one where they have like like a

(24:14):
horse they stall the equestrian show, and like dogs jumping
through hoops. But other than that, it's like clowns and
jugglers and uh like the circus all a beats of strength,
no animals, no big cat people on the road from
the law. Yeah, it's not like the gaudy Ringling Brothers. Now,
I haven't seen the circus and I can't even tell
you how Like you should you and you should check

(24:35):
out the Big Apple Circus. Oh yeah, yeah it's neat
all right, we'll check it out. It's like very small
and intimate. It's like it feels like what you might
expect the circus a hundred years ago to be. Like,
will you send me an email when it's coming? I will, Okay, okay,
I said search part. By the way, all right, so
that means listener mail. Yeah, this is from I'm gonna

(24:57):
call this um we help someone kick heroin? Did you
read this awesome. Um Hey, guys, have been meaning to
write you for a very long time. I've been listening
to you pretty much since day one, learning and loving
every step of the way. However, it was almost a
year ago I chose to check myself into drug treatment. See.
I am a marine, female marine no longer active duty,

(25:18):
but when I was injured, I was given a lot
of pain killers and ended up getting addicted to those,
and that eventually led to me getting strung out on
heroin for years. What does this have to do with you, Well,
heroin detox is one of the worst things you can imagine.
We were not allowed to listen to music, or watch TV,
or pretty much do anything but classes and groups. I

(25:39):
agree that it helped me being in a media blackout,
but I did beg the staff to let me listen
to you guys. To my amazement, my doctor was a
fan of yours and approved it. Awes, So while I
was going through the worst of the worst of it,
you were both there with me. I will spare you
the details. So August Fifte is not only I think
we've both seen the side feld where Laden's dating the

(25:59):
guy is kicking heroin. Did she Dad? Got kicking your Yeah,
don't you remember. I don't remember that used to kick
that one up. Sorry, go ahead. Uh So now August
fifte is not only my birthday I'm twenty nine this year,
but also my first birthday off drugs. Oh congratulations. I
want to thank you for what you've done for me,
and I'm gonna go back and listen to them all again. UM.

(26:19):
I know it is a lot to ask, but a
shout out would make my day. Dude and Elaine Turley, Elaine,
don't tell me that's a coincidence. Well, it's a. It'spelled
than a. She says, simplified from Elaine Turley. That's awesome,
and then she says, ps. Marines are the few and
the proud. Female marines are the fewer and the prouder.

(26:41):
So way to go, man, Yeah, I want to say, man,
I mean, lady, that's pretty awesome. Yeah. Yeah, you kicked
heroine with us. That's amazing. Yn'tn think about that? Um? Wow, man,
that was a mind blower. Chuck, pretty good one. Uh.
If you have a mind blowing story that relates to us,
even if it doesn't, that's cool. But if it does, wow,

(27:01):
that's even better. Um. You can tweet to us at
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(27:22):
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