SYSK Selects: 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.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, it's me Josh, and for this week's s
Y s K Select, I chose Lion Taming. Um. This
one came from our Summer of Sam, chosen by Sam
T Garden, who went on to become Sam the Intern,
who will probably go on to become Sam the House
Stuff Works employee at some point. Um, and I want
you to take a particular note of the segment where

(00:23):
we talk about how the Simpsons are known to predict
the future. It's an excellent example of how connected our
episodes are across the years. That or it's an example
of us later unwittingly rehashing info we've already covered. At
any rate, it's a good episode about an interesting topic.
So I hope you enjoyed. Welcome to Stuff You Should

(00:46):
Know from How Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryet.
This is Stuff you should Know. Yeah, uh, this Josh
is another episode of the Summer of Sam. Are are

(01:10):
oh this kid is good? Yeah? Our friend Sam T
Garden is programming our show here and there he and
Samson and How Lion Taming Works, which is also written
by Debbie Ronca, my buddy. Yeah from New Jersey roller
Derby Debbie as I call her, I don't call her that, No,
you don't, I call her debend If I call her

(01:31):
roller Derber Debby, you did perfectly the first roller Derby Debby.
That would just get difficult. Yeah. Um, well, right on,
this one's just going to be great then, because it
was a good article too. That's right. And you can
read Debbie's awesome log at freak girl dot com. That's
quite unplug um. And then where are we at with Sam? So?

(01:52):
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 corded a couple that he had not
heard yet that he also had on his list just
by chance. We're going to attribute those to him, just
just the ones that we saw afterwards. But anyway, thanks Sam,
this is a good one. We'll put chuck. Um. Well,

(02:15):
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. Season twelve, Episode nine,
excellent episode. It's where Homer Um. Basically they find out

(02:39):
that Homer is a crayons stuck in his brain, a
crayon crayon from childhood and they were they removed it
in 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 get surgery to cure
her chronic headaches. They found a pencil that was stuck

(02:59):
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. Um Homer
Uh in The Treehouse of Horror nineteen Who definitely didn't

(03:22):
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 machines that
had so many problems. He goes to vote for Um
Obama and instead it starts voting a bunch of times

(03:44):
for McCain. Okay, so the next I guess that year,
a woman from West Virginia said that she checked the
box next to Obama and it just automatically switched over
to McCain. This is after this thing came out, okay,
which would mean predicting. Probably most chilling is Um comes
from Springfield with the Spells as the dollar sign. The

(04:07):
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 Roy and
they're with their white tiger, Anastasia. She loves the city, Yeah,
um and uh anastalgia Um flashes back to when she

(04:32):
was caught in the wild by Siegfried and Roy shot
her with the trick Lizer good and Um spits out
her little bubble pipe and her little beanie and attacks
one of them. Yeah. This is a full ten years
before the attack of Roy Horn. In two thousand three,
during a show at the Mirage in Las Vegas, where Um,

(04:53):
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, it's like if you're gonna
write a Simpsons episode aping sick Green, right, what else
are they gonna do? You're gonna have the lion need
them or the tiger. I'm sorry, you raise an excellent
point here, but it's still it is. But you raise

(05:15):
a very good point. And the point is, Um, I
think everybody who sees someone interacting with the tamest wild
animal you can possibly imagine still will not be surprised
if that animal kills the person. Yeah, because, as Jack
Hannah put it very um appropriately. I think in Jack Hanna,

(05:36):
he was the original Steve Irwin, right, uh yeah, sure,
um he said you can train a wild animal, but
you can never tame a wild animal. And that's a
really big important point in the world of I guess
lion taming. Yeah, and another famous lion trainer, Slash Tamer,
We're gonna probably interchange those words. Said you can't tame

(05:59):
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. I'd like to see that
a train penguin. Well, yeah, I'm putting your mouth in
head in its mouth and cracking a whip. Be fun. Yeah,

(06:22):
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, he was the one I saw
growing up. Okay, at the Wrangling 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,

(06:45):
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. Because none of these people
think that they have 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

(07:09):
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 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

(07:30):
the cage little by little, like just my presence. Then
I'll stick an arm in, and I'll stick my head in.
Take a couple of scratches, yeah, here and there, and
then eventually he found himself 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,

(07:50):
I think, first American. He was the first known what
you would call Yeah, first American was a guy named
Isaac van Amberke and he was around in eighteen thirty three,
and he was when 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

(08:12):
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 actually act out biblical
scenes with these animals. And his big defense was Genesis
and God said, let us make man in our image

(08:35):
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 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

(08:56):
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 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

(09:19):
shows by making the lines lick his boots. Oh man,
what 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 the
tar out of Van Amberg. Yeah you can reference our
exo skeleton cast for that one, right yeah. All right?
Um have you seen Fast, Cheap and out of Control? Uh? No,

(09:41):
is that about robots? You gotta see that. It's Errol
Morris documentary. And it was about a topier gardner, a
robot uh scientist, and a lion tamer and how all
these 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

(10:04):
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
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

(10:24):
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
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 life. See this one

(10:45):
out there too was one of my favorites. Now 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 and
Cat Dancers. Look for a quiz question on that one
and you can get those on Netflix. So Clyde Batty,
who was Dave, who were his hero was around in

(11:07):
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 go through a lot of lion shooting him in
the chest. He gets expensive, but he was performing at
this um, at this the peak of this um lion tamers.

(11:31):
You think of an old timey lion tamer um, the
peak of the appreciation from the public. Sure, because a
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

(11:51):
um interact with their cats, and Beatty was kind of
the last of the pistol shooting whip crack in chair guys,
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

(12:12):
mine or they're single minded, and so the four points
uh of the chair legs confuse it. Yeah, and uh
that's what Hoover said, So I believe it. Well that's awesome. Yeah. Um.
So you've got on Remartine who starts everything out very
gently using trust yeah um, and basically just exposing himself

(12:33):
to these large cats. He did trust falls right and
the cat would catch him right. Um. And uh, then
you have um van Amberg coming along, Isaac van Amberg, Uh,
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 Batty things change

(12:57):
and you have modern lion trainers like sigfree In Roy Gunther,
Gebel Williams is that how you say his name? Yeah,
you're the German speaker going to gel Williams billions. This
just my I believe 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. Oh yeah, yeah,

(13:20):
with a leopard hanging over him the don't we fund
without it days? Probably I would imagine yea um. But
so you you have the then you have this kind
of transition 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. Yeah, um,

(13:43):
and 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 whipping the animal. The whip is to just
sort of like, hey, this is my space, this is
your space. Yeah, my space is over exactly spaces over there. Uh.

(14:25):
So let's talk about the psychology of all this stuff. Yeah,
animal psychology and people psychology, because it's really not that
much different. B. F. Skinner there's 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,

(14:51):
that's totally different. That was fear extinction that they were studying.
This is conditioning that Skinner was all about. Um. So
operat conditioning is what we're talking and 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,

(15:13):
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 animal's 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,

(15:34):
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 them with the 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

(15:55):
you do what you just That's right, and that's called
classical conditioning. Well, it starts with the 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

(16:17):
you've seen this 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, and I don't
think it was Christopher Guests who directed it. Uh. I
can't remember the name of it. Christian the Lions, something

(16:40):
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, Herod's did. Now they sold lions
back then, Harrod's does. It was sort of the head

(17:01):
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 line got bigger, of course, and it
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. Uh,

(17:23):
like it was it years later. It was 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 it was a few years the line jumps up
in like hugs the guys. It was amazing. It was
pretty amazing. Yeah, are you sure it's real? I'm as
sure that that's real as that you're real. Otherwise that

(17:45):
the biggest hoax has been pulled over the world. I
don't start that. I think the Howard Hughes biography was Christians.
That was pretty good. Um, but as Debbie points out,
for every Christian the lion there's a sick freed and roy. Yes,
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

(18:07):
were um sig Freed and Roy were doing their thing
and apparently they had like I think three thousand of
these performances under their belts already. Yeah, they were working
with Manticor 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

(18:28):
this this tiger intimately like they were its parents for
all intents and purposes. 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 mont Core

(18:53):
grabbed Roy Um by his wind pipe and dragged him
off stage from the outset. Um. Roy, by the way,
is now partially paralyzed and as a crushed tray chia
because of this, but from the outset, from the moment
he regained consciousness, Roy said, do not destroy Monticore. He

(19:15):
was like he something happened. He wasn't trying to 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,

(19:36):
this is the one. I believe a woman with a
beehive hair do, sitting toward the front row or possibly
in the front row, was like distracted and confused the
tiger 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,

(19:59):
and so 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

(20:21):
thought that Roy was in trouble because it was a
big brujah, all 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's sound 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

(20:45):
and UM cut his uh what do you call it?
The yeah, no, but the bleeder the jug. 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.

(21:06):
Yep Um. And he was at the Secret Garden and
Dolphin Habitat. I've 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, maybe at the rush Um.
I can't remember. It's also possible it was at another place.

(21:29):
But anyway, they have like their lions and a couple
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

(21:53):
s d A. The U s d E 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,

(22:17):
I think the whole concept behind lion 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

(22:38):
lion's mouth can open up wider than your head is
tall a foot three 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

(23:00):
stuff if 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

(23:21):
back then it was fun to poke in pride things
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, you a bearded lady and that

(23:42):
guy stinks so um. And I think Isaac van Jerk
was the first guy to put his head in the
mouth too, right, right. Unfortunately the lion didn't have finish
that job. Yeah. Yeah, we have like a whole suite

(24:16):
of circus arts stuff, human cannonball, 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 houst first, because that's the kind of site it is.

(24:38):
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 to first 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
horse they still have the equestrian show and my dogs

(25:00):
jumping through hoops, but other than that, it's like clowns
and jugglers and uh like the circus all a feats
of strength, no animals, no big cat people are the
both from the law. Yeah, it's not like the gaudy
Ringling Brothers. Now good. I haven't seen the circus. I
can't even tell you how long you should you and
you should check out the Big Apple Circus. Oh yeah,
yeah it's neat all right, we'll check it out. It's

(25:22):
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 call this, um we help
someone kick heroin? Did you read this? Awesome? Um? Hey, guys,

(25:46):
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 email marine
no longer active duty, 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

(26:08):
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 agree that
it helped me being an 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

(26:30):
and approved it. Awesome, 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 sign feld where Laton's dating the guy who's kicking heroin?
Did you dating guy kicking heroin? Yeah? Don't you remember?
I remember that? Sorry? Go ahead. Uh So now August

(26:52):
fifteenth is not only my birthday I'm twenty nine this year,
but also my first birthday off drugs. Oh congratulation. 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.
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's

(27:14):
both an a. Okay, she says, simplify from Elane Turley,
that's awesome, and then she says, ps marines are the
few and the proud. Female marines are the fewer and
the prouder. So way to go, man, Yeah you want
to say, man, lady, that's pretty awesome. Yeah. Yeah, you
kicked heroine with us. That's amazing. Yeah, you can't even
think about that. Um. Wow, man, that was a mind blower. Chuck,

(27:37):
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, that's even better. Um. You
can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
That's a Twitter handle. Uh. Facebook dot com slash Stuff
you should know is where we dwell on Facebook. Um.
You can also send us an email to Stuff podcast

(27:59):
at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how Stuff works dot com. M