Some animals are natural climbers and balancers; others are not. Weeks could be wasted in an effort to teach a beast to walk a tightrope, for instance, when the power of balance simply was not in his brain. So the trainer of to-day, being a believer in efficiency, allows his animals to volunteer for the various services of the performing arena. During the recess time, in which the animals are left to their own resources, their every mannerism is catalogued. In their play, for instance, it may be found that two lions or two tigers will box each other in mock fighting; two pals of the feline race that have selected each other as playmates. Naturally, there is fierce growling and a sprinkling of flying fur. The trainer notes it all, and when the show goes on the road, the audience gets a thrill out of two great cats which leap at each other in a seeming battle of death. For the trainer has taken advantage of this play instinct and made it a part of the show. The audience doesn’t know that the big beasts are growling and hissing in good humor, and wouldn’t believe it if the trainer announced the fact.
Another animal will be found to have a love for climbing and for balancing himself about the thin rails of the arena. This is the beast which is turned into the “tightrope walking tiger” or the “Leonine Blondin.” Another will be a humorist, cavorting about in comical fashion, and he becomes the “only-y-y-y, living-g-g-g, breathing-g-g-g cat clown in existence.” In fact, the animal trainer has learned one great truth, that animals have tempers, likes, dislikes, moods, frailties and mannerisms just as a human has them, and that the easiest way to present a pleasing act is to take advantage of the natural “histrionic talent” of the beast. For instance, on one of the big shows was an “untamable lion.” At the very sight of the trainer, he would hiss and claw and roar and appear obsessed with a mad desire to eat that trainer alive at the first opportunity. His act was a constant thing of cracking whips, of shouts, of barking revolver shots, and of scurrying attendants outside the arena, on the alert every instant for the leap of death. Old Duke, to tell the truth, seemed one of the fiercest beasts that ever went into a steel arena. His every mannerism carried the hint of death; he hated humans; you could see the malevolent glare in his eyes, the deadly threat of naked teeth, the—
By the way, did you ever play with a dog that mocked fierceness? A dog that growled and barked and pretended every moment that he was going to take off an arm or a leg, while you, in turn, pretended just as hard as that you were fighting for your very life? Of course, I shouldn’t reveal circus secrets, but I once spent half an hour with Old Duke in a cage so small that he slapped me in the face with his tail every time he turned round, and I didn’t even have the customary buggy whip!
The explanation is simply the fact that it was discovered early in Duke’s training days that he was an animal humorist. Pompous appearing, dignified in mien, yet possessed with a funny streak, which the trainer soon recognized and realized, Old Duke played his rôle so excellently that upon his death a short time ago, a large newspaper published an editorial regarding him, and the laugh that he, the lion, had on the “smart” human beings who had watched him!
“If Old Duke only had possessed a sleeve,” said the editorial, “he would have placed many a snicker in it during his long and useful show days. For Duke had a mission, that of showing at least a few persons who really understood him and who knew, that we who call ourselves humans are only super-egoists, that because we can talk, and build edifices and go scurrying about this ant hill we call life, we think we are the only beings existent who possess a brain. That was Duke’s mission, to prove, after all, that we are only wonderful because we think we are wonderful, that we believe animals are soulless things because we do not understand them. No doubt there are many Old Dukes in the animal kingdom, supposedly our inferiors, that go through life tickling our egoism, and quietly, to themselves, giving us the laugh!”
In the old days of animal training, Duke would have been just a lion doing routine things, because the trainers of those days didn’t know enough to realize that animals might possess individuality. But those days are gone. It is a different deal now; far more acts are suggested by the animals themselves than by any trainer. The man in circus demand is the person who knows enough to stand at one side and watch, then take advantage of what he has seen.
Which explains perhaps a sight many circus-goers have noticed—of a herd of young elephants romping in the mud of a show-lot, and an interested group of men standing at one side, cataloguing every move. Mud makes elephants actors. From a beginning of mud and rain come the balance artists of the elephant herd, the dancers, the “hootchie-kootchie” experts, and the comedians. All for the reason that mud to an elephant is like catnip to a lion or tiger. It is part of an elephant herd’s routine of health to send it forth into the mire and rain of a “wet lot” and let the members play like so many tremendous puppies. And while they play, the trainer observes.
No two do the same thing in the same way; the individuality is as marked as in the members of any human kindergarten class. The trainer therefore has simply to pick his “bulls” for the various things he wants them to do when they have graduated into performers, one to walk upon his hind legs, another to dance in the ring as he danced in the happiness of sticky mud, one more to sit on still another’s head, and so on throughout the routine. There is hardly an elephant act that has not been first done voluntarily at some time in the antics of a play-fest in the mud.
However, after learning an elephant’s aptitudes comes the real job, that of making him know that he is to do these tricks as a part of his livelihood, and to recognize them by cues. An elephant doesn’t measure his weight by pounds; he runs to tons, and to teach him the rudiments of his life-work under canvass is a matter of everything from blocks and tackle to lifting-cranes.
Combined with one ultra-essential point: the elimination of pain. There is no braver beast than an elephant, and no greater coward; no better friend and no worse enemy. Injure an elephant when he is a baby, combine the thought of pain with the idea of work, and some day it all will come back in a furious, thundering engine of destruction that not only wrecks the circus, but signs his own death warrant. Bad elephants must be killed; and when that happens a circus checks off anything from $4000 to $10,000 on the wrong side of the ledger.