That’s one item. The four giraffes are another, and in case you should desire to purchase a first-class giraffe some day, just write out a check for $15,000 and then trust to good fortune to get you the animal. Giraffes are scarce. So are hippopotami and rhinoceri and great apes, to say nothing of pythons, and jungle-bred tigers and lions and leopards and other animals of their kind. Figuring the interest on the investment alone, for the number of performance days which are granted to the circus, it costs nearly $2000 a week to carry that menagerie around the country. That is the amount the original outlay would earn if it were invested in the ordinary channels of business. Nor does that include the items of trainers, of food, of assistants, cage men, dens, horses for transportation, railroad equipment and repairs, and steam haulage. So a menagerie really isn’t such a cheap adjunct, is it? Nor is that all.
A few years ago, John Ringling learned that there was a wonderful ape in England. He had heard that it was a real gorilla—but didn’t believe it. He went to England and to the home of the man and woman who had reared the beast to health from a disease-ridden little thing which had been landed in London from a tramp steamer. It was a real gorilla, the first one that ever had thrived in captivity. John Ringling wanted that animal for his circus. It meant that the people of the United States would be given an opportunity to study something which neither the combined efforts of scientists nor the hunting parties of the animal companies of all the world had been able to give. He didn’t need the gorilla. The menagerie was full as it was. But there was the urge of the true circus man—to bring forth the thing which had not been seen before, to present something new. It meant a gamble of thousands of dollars. He took the chance. The check read for $30,000. John Daniel, the gorilla, was brought to the United States—and lived less than a month! Such are the risks taken by the circus man to keep his menagerie up to the plane which he desires. This is not the only instance.
Expeditions have been fostered, men sent away from the United States for months, even years at a time, to gain some special animal. Perhaps the expedition is a success. More often it is a failure. But the crowds which throng through the marquee into the menagerie see nothing but the gilded cages and the picket line of elephants, giving but little thought to the effort and expense behind it all. Which worries the circus man not at all. What he is after is to get people into that menagerie.
That, in the final analysis, is of course the real reason behind the menagerie—to help get people into the circus. But in doing that, a number of other things are accomplished. In the first place, the rural population is thereby given its knowledge of natural history. The farmer’s boy and the boy of the city not large enough to support a zoo get their first sight of the lion, the tiger, the elephant and giraffe and hippopotamus in a circus menagerie. With that, there comes the inevitable human attribute of making comparisons—and following that, study comes easier. It’s much more pleasant to read in the newspaper about some one you know, than it is to read about some one wholly abstract. The same is true of animals. After a person has seen the tigers in a circus, he wants to know more of them. That’s when the books come in.
Nor is science neglected by the circus. It was due to the importation of John Daniel by the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey that the anthropologists of New York were able to dissect a gorilla brain and carry on their studies through an actual autopsy upon a specimen of an animal group which has been almost as mysterious as the fabled Dodo. The same thing was true with a giant animal called Casey, which was imported several years ago from Cape Lopez, Africa, by way of Australia, by a man named Fox. The animal was a mystery, and it still is a mystery. It looked like a chimpanzee, yet had characteristics and size which marked it as different from any other chimpanzee which ever had come to this country. It also had gorilla characteristics, yet it was not a gorilla. It died on an operating table in Tampa, Florida, of acute appendicitis, and following its death an autopsy was performed, showing surprising indications. For one thing, the speech centers of the brain displayed remarkable development, giving the hint that had the animal lived, there might have come the time when it would have been able to speak with the articulation of a low order of humanity. Other developments showed a close relationship to the human brain—at least a tendency in that direction. Had the circus which exhibited it known all that beforehand, it might have advertised it as the missing link. But the circus didn’t, which was perhaps just as well.
However, one thing remains—Casey was a mystery, and to the circus world belongs the credit of bringing into general knowledge an animal which hinted, at least, of a strange race of ground apes which may yet be discovered in Africa, showing a development different from that of the chimpanzee and of the gorilla, yet combining both, and aiding the scientists in their researches into the beginnings of man. That Casey was a certain type of chimpanzee was, of course, true. But what type? And what gave him his peculiar, closely human countenance? And his great size? He was nearly twice as large as his friend and companion Biz, an ordinary chimpanzee, and one saw in them the dissimilarity that one notices between two widely different races of men. If Casey could only have explained!
Some day another Casey may come to America. And another following that. Circus men will bring them when they come, and the investigations which follow may cause many a surprising result.
And by the way, the next time you go to the circus, just try an experiment and see how much more real amusement and interest you get out of looking at the animals. Try a new viewpoint. Just remember that we are all animals; we all belong to the same kingdom. With that in mind, experiment with the idea of looking at those animals not as just so many mere brutes, but as merely a different branch of the animal kingdom to which you belong. Look upon them as foreigners, as visitors to your land from a different shore, strange but willing to learn, and with far greater perceptive powers, perhaps, than we have.
As I have mentioned before, the human race is egotistical. It likes to believe that it knows everything. But a close study of animals will reveal that perhaps they can teach us things, and that, in their way, they may have every bit as much sense as we have. A dog, you know, can understand his master’s slightest whim and mood. But few indeed are the masters who can understand their dogs!
The Author