That was less than a hundred years ago. Then two sick cubs with a quiet man sitting between them aroused the curiosity of all England, while now a man goes into the arena with twenty-seven full-grown male lions and makes them perform at the same time!
From that first incident, the advance in animal training for exhibition purposes has been steady. Many things have been done which no one ever believed could be done; many valuable facts and characteristics about wild animals discovered which would, in all probability, never have been known to science otherwise; and a great many lessons learned as to the wonderful power of man over all the animal creation, if exercised in the proper manner.
The advance was much slower at the start than it is now, when every year sees as great improvement in animal training as ten years did a century ago. It was five years before George Wombwell realized that it was possible for almost any animal to be trained and handled if he could only find the right man to do the handling. But that was then, and is now, a matter of the greatest difficulty.
The progress during the first three quarters of the last century was very slow. There were various performances in which a man or a woman entered the arena with wild animals and put them through very elementary drills; but it was within the last twenty years only that the involved groups and elaborate tricks of the present day have been suggested and produced.
Many things were not known formerly respecting the control of animals, which now form the very first essentials for all trainers, and accidents were more frequent and more dangerous. One of Wombwell’s most famous trainers was Ellen Bright, a girl who achieved a great reputation. Unfortunately, owing to some slight carelessness on her part, she was killed by a tiger in 1880, when only seventeen years old. Had she only realized more fully the need of patience and firmness with wild animals, there is no doubt whatever that the accident which caused her death would not have taken place.
When it is considered how many trainers there now are, with how many animals they perform at one time, what difficulties they have to face, not only with such numbers, but with such diverse creatures naturally so antagonistic to one another, as in the case of the mixed groups, and how comparatively few accidents happen, it can be readily understood how far this science has progressed.
Perhaps of all the types of animal training these mixed groups are the most wonderful. Lions and tigers instinctively hate each other, and in their native state look with contempt on jackals and hyenas. Were a lion and a tiger to meet in the jungle, it would mean a fight to the death. If two or more male lions meet in their native haunts, a fierce fight is the natural sequence, until only one is left to bear witness by his scars and tears of the terrible battle which has been fought. Should a jackal or a hyena see the king of beasts, he skulks around until his majesty has finished his meal, and then sneaks forward to take the leavings.
And yet, in these mixed groups, lions, tigers, hyenas, sloth-bears, polar bears, and Tibet bears are all together in the same arena; one sits quietly on his pedestal while another goes through his act; the lion has to associate with the hyena; and in some cases two animals, naturally antagonistic to each other, and coming from far corners of the globe, perform together without even showing that they object, and have been subjected to this gross indignity by the superiority of man.
It took Herman Weedon years of patient and painstaking toil and trouble to bring his group to its present state of perfection. The hardest task of all is to accustom animals of one kind to tolerate the presence of animals of another kind. There is always the danger of a fight, which between two wild animals generally ends in the death of one or the other, and the trainer has to consider the interests of his employer as well as the great risk to his own life.
In arranging a mixed group, each animal has to be studied carefully; his idiosyncrasies must be humored, his characteristics must be known and ever borne in mind; the animosity between the wild beasts must be taken into careful consideration, and the methods of teaching must vary with each animal according to its special traits. It means years of patient effort, because it is practically training animal nature against its instincts, and the final result of amity, or assumed amity, between such antagonistic forces is for this reason one of the greatest proofs of the extent of man’s power over wild animals.