The Training of Wild Animals

by Frank Charles Bostock

Many reflective men now believe that the mind of an animal differs from the human intellect only in degree. The extent of this difference, however, remains a question, and one on which close observation of domestic animals, and more particularly of wild animals trained for public amusement, is calculated to throw a great deal of light.

Through a study of wild animals in their native haunts there may be learned what progress each has made in adapting itself to the natural conditions of its life; but the study of trained animals, placed under new conditions and influences, will show whether these are capable of further or, at any rate, divergent advancement intellectually, and give some hint of the probable limit of this progress. It may then be seen to what extent the animal trainer has gone in his development of brute intellect, and that that development has come about under conditions not entirely dissimilar to those observed in the advancement of the intellect of the higher species of animals.

It should be noted, first, that “taming” and “training” are two different words expressing two distinct ideas. “Taming” is merely inducing an animal to abandon its natural fierce disposition so far as to come under human control and be more or less sociable with man. It is a matter in which animals differ very widely, not only as between classes, but as between individuals of the same species.

Moreover, tameness seems to be a matter of the disposition rather than of the intellect, and, perhaps, pertains to a lower rather than to a higher grade of intelligence, for it is noticeable that some of the animals most apt in the school of the trainer abandon only slightly, if at all, their native savagery. On the other hand, some animals thoroughly domesticated seem quite incapable of any degree of education, though this may be from the fact that no one has tried it in a continuous or systematic way.

It would be hazardous to say that any animal organism is too low to manifest, had we eyes to see it, some intelligence superior to instinct. It is said that even fishes can be taught simple actions, although personally I have had no proof of it. Serpents can also be taught a little, though performing snakes are usually simply submitting to be put through certain motions in the hands of their keepers. But from birds up to elephants, the most intelligent of all animals, there is not one species, it may safely be said, which is not more or less amenable to the training of man.

It is a delusion to think that a wild animal is ever really “tamed.” He acquires, through passiveness and receptivity, an amenity to man’s control, and for the time being drops his ferocity. This is partly because of the inducements which are placed in his way. He has all that an animal can want,—food, cleanliness, indolence, proper exercise, even affection,—everything but freedom, but he only bows to man’s will because man, through the exercise of his intelligence, takes advantage of the animal’s ignorance. Every animal trainer thoroughly understands what the public does not know—that the trained animal is a product of science; but the tamed animal is a chimera of the optimistic imagination, a forecast of the millennium.

The first principle that is taught a trainer is: “Never let an animal know his power.” The moment he realizes that, he is likely to use his terrible teeth, or still more terrible claws, for I always try to impress upon the trainers that each animal is, as it were, possessed of five mouths, as he can do as much, if not more, damage with each of his four feet as with his mouth.

The very moment an animal realizes his power, his training is at an end. He grows insolent, and in nine cases out of ten proceeds to wreak his vengeance on the trainer for what he concludes are past outrages; his fear has gone, and with his knowledge comes power, and his animal ferocity, long slumbering and awaiting an opening, breaks out with redoubled vigor. The only thing to be done is for the trainer to get out as soon as possible, and let that particular animal lead a solitary life for the remainder of his days.

This is one of the reasons that everything is done to further the animal’s increased respect for mankind. If he makes a scratch on a trainer, the man does not resent it in any way, for he does not wish the animal to know that he is capable of inflicting injury. Should the animal become aware in the slightest degree that what has been done is an evidence of any superior ability, he might naturally presume upon it and proceed to hurt the trainer in some other manner.

Many animals do, of course, inflict injuries upon the trainers fairly often, but it is a most unwise trainer who ever makes the slightest sign of pain or annoyance. Trainers have been known to give a flick of the whip, or some other punishment, but the result is always the same. Either the animal promptly retorts in some real injury, or indulges in a fit of the sulks which he is slow to forget. The blow he, as a rule, never forgets.