Lion taming

Lion taming is the practice of taming lions, either for protection, whereby the practice was probably created, or, more commonly, entertainment, particularly in the circus. The term is also often used for the taming and display of other big cats such as tigers, leopards, jaguars, cheetahs, and pumas. Lion taming is used as a stereotypical dangerous occupation due to the obvious risks of toying with powerful instinctive carnivores.

Lion taming is performed in zoos across the world, to enable less dangerous feeding and to bring more profit by holding programmes like cub petting.

In recent years the "taming" of wild animals for performance purposes has drawn accusations of cruelty. ^[1].

Note that taming an individual lion is not the same as domestication of a species.

Lion tamers

• George Wombwell (1777–1850), founder of Wombwell's Travelling Menagerie, raised many animals himself including the first lion to be bred in captivity in Britain. He was buried in Highgate Cemetery, under a statue of his lion Nero.
• Thomas Beckerson was an English botanist who studied in Africa but was fascinated by the lions there and brought back his lion taming skills to Victorian London.
• Carl Hagenbeck (1844–1913) was a merchant of wild animals.
• Rose Flanders Bascom was an American female lion tamer in the early 1900s.^[2] She was born in 1880 in the village of Contoocook within the town of Hopkinton, New Hampshire. In 1898 she married Alfred Bascom who was of French Canadian ancestry but born in the United States. About 1905, Rose joined the circus life and became a lion tamer. It is reported that she was clawed by a lion resulting in an infection that led to her untimely death around the year of 1915, leaving her husband Alfred and their young daughter Agnes.
• Alfred Court (1883–1977), animal trainer for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in the 1940s.
• Mabel Stark (1889–1968)
• Jules Jacot (1890–1971) was the lion tamer at the St. Louis Zoo from the 1940s through the 1970s. He worked up until the year before his death at the age of 81.
• Professor George Keller (1897–1960)
• Clyde Beatty (1903–1965) was among the pioneers to use a chair in training big cats.
• Charly Baumann (1928–2001), animal trainer for the Blue Unit with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
• Gunther Gebel-Williams (1934–2001) was a world-famous animal trainer for the Red Unit with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.^[3]
• Martin Lacey, (born 1947), animal trainer, owner of the Great British Circus, trained most of the tigers used in the ESSO TV advertisements in the 1970s.
• Susan Lacey, wife of Martin Lacey, also animal trainer who performed with tigers.
• Martin Lacey, Jr., (born 1977), son of Martin, an animal trainer and performer with Circus Krone in Munich.
• Alex Lacey, also son of Martin, animal trainer and performer.
• Irina Bugrimova (1911–2001), the first female lion tamer in Russia
• (in fiction) "Ronder, of course, was a household word. He was the rival of Wombwell": Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger

References