Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Lion Taming Works

Episode Date: February 3, 2018

Bossing a lion around in front of a crowd at a circus has been an attraction for 200 years, but exactly how lion tamers get their captive wild animals to comply has evolved over time. Take a peek in the jaws of this odd profession with Josh and Chuck. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's a lot over today. Hey, everyone. It's me, Josh, and for this week's S-Y-S-K Selects, I chose Lion Taming. This one came from our summer of Sam, chosen by Sam Teagarden, who went on to become Sam the Intern, who will probably go on to become Sam the House of Works employee at some point. And I want you to take a particular note of the segment where we talk about how the Simpsons are known to predict the future. It's an excellent example of how connected our episodes are across the years, or it's

an example of us later unwittingly rehashing info we've already covered. At any rate, it's a good episode about an interesting topic, so I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HouseofWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. This is Stuff You Should Know, yeah. This, Josh, is another episode of the Summer of Sam.

Oh, this kid is good. Yeah. Sam Teagarden is programming our show here and there. Hey, Sam. And Samson and Haline Taming Works, which is also written by Debbie Ronca, my buddy. Yeah. From New Jersey. Yep.

Roller Derby Debbie. I don't call her that. No, you don't. I call her Deb, she's my old friend. If I call her Roller Derby Debbie. You did it, probably the first time. Yeah, Roller Derby Debbie, that would just get difficult. Sure.

Yeah. Well, right on. This one's just going to be great then, because it was a good article too. That's right. And you can read Debbie's awesome blog at FreakGirl.com. That's quite a plug. Thank you. And then where are we at with Sam?

So Sam has now selected how lion taming works. What was the first one? I can't remember. It was a couple of weeks ago. He's done two. Man, it was awesome. But we actually recorded a couple that he had not heard yet that he also had on his list.

Oh, good. Just by chance. Are we going to attribute those to him? No. Just the ones that we saw afterward. But anyway, thanks, Sam, this is a good one. Thanks. Well put, Chuck.

Thank you. Well, let's see. I have a bit of an intro. Have you ever heard the idea that the Simpsons have a tendency to predict the future? No. Okay. Well, let me enlighten you. There was an episode called Homer HOMR, Season 12, Episode 9, excellent episode.

It's where Homer, basically, they find out that Homer has a crayon stuck in his brain. A what? A crayon? A crayon from childhood. And they remove it and his IQ just immediately doubles. Classic. In 2007, years after Homer, a German lady, age 59, was going to get surgery to cure her chronic headaches.

They found a pencil that was stuck up there from childhood. Did she stuck up there? Yeah. Wow. And apparently forgot. They removed the pencil. She's fine. People are wacky.

Yeah. But isn't that weird? Yeah, sure. Okay. Here's another one. Let me see what you think about this. Homer in the Treehouse of Horror 19. Oh, definitely didn't see that one.

Really? I quit watching it after a certain amount. This is Season 20. Okay. He goes to vote for Obama on Election Day. And the, well, it's a takeoff of Deebold, the voting machines that had so many problems. He goes to vote for Obama and instead it starts voting a bunch of times for McCain. Okay.

So the next, I guess that year, a woman from West Virginia said that she checked the box next to Obama and it just automatically switched over to McCain. Really? This is after this thing came out, okay? Which would mean it's predicting. Probably most chilling is, comes from Springfield with the S spelled as the dollar sign. The subtitle is, or how I learned to stop worrying and love legalized gambling. Season five, episode 10, Springfield gets a casino.

I remember this one. Mr. Burns Casino. Great one. Yeah. And in it are two characters who are obviously based on Siegfried and Roy. And they're with their white tiger Anastasia. She loves the city. Yeah.

And Anastasia flashes back to when she was caught in the wild by Siegfried and Roy. We shot her with a tranquilizer gun and spits out her little bubble pipe and her little beanie and attacks one of them. Yeah. This is a full 10 years before the attack of Roy Horan in 2003 during a show at the mirage in Las Vegas where one of their white tigers attacked them, Montecor, attacked Roy. That's right. And basically just ended their career right then.

Yeah. I think on that one, like if you're going to write a Simpsons episode, Aping, Siegfried and Roy, what else are they going to do? You're going to have the lion eat them. Okay. Or the tiger. I'm sorry. You raised an excellent point here, Chuck.

But it's still remarkable. It is. But you raised a very good point. The point is, I think everybody who sees someone interacting with the tamest wild animal you could possibly imagine, still will not be surprised if that animal kills the person. Because as Jack Hanna put it, very appropriately, I think, and Jack Hanna, he was the original Steve Irwin, right? Yeah, sure.

He said, you can train a wild animal, but you can never tame a wild animal. And that's a really big, important point in the world of, I guess, lion taming. Yeah. And another famous lion trainer slash tamer, we're going to probably interchange those words, said, you can't tame a lion because if you did, there would be no act. Yeah, okay. Like part of the act and part of the thrill of this for people is the fact that these are wild beasts.

And if it was just a penguin, it wouldn't be very exciting. No, it wouldn't. Although, I'd like to see that. A trained penguin? Well, yeah. Putting your mouth in it, head in its mouth and cracking the whip, that'd be fun. Yeah, it would be. It would be really mind blowing if the penguin was dressed like a lion tamer and you were

treating it like a lion. Okay. I've got another lion tamer quote for you, then, smart guy. All right. Gunther Gebel Williams. Yeah, he was the one I saw growing up at the Ringling Brothers. He said, a wild animal is like a loaded gun. It can go off at any time.

So let's end the intro with that. Okay. Let's go about lion taming. You brought up a really good point, Chuck. If you are in this world these days, it's not lion tamer, it's lion trainer or wild animal trainer because none of these people think that they have a tame animal on their hands. No, it's sort of the hubris of some of these early jerks that we'll talk about right now.

18, 19 was kind of when it all got going, a Frenchman named Henri Martin, he was a retired horse trainer and he thought, you know what, I'm going to try and work with a tiger, which is very different than what anyone's ever seen before. And he had a method where he worked himself into the cage little by little, like just my presence, then I'll stick an arm in, then I'll stick my head in. Take a couple of scratches. Yeah. Here and there.

And then eventually he found himself earning the trust of the big cats over time and he would find himself completely in the cage. So he was the first dude period, I think. First American. He was the first known, what you would call lion tamer. Yeah. The first American was a guy named Isaac Van Emberk and he was around in 1833 and he was, what I meant when I said jerks, because he would apparently like beat these cats with

crowbars and use very violent tactics. Yeah. And he had a pretty good excuse for it or justification, didn't he? Was that sarcasm? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. He was a biblical guy and he would actually act out biblical scenes with these animals

and his big defense was Genesis 126 and God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air over the cattle and over all the earth and over everything creeping that creepeth upon the earth. Creep. Creep. And I just like the Bible saying creepeth. Yeah.

It's pretty cool. And it just kind of goes on. It's one big one run on sentence and you can't help but wonder if Van Emberk would say the whole thing or he'd just be like, just read Genesis 126. Yeah. His big, his finishing move was sort of insult to injury after he would do all this stuff and of course he's not beating them with a crowbar in front of people, but apparently that's how he trained them to begin with out of fear and injury.

And he would finish his shows by making the lines lick his boots. Oh man, what a jerk. I know after all that, after suffering at his hands. You know what would be awesome would be to see the steam man of the prairie beat the tar out of Van Emberk. Yeah. You can reference our exoskeleton cast for that one. Right?

Yeah. All right. Have you seen Fast Cheap and Out of Control? No. Is that about robots? Oh, you got to see that. It's Errol Morris documentary and it was about a topiary gardener, a robot scientist and a lion tamer.

And how all these things sort of intertwined, there was one more, a mole rat specialist. And in the movie, Dave Hoover was the lion tamer and Errol Morris also worked in because Hoover was a huge fan of Clyde Beattie and Errol Morris worked in this old black and white footage and Clyde Beattie was almost the fifth character of that documentary. Oh yeah? Yes, really, really great. Okay. I have a really good wild animal tamer documentary.

All right, let's hear it. Jimmy introduced me to this one, it's called Cat Dancers. Have you heard of it? No. Oh my gosh. It is, it's so heartbreaking. It's ridiculous. Really?

It's about this group of people who like have their own thing going on and love one another and love their big cats and then just things keep going wrong. Oh, really? It's a really great documentary. It's one of the best I've ever seen in my entire life. Wow. You know, I'm going to throw, this one out there too is one of my favorites. Okay, go ahead.

No, Fast Cheap and Out of Control. Oh, okay. Well, there, it's both on the table. It's crazy though that this podcast features two of our favorite documentaries. Yeah. Fast Cheap and Out of Control and Cat Dancers. Look for a quiz question on that one. And you can get those on Netflix.

Exactly. So Cly Beatty, who was Dave Hoover's hero, was around in the 1920s. He used a pistol and a whip to keep things in line. And I think the pistol was like a sound scare, less than like a threatening thing. Right. You go through a lot of lions shooting them in the chest. That's right. It gets expensive.

But he was performing at this, at this, the peak of this lion tamers. You think of an old-timey lion tamer, the peak of the appreciation from the public. Sure. Because a lot of these guys, they shaped the public expectations, but they were also responding to them. And the public has had a role in shaping how lion tamers, lion trainers, interact with their cats. And Beatty was kind of the last of the pistol shooting whip crack in chair guys.

The old guy? Yeah. Hoover actually explains the chair and Debbie's right on the money. Yeah. If you've ever wondered why they point a chair at a lion, it's because apparently these big cats have a one-track mind or they're single-minded. And so the four points of the chair legs confuse it. And that's what Hoover said, so I believe it.

Well, that's awesome. So you've got Henri Martín, who starts everything out very gently using trust and basically just exposing himself to these large cats. He did trust falls. Right. And the cat would catch them. And then you have Van Emberg coming along, Isaac Van Emberg, basically just beating the tar out of these things and using a very different method, fear.

And Cly Beatty kind of carries that torch. And then after Beatty, things change. And you have modern lion trainers like Siegfried and Roy, Gunther Gebel Williams. Is that how you say his name? Yeah. You're the German speaker. Gunther Gebel Williams? Oh.

This has been my eye bleed. Yeah. He, like I said, he was the one that was very big in the 70s and 80s when I was growing up. Right. And apparently he was in an American Express commercial. Oh, yeah? Yeah, with a leopard hanging over him.

The Don't We Fun Without It days, probably? I would imagine. But then you have this kind of transition to the modern lion trainer, which is actually a circle back to the beginning. The beginning. A little more genteel. Well, that's just that. It's like using trust, not using beatings and basically just spending time with your

animal to let it get to know you. Yeah. And the whip they use, even if you see a whip these days, they're not whipping the animal. The whip is just to sort of like, hey, this is my space. This is your space. Yeah. My space is over here. Exactly.

Your space is over there. Yeah. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

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In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. Lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, cancelled marriages, K-pop, but just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world

came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology? It changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So, let's talk about the psychology of all this stuff. Yeah? Animal psychology. And people psychology. What? Because it's really not that much different. B.F. Skinner is a person psychologist, very famous one.

Yeah, he created the Skinner box. That's right. Raised his children in it. Oh, is that what's his face? I don't know. I thought you were talking about the kid that was kept in isolation. Arthur? Oh, baby Albert.

Albert. No, no, no. That's totally different. Okay. That was some fear extinction that they were studying. Gotcha. This is conditioning that Skinner was all about. So operant conditioning is what we're talking about and that's basically connecting a behavior

with a signal and giving the animal a reward. Yeah. It's like it's pretty much a one, two, three cycle. Yeah. It's basically saying like you did something that's even remotely close to what I want you to do. So here's some food. And now you have the animal's attention.

Yeah. Like, oh, where did that come from? Right. Now you kind of shape that behavior where it's like, you know, come on, let's try turning to the right. And then if they move to the right, they get a little bit of food. And maybe if they turn all the way to the right, they get a bunch of food. And then you have, say, you're leading them with a stick.

Yeah. So eventually you remove the stick and replace it with something like a snap or a clap. Yeah. Or, hey, oh, yes. You hear a lot of that. And all of a sudden you have an animal that can turn in a circle when you do what you just did. That's right.

And that's called classical conditioning. Well, it starts with operant and moves into classical conditioning. Operant, then capturing, then shaping, then classical conditioning. And capturing and shaping are part of operant. Exactly. Should we talk about Christian the Lion, I guess? I don't see how we can. It is real, people.

If you've seen this on the YouTube, it is not made up. Are you sure? Oh, yeah. Like, you realize what you're saying here, man. Dude, it's as real as like anything in history that happened. Okay. Like, I've seen the documentary about it. And I don't think it was Christopher Guest who directed it.

I can't remember the name of it, Christian the Lion, something like that. You've seen it on YouTube in the 1969, late 60s, a couple of Aussies, John Rindell and Ace Bork, bought a lion from a department store in London. Harrods. Didn't know they sold lions back then. Harrods does. Really? Yeah.

It was sort of the head of London at the time. It was like the swinging 60s and these dudes were known for having this lion and like throwing parties and stuff. It was like pretty cool. And the lion got bigger, of course, and they had to release it into the wild with the help of the born free people. And then there's, of course, the famous video where they went to visit this lion, like, was it years later?

It was 1973 or two, I think, 1972. I'm not sure when they released him, but it was quite a while later. And the- It was a few years. The lion jumps up and like hugs the guys. It was amazing. It was pretty amazing. Yeah.

Are you sure it's real? I'm as sure that that's real as that you're real. Huh. Otherwise, the biggest hoax has been pulled over the world in history. Well, I don't know about that. I think that Harrods used biography as Top's Christian lion. Yeah, that was pretty good. But as Debbie points out, for every Christian lion, there's a secretionary.

Yes, which we already kind of covered, but I think we should go a little more into it. Yeah, there's some different theories out there. So, in 2003, they were, Siegfried and Roy were doing their thing, and apparently they had like, I think, 3,000 of these performances under their belts already. Yeah. They were working with Manticore, or Montecore, sorry, who was one of their tigers, who they'd raised from a cub, and he was now seven years old. So they knew this tiger intimately, like they were its parents for all intents and purposes.

Yeah, and that's one of the keys, too, with lion taming, is that you raise them from a cub. They're not going out and getting these tigers from the savannah that are grown, and then taming them. So the Simpsons were wrong in that respect. Sure. But, so, during this performance, something happened. Montecore grabbed Roy by his windpipe and dragged him off stage.

From the outset, Roy, by the way, is now partially paralyzed, and has a crush trachea because of this, but from the outset, from the moment he regained consciousness, Roy said, do not destroy Montecore. He was like, something happened. He wasn't trying to hurt me, he was trying to protect me, and he was just dragging me away from whatever it was. Roy suggested that possibly he had a stroke, and that freaked out the tiger, the tiger picked up on it.

It's also been theorized that a woman, this is almost like the lone gunman theory. Actually, this is the one I believe. A woman with a beehive hairdo sitting toward the front row, or possibly in the front row, was distracted and confused the tiger, which I guess maybe the tiger was trying to get Roy away from the beehive. Well, what happened, the accounts I read, is that this tiger became transfixed on this lady and started walking toward the lady. And so Roy jumped in between them, and the tiger grabbed ahold of his wrist at this point,

and Roy bopped him on the nose with the microphone, was going, release, release. And he released him, and he fell backward at that point. And I think that's when the tiger, keep wanting to say lion, that's when he thought that Roy was in trouble because it was a big brouhaha all of a sudden with him falling over, people rushed out there in the confusion, they think that he grabbed him like he would grab a baby kitten around the neck to pull it off stage. So that's, I believe that. That sounds sensible.

But he didn't let go. Like they sprayed him with this fire extinguisher, and they beat him with a fire extinguisher until he let go. And it cut his, what do you call it, the... Windpipe. Yeah, no, but the bleeder. The... The jugular?

The jugular. Roy's still alive, he survived. And they actually had a final performance in 2009, six years later. With Montecor? With Montecor. Yeah, because he's still alive. Yep. And he was at the secret garden and dolphin habitat.

I've been there. Oh yeah? It's pretty awesome. Where is this? It's in Vegas. Oh, okay. I can't remember what hotel it's at, but... Well, the mirage is where they performed.

But I feel like they, if it's, it may be at the Mirage. I can't remember. It's also possible it was at another place. But anyway, they have like their lions and couple tigers. They have a bunch of stuff, and it's sad because it's a small zoo. But I'm sure these animals are treated better than the average animal at a zoo. But I mean, they're in these enclosed habitats. Well they get investigated just like modern circuses do.

I think there are routine checks by, which government agency is it? Do you remember? The USDA. The USDA does that. They do circuses, zoos, that kind of thing. Okay. The thing is, is if you're an animal welfare group, you probably don't think the USDA is doing enough.

Yeah. And even if they are following the letter of the law, you probably think the letter of the law isn't strong enough. Yeah. And supposedly every single major circus in the United States has been cited for violating the Animal Welfare Act. Yeah. So I think the whole concept behind lion taming and lion training is fascinating for most

people. But then you take another step further and you're like, these are wild animals in captivity. Like what are you doing? Yeah. Why is your head in its mouth? Exactly. And I'm glad you brought that up because then in the introduction, there's a pretty good description of what a lion can do.

What can a lion's mouth can open up wider than your head is tall, a foot, 30 centimeters. It's also capable of crushing a bull's spine. I love that reference. That just sounds tough. It is tough. A spine of a bull. Yeah. And the claws are about three inches long.

Pretty serious stuff. So I mean, yeah, this is very serious stuff if you're a lion trainer, but at the same time it's like, how do you justify having this act? What's the act for? What's it doing? Yeah. Is it protecting? Is it conserving?

Is it raising awareness? I think people are demanding more explanation than they did in, say, the time of Clyde Beatty. Well, yeah, because back then it was fun to poke and prod things that you thought were unusual and exotic. And there wasn't a lot of respect for it. Like the initial circuses before there were these acts were, I think they had horse acts, but it was mainly like, look at these animals and cages that you've never seen before. Exactly.

And look, there's a pygmy. Yeah. You know? Bearded lady. Yes. Thanks. And I think Isaac Van Jerk was the first guy to put his head in the mouth, too. Right?

He was. Yeah. He was the first guy to put his head in the mouth, and he was the first guy to put his head in the mouth, and he was the first guy to put his head in the mouth. And that was the first guy to do it. So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest,

I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're gonna get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me

to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle

on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are gonna change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The And we have like a whole suite of circus art stuff. Do we? Human Cannonball? Oh yeah, yeah. Man, we've got a, we have several others. Circus arts.

Yeah, that's what it's called. If you even look on the channel, it's entertainment.howstuffworks.com slash art slash circus arts. Wow, it has a sub channel circus art sub channel at house the first because that's the kind of site it is And if you go to that sub channel, you don't even need to do that You can go to the search bar on the home page at house the first calm and type in lion taming and it'll bring up this article Yeah, I think we know we talked about something else because I mentioned that I go to the Big Apple Circus

When it comes through town, yeah, I remember talking about that and that's the one where they have like a Horse they saw the equestrian show and like dogs jumping through hoops, but other than that It's like clowns and jugglers and Like the Circus Olay feats of strength No animals. No big cat people on the road from the law. Yeah, it's not like that the gaudy ringling brothers now Good to know I haven't seen the circus. I can't even tell you you should you and you should check out the Big Apple Circus Oh, yeah, that's neat. All right. We'll check it out. It's like very small and intimate It's like it feels like what you might expect the circus a hundred years ago to be like

Will you send me an email when it's coming? I will. Okay. Okay. I said search bar by the way All right, so that means listener mail This is from I'm gonna call this we helped someone kick heroin Do you read this awesome? Hey guys, I've been meaning to write you for a very long time I've been listening to you pretty much since day one learning and loving every step of the way However, it was almost a year ago. I chose to check myself into drug treatment. See I am a marine female marine

No longer active duty But when I was injured I was given a lot of painkillers and ended up getting addicted to those and that eventually led to me getting strung out on heroin for years Huh, what does this have to do with you? Well heroin detox is one of the worst things you can imagine We were not allowed to listen to music or watch TV or pretty much do anything but classes and groups I agree that it helped me being in a media blackout But I did beg the staff to let me listen to you guys to my amazement

My doctor was a fan of yours and approved it awesome. So while I was going through the worst of The worst of it. You were both there with me. I will spare you the details So August 15th is not only I think I think we've both seen the Seinfeld where Elaine's dating the guy who's kicking heroin Did she date a guy kicking heroin? Yeah, don't you remember? Sorry go ahead So now August 15th is not only my birthday. I'm 29 this year, but also my first birthday off drugs Oh, congratulations. I wanted to thank you for what you've done for me, and I'm gonna go back and listen to them all again I know it is a lot to ask but a shout out would make my day dude and

Elaine Turley Elaine don't tell me that's a coincidence Well, it's a it's both in a she says simplify from Elaine Turley That's awesome, and then she says p.s. Marines are the few in the proud female Marines of the fewer in the prouder Nice, so way to go man. Yeah, I want to say man. I mean lady. That's a pretty awesome. Yeah You kicked heroin with us. That's amazing. Yeah, can you think about that? Wow, man, that was a mind-blower Chuck pretty good one if you have a mind-blowing story That relates to us even if it doesn't that's cool, but if it does wow, that's even better You can tweet to us at sysk podcast. That's our Twitter handle

Facebook comm slash stuff you should know is where we dwell on Facebook You can also send us an email to stuff podcast at discovery dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics visit how stuff works calm I'm munga shatikler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe you can find in major league Baseball international banks k-pop groups even the white house, but just when I thought I had a handle on this subject Something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed Whether you're a skeptic or a believer give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too Listen to skyline drive on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts

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