 Saw this photo at the Art Expo in Chicago... as I remember there was someone in Indiana (a doctor Smith?) who had a pet hyena. Does this ring a bell? Also, have there been Hyenas used in circus acts? Mark?  |
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
From Mark Rosenthal
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
at one time, early in his career, clyde beatty included hyenas in his act. he had to wear special boots to protect his shins.
The Palacos had 2 hyenas in thei mixed group trained by Jim Clubb on the Gold & Blue units in 1989-'90-'91
I believe Alfred Court also had Hyenas on RBBB
Pat white had a hyena in the mixed group from Jim Clubb in Austria Nationalcircus Louis Knie in 1997.
Anyone know If Mr Clubb put the Hyenas with the cats as babies or adult animals?
A quick google for striped hyenas lists them as native to northern Africa, India, Pakistan and Turkey !
We had a breeding pair of spotted hyenas and a striped (don't remember if it was male or female, since you can only tell with a blood test...)at Baudy's years ago...I do remember this; we had to split heads (horse/cow)to feed to the lions and tigers, but could put a full head in the hyena compound and they would be able to strip it clean...they have the strongest jaws as I recall!
:-)
Cindy Potter
Richard Reynolds says - -
The Clubb/Palacios animals were striped hyenas. I believe they bred and produced some healthy pups. Somewhere I read a report that these two hyenas were very friendly towards humans. They were the first hyenas I ever saw in a circus ring and that was late - -1990.
John Helliott also had two striped hyenas in a mixed act in the 1920s- - a photo of that may be seen in the **National Geographic** for October 1931 The two hyenas are sitting on low stools against the cage bars nearest the photographer. This was a Peru based act and Clyde Beatty may have worked them in his early years there. Incidentally, the NG circus article is one of the best circus photo-stories ever done, including the first ever circus color photos.
Off hand I cannot think of a spotted hyena in the circus ring in USA. Jim Alexander mentioned an act where hyenas would grab a piece of fat soaked canvas in their mouths and be lifted up. Jim do you have any idea where and when that might have been or the species of hyena involved?
Spotted hyenas are much larger than the striped species and for that matter larger than the very rare brown hyena of SW Africa. I have never seen a brown hyena in a circus let alone one performing in the ring. There have only been a few of them in captivity in USA. I saw 2 of them at Jacksonville Zoo on 16 September 1970 (they then had all three species) and another 2 at Los Angeles zoo on 18 September 1975. I could not find an ISIS listing of a single brown hyena in captivity anywhere in the world at the moment, though that inventory is far from 100% inclusive.
Though hyenas have not been a staple of mixed acts in USA there have been a number of them in Europe.
In 1921 Alfred Court and his brother Jules framed the Zoo-Circus with strong emphasis on animal acts. Hans Jürgen Tiede reported that when Alfred Court and his brother Jules took over the menagerie of Auguste and Florian Laurent, they got many big cage animals, including 7 spotted and striped hyenas. For 1924 the Zoo Circus featured a wonderful mixed act presented by one Marcel Chaffraix. It included lions, tigers, spotted jaguar, pumas, leopards, spotted and striped hyenas, wolves, Great Dane dogs, and two rare long-legged South American maned wolves.
I have never heard of another maned wolf on a circus anywhere, other than this one. It is a quite beautiful animal but poorly named. It is really not a wolf (i.e. dog family) but an intermediate animal between wolves and foxes. It actually looks more like a very tall red fox.
Throughout the 1920s the Zoo-Circus continued with mixed acts that included hyenas.
Hyenas can live extraordinarily long in captivity - -much longer than any member of the dog or cat families. According to Weigl, the record is 41 years and 1 month held by a male spotted hyena in the Berlin zoo from 1924 to 1965. The oldest one I ever saw was a male spotted in Milwaukee zoo when Ken Kawata and Bess Frank were there. He was about 25 years old when I saw him in 1991. He seemed very gentle and eagerly came to the bars of his off-exhibit cage to be petted by the keepers.
Jerry Booker, in California, did some sort of trained hyena presentation in the 1960s.
I seem to recall that Eddie Kuhn had a hyena in his act.
Was that same Jerry Booker an accomplished artist too, working in pencil and charcoal?
Post a Comment