From Richard Reynolds #3

Luis and Marcia Louise Palacio RBBB – Blue - -1990 As you see 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. I would invite Jim Clubb to comment for us about his breeding the striped hyenas. 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? As you all know, 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). Frank Thompson may have been the director there then. I saw 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% accurate or inclusive. Though hyenas have not been a staple of mixed acts in USA there have been a number of them in Europe. In 1921 the famed French trainer Alfred Court and his brother Jules framed the Zoo-Circus with strong emphasis on animal acts. Hans Jürgen Tiede reported that when Alfred and 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 as you know, being an animal intermediate between wolves and foxes. It looks to me more like a very tall red fox. Throughout the 1920s the Zoo-Circus continued with mixed acts that included hyenas. We know that hyenas can live an extraordinarily long time - -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. I'll quit on that. Richard