Thursday, May 03, 2007

Ringling-Barnum Circus 1952 #9

Posted by Picasa

Posted by Buckles at 5/03/2007 05:50:00 AM

3 comments:

Bob Cline said...

Buckles,
While I have been keeping elephant records for years, I have not been around many elephants on a daily basis let alone a large herd like these were.
Were the elephant hands assigned a certain amount of animals to tend to only or was this where everybody did what ever until the entire job was done?
Thanks,
Bob

03 May, 2007 09:43
Buckles said...

Cleaning up the picket line was always a community project, everyone started at one end and finished at the other.
Each herd worker had three men that rolled tubs and so forth during the act. They would also be responsible for sweeping them off, putting on headpieces, etc.
In the days when the show moved every day, all the elephant men rode. Like everything else, rank had it's privilege and those with seniority picked out the ones that had nice pace and the newcomers got those that didn't as is the case with the first rider seen above.

03 May, 2007 10:13
Anonymous said...

Some nice looking big headed elephants in this pic.
The older movies and photos I see seem to have elephants with larger squarer heads than I see nowaday. Is there a basic difference in the elephants of the 1940s and present ? I seem to remember something about the earlier elephants coming from India and the modern elephants being from Thailand. Is this true Are there recognised subspecies of Asian Elephants and how many ?

03 May, 2007 11:27

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)