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Tuesday, January 23, 2007
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8 comments:
Ride um Cowboy!!!! You could have been a star!!! Did you ever shoe this Rino? You have so many talents and alway a credit to any place you worked. A real down to earth human being loved by all who met you. Even me who never did.
Rode the buck out of him! Actually I could ride him, he was very gentle. Merv Griffin did a show at Great Adventure with Alex Caress, guest animal guy and he was scared to death of Sqeaker.
Richard Reynolds asks and adds - -
What location is this? When was the photo taken? Looks like a zoo-type compound.
Rex Williams had a white rhino named Thor. He came from Wild Animal Safari, Kings Mill, OH. Was trained Rex and the late Bill Johnston in winter of 1974-75. Johnston told me he was in an act with a horse. Thor made Shrine appearances in 1975. Rex sold Thor to circus owner Raoul Suarez and delivered him to Suarez in Laredo in October 1975. Thor died in Mexico in 1976 from injuries inflicted by an African elephant.
Garden had a white rhino with his Toby Tyler show. In March 1986, it got loose at quarters in Myaaka City and led folks on a merry chase until sheriff's deputies or wildlife authorites shot and killed him. I do not think this rhino ever made a ring appearance.
Garden got another white rhino and it was confiscated by game or humane authorites up in Virginia, owing to problems that seemed to constantly plague Garden.
RBBB has had two white rhinos - -both on the blue show. The first was in 1988, a calf named Mkhombe or Tank, that was supposed to be trained by Mickey Bohannon for use in spec or the ring. It was very tractable young animal. It traveled as led stock in the stock car with zebras etc. [That was certaily a first.] When I saw it in Atlanta, they led him to the backyard. Bohannon got injured by this rhino - seemingly a pure accident - and Tank never performed as planned. He was later sent to David Meeks' Little Mountain Zoo at Inman, SC.
The other blue show white rhino was Flavio Togni's Thor on the 1990-91 Blue show. It did a nice routine in the ring, ridden, the first year, by black leopard.
White rhinos are more tractable than any of the other species and many are downright gentle. And they can grow to an astonishing size - -the biggest of all the rhinos. It's hard to believe in light of how common they are today, that the very first one did not reach a zoo or circus until 1946, an orphaned calf that went to the Pretoria zoo in South Africa.
A few remaing comments - -
Freddie Knie (Swiss Circus Knie) was the first to train and ride a white rhino in a circus ring. Knie got a pair of white rhinos in 1966 and the female - -Ceyla or Zeila - -was selected for training and first appeared in the ring in 1968.
There has not been a "trained" circus Indian rhino since the 1870s. There were at least two of them. One was owned by Dan Rice from 1855 to 1861. The other was owned by John "Pogey" O'Brien in the 1870s. It had a ring through its nose like a bull. There is a famous photo of this rhino with his trainer, a chain leading from the trainer's hand to the ring in the rhino's nose.
We are not likey to evr see another Indian rhino on a circus. The last one with an American show, Bill by name, died on RBBB in 1926.
Miami zoo had an Indian rhino calf that pulled a small cart.
I have a good photo of a lady riding Whipsnade's Indian rhino, "Mohan" around 1951. Whipsnade is London country zoo. Buckles earlier had this photo on his blog.
Rookmaaker published of a photo of a keeper riding a Sumatran rhino in the Rangoon zoo in 1913.
Richard, this is in NJ at a safari park I worked at. I had 28 african elephants and 16 white rhinos with two baby rhinos born in the second year I worked there. The breeding rhinos came from a park in Texas that we sold them to . Buckles got two male asian elephants and one female african elephant and Rex got the other male asian.
Wonferful infos about rhinos! About Knie rhinos and others in Europe, you maybe can check my post of last January 20 (it is under Mr.Reynold's picture of rhino at MGM).
This photo is going to be my PIN UP photo for this year. Great Gary
I once read somewhere that rhinos are just as trainable as elephants, but that having a trained rhino was the equivalent to a trained bulldozer. Any comments anyone?
RE
Robert Baudy had a rhino at his place in Webster in the early 90's. I don't think it was trained. He was however quiet accurate at hitting the wheelbarrow out of his corral.
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