Animal trainers

[Pckts]

I will go on to post about possibly the greatest Animal trainer I have read about

Louis Roth:

These are my notes from the book I read about him



"40 years with jungle killers"


-Louis Roth trained Beatty, Nelson, Stark, and tons of others (lots of Capt'ns and lots of other women surprisingly)
-he said "you will hear it said that a tiger can kill a lion, or vice versa. In my experience I have seen all theories exploded."
-then goes on to talk about tigers killing lions, leopard killing a large tiger, lion killing a polar bear etc.
-He says a polar bear is usually the toughest, and can usually defeat either big cat.
-Polar bears fight more with their mouth compared to grizzlies and brown bears who prefer to grapple and shove on two legs
-Tigers are quicker and more treacherous
-tigers fight on their backs more and lions prefer not to
-Had a wild lion named leo who he taught to wrestle with him
-had a tiger escape over a 16' wall and proceeded to kill as many goats as he could from the pen next to his, the men tried to remove one goat and the tiger was so tenacious it was latched on to the goat and hoisted half way up the 16' wall by just his mouth before he let go. He was the reason that Roth had to put a tarp over  his ring.
-had 3 lions in one pen and put a tiger in the other, the 3 lions roared morning till night trying to get at the tiger, until one lion ripped a whole in the partition and stuck its head through only to have the tiger snatch its head in its mouth and wouldn't let go until they had to stick a 2 x 4 in its jaws and pry them open. The lion was left a bloody mess.
-Lions will slap their tail, roar and stomp when they are unhappy. A tiger is impossible to tell, they will attack out of no where.
-Both big cats are easily deterred from attacking when you have something load or different in front of them. They both seem to be unsure of new things
-Wild cats are far easier to train than captive cats, Not why you would expect.
Roth goes on to say
"I asked my old teacher if he could train wild cats, he said he could"
"He then says that his teacher said you can get them to balance, jump through hoops etc.. but they will always be aggressive and wild, they never loose there fear of humans and they are always dangerous, that is why he thinks they are easier to train"
"he said when you are in the ring with a wild cat, you never are lax, you always no this animal is dangerous and will kill you in a second, with a captive cat, they will purr and be your best friend for years, and still they can snap at any second"
-he said most cats hate each other but can be taught to tolerate each other fairly easy, but cats and bears do go insane and loose all control from time to time
-he raised a goat and male lion together and when the lion would perform, the goat would blead loudly until his friend was returned to him, when the goat was let out to graze the lion would roar for his friend. The goat got a mysterious disease and died, the lion would let no body near, when they finally got the goat carcass out, the lion was so sad, they found a new goat and rubbed the smell of the old goat all over the new goat twin, and the lion wanted to play with the goat so bad, until finally the goat was comfortable around the lion, they finally let them in the same cage, the lion smelled the goat, looked around confused and sad, then smacked the goat to the floor, bit its neck and killed it.
He gives tons of credit to Mabel stark, who he calls "fearless" and says she has been attacked by the lions and tigers a few times and still continues to train both big cats with no fear. Calls her the greatest female big cat trainer he has ever seen.
-He needed a black leopard or jag (forget) to fight a Tiger for a movie, he didn't have a black leopard/jag so they had a smaller lioness who was next to this tiger and for whatever reason, they hated eachother (so roth thought) they were always trying to get at each other, so Roth thought they would be good for the movie and would probably just go right after each other. So they spray painted the lioness black and let her go in to the tigers pen and waited with film in hand waiting for a violent fight only to have what they thought was a hatred between these two specific cats turn into a absolute love fest. All they wanted was to play and wrestle with eachother which apparently is all they would do from the moment the met.


What this book opened my eyes to was this, these big cats were sold to the trainers mentioned above and taken to the US, where they were bred time and time again, it might be the beginning of the N. American Tiger and Inbred lion problem in the US today, sad that it turned into a free for all. It seems as though big cats and wild animals in general were an economical stimulate back then, they were an industry, animal rights were non existent. Much like womens rights or race rights, but like them, those rights were slowly given and so are animals rights. It gives me hope, I look forward to the progress of humans as a species. Reply