![The dancing bear by William Frederick Witherington](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/The_dancing_bear_by_William_Frederick_Witherington.jpg)
A tame bear, often called a dancing bear, is a wild
bear
Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Nor ...
captured when young, or born and bred in captivity, and used to entertain people in streets or taverns. Dancing bears were commonplace throughout Europe and Asia from the Middle Ages to the 19th century, and can still be found in the 21st century in some countries.
Dancing bears
History
In Ancient Rome, bears and monkeys were led to dance and perform tricks for the public. Dancing bears were commonplace in the Indian subcontinent for centuries. The last of them were freed in 2009.
In Russia and
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
, cubs were for centuries captured for being used as dancing bears accompanying tavern musicians (''
skomorokhi
A skomorokh ( in Russian, in Old East Slavic, in Church Slavonic. Compare with the Old Polish , ) was a medieval East Slavic harlequin, or actor, who could also sing, dance, play musical instruments and compose for oral/musical and dramatic ...
''), as depicted in the ''Travels'' of
Adam Olearius
Adam Olearius (born Adam Ölschläger or Oehlschlaeger, 24 September 159922 February 1671) was a German scholar, mathematician, geographer and librarian. He became secretary to the ambassador sent by Frederick III, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, to ...
.
Dancing bears were widespread throughout Europe from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. They were still present on the streets of Spain in 2007, and in Eastern Europe.
Recently, organizations and animal rights activists have worked to outlaw or eliminate tame bears, since the practice is seen as cruel and antiquated, citing mistreatment and abuse used in order to train the bears.
French bear handlers
Traveling with a bear was very popular in France at the end of the 19th century, between 1870 and 1914. More than 600 men from Ariege in the French Pyrenees trained a bear cub found in the mountains near their home. Among them, 200 traveled to North America arriving at the ports of New York, Quebec, Montreal and Halifax from the ports of Liverpool, Glasgow and Belfast.
[Louise Pagé, The Man behind the Dancing Bear, amazon.ca, ISBN 9782981754516] They would leave their home early in spring, walking from the Pyrenees through France and England, earning money for the crossing in order to arrive in North America in May or June.
Gallery
File:Dancing Bear Adam Olearius Travels.jpg, Engraving with dancing bear from Adam Olearius
Adam Olearius (born Adam Ölschläger or Oehlschlaeger, 24 September 159922 February 1671) was a German scholar, mathematician, geographer and librarian. He became secretary to the ambassador sent by Frederick III, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, to ...
's ''Travels'', 1647
File:Bohemian Bear Tamer 01.jpg, ''Bohemian Bear Tamer'', 1888 cast by Paul Wayland Bartlett
Paul Wayland Bartlett (January 24, 1865 – September 20, 1925) was an American sculptor working in the Beaux-Arts tradition of heroic realism.
Life
Bartlett was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Truman Howe Bartlett, an art critic a ...
File:Pushkar-bear and handler.jpg, A dancing bear in Pushkar
Pushkar is a city and headquarters of Pushkar tehsil in the Ajmer district in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It is situated about northwest of Ajmer and about southwest of Jaipur.[children's television
Children's television series (or children's television shows) are television show, television programs designed for children, normally scheduled for broadcast during the morning and afternoon when children are awake. They can sometimes run during ...]
show, Captain Kangaroo
''Captain Kangaroo'' is an American children's television series that aired weekday mornings on the American television network CBS for 29 years, from 1955 to 1984, making it the longest-running nationally broadcast children's television program ...
, featured a character known as "Dancing Bear."
* The concept has entered into the lexicon in the form of the common proverb; "The marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at all."
* Randy Newman's song "Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear
"Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear" is a song written by Randy Newman, about a sincere young man of modest means named Simon Smith who entertains affluent ("well-fed") diners with his dancing bear. A recording by the Alan Price Set reached ...
" is about a humble young man who entertains high society with his tame bear.
* A dancing bear features at the end of Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 Western novel ''Blood Meridian
''Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West'' is a 1985 epic novel by American author Cormac McCarthy, classified under the Western, or sometimes the anti-Western, genre. McCarthy's fifth book, it was published by Random House.
In a l ...
'' and is shot in a saloon by a drunkard.
* In ''The Simpsons
''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, ...
'' episode “Marge on the Lam
"Marge on the Lam" is the sixth episode of the fifth season of the American animated television series ''The Simpsons''. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 4, 1993. After Marge invites her neighbor Ruth Powers ...
,” Homer Simpson
Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the American animated sitcom ''The Simpsons''. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared, along with the rest of his family, in ''The Tracey Ullman Show'' short "G ...
and Lenny Leonard both misremember ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...
as “the bear in the little car.”
* Rafi Zabor's novel ''The Bear Comes Home
''The Bear Comes Home'' is a novel written by Rafi Zabor. It won the 1998 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. It was selected as an alternate for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.
Details
The novel tells the story of an alto saxophone-playing bea ...
'' is a fictional story about a bear trained to play jazz saxophone.
* The Joanna Newsom
Joanna Newsom (born January 18, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Born and raised in Northern California, Newsom was classically trained on the harp in her youth and began her musical career as a keyboardist in the San Francisc ...
song “Monkey & Bear” concerns a bear named Ursala who is deceived by the Monkey into dancing for children.
* The animated movie '' Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted'' features a bear named Sonya who is trained to ride a unicycle. Sonya is considerably more animalistic than the other anthropomorphic
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.
Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...
animals in the film.
See also
*Iomante
, sometimes written as , is an Ainu ceremony in which a brown bear is sacrificed. The word literally means "to send something/someone off". In some Ainu villages, it is a Blakiston's fish owl, rather than a bear, that is the subject of the ceremo ...
*''The Bear Comes Home
''The Bear Comes Home'' is a novel written by Rafi Zabor. It won the 1998 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. It was selected as an alternate for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.
Details
The novel tells the story of an alto saxophone-playing bea ...
''
*Ursari
The Ursari (generally read as " bear leaders" or "bear handlers"; from the ro, urs, meaning "bear"; singular: ''ursar''; Bulgarian: урсари, ''ursari'') or Richinara are the traditionally nomadic occupational group of animal trainers amo ...
*Bear-baiting
Bear-baiting is a blood sport in which a chained bear and one or more dogs are forced to fight one another. It may also involve pitting a bear against another animal.
History Europe Great Britain
Bear-baiting was very popular from the 12th ...
* Corbinian's Bear
*Wojtek (bear)
Wojtek (1942 – 2 December 1963; ; in English, sometimes spelled Voytek and pronounced as such) was a Syrian brown bear (''Ursus arctos syriacus'') bought, as a young cub, at a railway station in Hamadan, Iran, by Polish II Corps soldiers who ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tame Bear
Bears
Animal rights
Animals in entertainment
Animal training
Cruelty to animals