Animal acts in Las Vegas Part 2
Yesterday we recapped the demise of Siegfried & Roy’s big-cat show, as well as the attempt by magician Jay Owenhouse to display tigers in a circus tent near the Las Vegas Monorail. Today, the fascination of magicians and others with lions, tigers, and other exotic animals continues …
Another big-cat act that ran afoul of activists was headlined by the late Dirk Arthur. Having bounced down the Las Vegas food chain from MGM Grand to Caesars Palace to the Tropicana, Arthur was slated to take his act to the Westgate. But then 15,000 PETA supporters inundated the hotel-casino with complaints and Arthur left Sin City.
Notes People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ website, “Arthur had been cited for keeping big cats in metal cages with no protection from the scorching sun when temperatures reached 127 degrees and for confining a tiger to a filthy enclosure with a buildup of animal waste.” Adds Klayton Rutherford, director of captive wildlife advocacy for PETA, “Now Dirk Arthur’s big cats are out of show business entirely.”
Jeff Lowe might be familiar to some from the Tiger King Park scandal, which involved the federal confiscation of 69 animals from Lowe and Joseph “Exotic Joe” Maldonado-Passage. Lowe was “actually the man who took over Joe’s Exotic Zoo, which is now closed,” Rutherford says. “For a while, he was bringing big cats to Las Vegas and selling public interactions and photos with them.”
That didn’t sit well with PETA. They persuaded Las Vegas Metro to raid Lowe’s pad in 2017. This resulted in the seizure of tiger cubs and a lemur. Lowe was also fined $10,000 (his jail time was suspended). “But Lowe admitted to a Las Vegas reporter that he was still selling animal encounters for private parties, rolling big-cat cubs through hotel-casinos in suitcases,” PETA reported at the time.
And don’t forget the lion habitat inside MGM Grand. You’ll have to remember it, as it no longer exists. “PETA had filed complaints to the state OSHA administration to fine the exhibitor after multiple safety violations. These victories, they’re hard-fought and a great sign of how far we have come in the movement,” Rutherford recalls.
For those without long memories, 15 years ago MGM Grand still had a glassed-in lion enclosure just off the casino floor. Run by Keith Evans, rather than MGM, its history included a pair of attacks on handlers by stressed lions. Evans also got slapped by the Department of Agriculture for declawing a pair of lion cubs.
Summarizes Rutherford, “Vegas has become synonymous now with victories for animals. That is a great example of how public perception has changed. What people expect for entertainment today has shifted so greatly that they simply don’t want to see that anymore.”
