animals – LIFE

Mane Event: LIFE’s 25 Most Memorable Horses

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 09:00:29 +0000

Horses are majestic creatures who have played many roles in American culture. They’re athletes (Seabiscuit), movie stars (National Velvet), military troops, and farm workers—not to mention beloved companions. In one 1952 gimmick, a horse that supposedly possessed clairvoyant powers even composed a headline for a LIFE story about herself. (She was clairvoyant, but not creative: the headline was “Talking Horse.”)

To celebrate horses now and then, here’s a look back at 25 of the most memorable horses in LIFE’s pages.

Polo ponies at the Peachtree Ranch in Texas, 1939.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Championship horse Seabiscuit after winning the Santa Anita Handicap, 1940.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A doctor listened to a horse’s heart at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Moroccan soldier of the French expeditionary force held the General’s Arabian horse, 1940.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A stallion tried to make friends with a barn cat, 1943.

Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A man watched his work horse drink from a water trough, 1944.

Fritz Goro The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor posed with a saddle horse after her smash movie debut in “National Velvet,” 1945.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

These boys rode their horse to school, 1946.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A lucky horse joined the roulette action in Las Vegas, 1947.

Jon Brenneis The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Gene Autry, astride his horse Champion, surveyed his Ranch, 1948.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The foreman of the JA Ranch, Clarence, Hailey Long, sat with his horse, 1949.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Mary Breckenridge ran the Frontier Nursing Service in Leslie Country, Kentucky, 1949.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“Lady Wonder,” a clairvoyant 27 year old talking horse, could count and spell its name by tipping over lettered panels, 1952.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This child could look his miniature horse in the eye, 1952.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Baby horses scampered down the stretch at Los Alamitos track, 1952.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The horse sailed gracefully toward its tank in Atlantic City, N.J., 1953.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Midget thoroughbred filly, Big Bertha, and her mother on Woodland farm, 1954.

Lisa Larsen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A six-year-old cowboy learned how to shoe a horse, 1954.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This young girl rode her pony as a colt followed, 1956.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“Misty of Chincoteague,” a wild horse, indulged before returning home to Chincoteague Island, 1957.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harness racing at the All-Russia horse show at the Hippodrome, 1958.

Howard Sochurek The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Trader Horn nuzzled a young friend at Roosevelt Raceway, 1959.

Donald Uhrbrock The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Israeli children of the Habad sect at a farm village, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A troika race at Hippodrome, 1963.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy the horse rollerskated in front of his farm, 1963.

Joseph Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Mane Event: LIFE’s 25 Most Memorable Horses appeared first on LIFE.

Twenty-five Delightful Pictures of Cats

Tue, 08 Aug 2017 10:00:47 +0000

In addition to the cats, these photos feature some familiar, feline-friendly humans: There’s a 1959 photo of Ernest Hemingway, who collected six-toed cats, with a cat helping itself to a glass of water. (Hemingway’s cats may have drunk more than water, with one letter suggesting the author fed one named “Friendless” whisky and milk when Hem was feeling lonely and wanted to drink with somebody.) And there’s Fred Astaire palling around in 1962 with the Siamese cat that fellow film star Kim Novak, also pictured, had given him. “Animals loved Daddy,” Astaire’s daughter Ava later told Vanity Fair‘s editor-at-large, Sarah Giles.

But it’s also clear that a cat can be a star, whether or not its owner is famous. For example, in 1958, Navy doctor Dietrich Beischer used magnet boots to train a kitten to chase a mouse upside-down—to get a sense of how humans would deal with weightlessness. Thus, the cat played an important role in the history of space travel. And as for a cat in a funny hat or a cat eating corn on the cob well, some things never change.

Here’s a look at 25 of the best feline photos in LIFE’s iconic archive of 20th century photography.

A kitten emerged from pot of milk after falling into it, 1940.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Aspiring ballerina Edwina Seaver relaxed on the sofa at home with Siamese cat Ting Ling, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A cat nestled in a carrier during an air raid, 1941.

John Phillips The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Portrait of Blackie, LIFE photographer Gjon Mili’s cat, 1943.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A husky Persian cat posed with his ribbons and trophy at the Atlantic City Cat Show, 1945.

Jerry Cooke The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Rudy the Dachshund and Trudy the cat engaged in hide and seek or ‘pounce on the dog” in prelude to a friendly roughhousing wrestling match between the pet housemates. 1946.

Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Baby, the seeing-eye cat, 1947.

Loran F. Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cat on wheels, 1948.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A cat named Monkey had a large hat collection, circa 1948/1949.

James Whitmore The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nipper, the corn loving cat, 1951.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Russian-born American operatic mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel sang as a cat named Blackie sat on a piano, 1952.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sharon Adams, 10, played in a snow drift as her cat maintained its comfortable perch atop her head, 1952.

A. Y. Owen The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Dutch billiards prodigy Renske Quax fed cream to his cat, 1953.

Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fresh milk at Arch Badertscher’s dairy farm. 1954.

Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pets of the Lyng family: Mitten the cat, Tosen the dog and an unnamed mouse, 1955.

Jytte Bjerregaard Muller The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Composer Alan Hovhaness worked in a score-littered studio while a black cat nestled among the papers on the piano, 1955.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kim Novak played with Siamese cats that were used in one of her movies, “Bell, Book and Candle,” 1958.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Naval researcher Dr. Dietrich Beischer tested effects of being upside-down for prolonged periods of time on a cat and mouse, 1958.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ernest Hemingway sat while a cat drank out of a water glass on the table, 1959.

Tore Johnson The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Otto Preminger looked at stray cats while attending the Venice Film Festival, at which his film “Anatomy of a Murder” was shown, 1959.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Black cats and their owners lined up for an audition for the movie “Tales of Terror,” 1961.

Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ordinary striped tabby cats waited on a beach as a man went into the water to catch fish, 1962.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fred Astaire danced with his Siamese cat on his shoulder, 1962.

John Swope The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

The manipulation of light created emotive and visual effects, 1963.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Poet Rod McKuen played a record on his stereo set while a pet Siamese cat nuzzled his face affectionately, 1967.

Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Twenty-five Delightful Pictures of Cats appeared first on LIFE.

How John Dominis Photographed Wild Antelope Without a Telephoto Lens

Tue, 27 Jun 2017 10:00:26 +0000

The photographers on LIFE Magazine’s staff did it all, taking on assignments wide and varied without a blink of the eye. John Dominis was no exception. He joined LIFE as a staff photographer in 1950 and would go on to shoot some of the biggest stars of the era Steve McQueen, Frank Sinatra and Robert Redford to name a few. He also shot one of the most iconic images of the 20th century: Tommie Smith and John Carlos giving the black power salute at the Olympics in Mexico.

Here, LIFE looks back at one of his lesser known shoots—the African Antelope, which was a cover story and a follow up to The Great Cats of Africa, which would earn him Magazine Photographer of the year in 1966 and later become a book. In the Editor’s Note that accompanies the story, Dominis described how he was able to get the dramatic photo of the “bizarre wildebeest” (the last slide in the gallery above) without a telephoto lens.

“I wanted to get low-angle shots that gave a dramatic sense of their speed. I built boxes out of plywood and mounted cameras inside of them,” Dominis explained. “John [Mbuthi, a local whom Dominis worked with on the story] and I worked for three weeks with them. We’d go a mile ahead of a herd and put down the boxes and camouflage them. Then we’d hide a quarter of a mile away and wait maybe for several hours. Meanwhile the light might change and there was no way I could alter the exposure on the cameras. If the animal reached the boxes, I pushed the button that triggered the motorized cameras by a radio signal and ran off a whole roll of film. I must have exposed 40 rolls, but ended up with only one really good frame.”

Featured in this gallery are images provided by the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin of these contraptions that John Dominis set up. These rarely seen images show a photographer at work and just how resourceful Dominis was in getting the shot.

The Briscoe Center recently acquired the John Dominis archive after his daughter, Dori Beer, reached out to the center. His longtime friend and photo editor M.C. Marden organized the collection, which contains a comprehensive look at his professional and personal work and life. While his archive won’t be open to the public until later in 2017, the Briscoe Center the photojournalism collection of which also includes the work of Diana Walker, Eddie Adams, Dirck Halstead and others is open for research and focuses on a behind-the-scenes look at how Americans experience the world, from politics to war to wildlife, via the media.

“Pictures like [Dominis” animal series] have something to say about how Americans (though magazines like LIFE) perceive the outside world,” said Ben Wright of the Briscoe Center, in a statement to LIFE. “These pictures and collections are not only beautiful and interesting: they’re historical evidence that help historians to understand the past with accuracy and integrity.”

John Dominis on assignment in Africa, 1969.

John Dominis Photographic Archive/UT Austin’s Briscoe Center

There are few more spectacular sights than a herd of oryx striding across the grasslands, with scores of saberlike horns glistening in the sun.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Soaring above the thick brush of East Africa, two impala moved with a flowing grace unsurpassed in the animal kingdom.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The gazelle is one of the fleetest of the antelope. Among it’s natural enemies, only the cheetah has a chance of running it down.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Dominis on assignment in Africa, 1969.

John Dominis Photographic Archive/UT Austin’s Briscoe Center

The wildebeest (South African Dutch for “wild beast”) are the oddest and fiercest-looking antelope of all.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post How John Dominis Photographed Wild Antelope Without a Telephoto Lens appeared first on LIFE.

The Rabbit Show

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 10:30:44 +0000

The LIFE photo archives are full of mysteries, great and small—and in this case, furry. At some point around 1943, LIFE sent a photographer to cover a Long Island Rabbit Breeders Association show. There are no contact sheets, no notes or captions were saved, and the photographs were never published. All that can be said is that the event was clearly hopping.

However, while these rabbits seem to have been pampered pets bred for show, one possible reason why rabbit breeding might have been pursued at the time was a lot more practical.

“During the wartime era, when meat was rationed, rabbit breeding was promoted by the USDA as an inexpensive way to raise meat for your own family,” says Margo DeMello, anthropologist and president of the House Rabbit Society, who co-authored Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature. “Many breeders sell them as meat and pets, and that was certainly the case in the ’40s, so these rabbits shows would’ve appealed to both audience.”

The history of cuniculture—the agricultural practice of breeding and raising domestic rabbits—of course goes back much further than that. The Romans kept rabbits in walled gardens known as leporaria. Since rabbit meat was thought to be an aphrodisiac and a fertility aid for women, rabbit breeding was a female-dominated industry. “Men would be responsible for larger animals, and women would be responsible for smaller animals that could be raised at home, closer to the children,” says DeMello, whose nine rabbits reside in their own wing of her home with their own private courtyard outside Albuquerque, N.M. (alongside six chihuahuas, three cats and a parrot).

And, though the WWII push for rabbit consumption might unnerve the Easter bunny, breeding rabbits as food does have Easter-time roots. Catholic monks in southern France are believed to have been some of the first people to domesticate rabbits, and are said to have popularized the practice at their monasteries throughout the Middle Ages, at which point the church apparently considered the ancient delicacy of “laurice” rabbit fetuses or newborns more like fish than animal meat, thus allowing them to be eaten during Lent.

1943 Rabbit Show

Marie Hansen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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This Adorable Panda Was at the Center of a Cold War Conflict

Wed, 15 Mar 2017 09:00:07 +0000

If anything could bring the gap between nations and ideologies, even at a time of tension and war, it just might be an adorable baby panda. But, even for a panda, such a task is far from easy.

Just look at Chi Chi.

As LIFE explained in its June 16, 1958, edition, which featured photos of 130-lb., 1.5-year-old Chi Chi, she had been acquired in Beijing by animal dealer Heini Demmer. From her cage in Frankfurt, Germany, she was then in the middle of what the magazine called “a small international trade crisis.” Zoos across the U.S. put in bids to acquire the rare creature, but a “U.S. embargo forbids all trade with China, and the Treasury Department refused to make Chi Chi an exception.” And on top of all of that, her keepers had run low on bamboo and had to try feeding her wheat and rice with sugar.

She ended up settling down halfway at the London Zoo, when the British bought her for $28,000. Because she’d been deemed “enemy goods” by the U.S., “British children can thank the Cold War that they are privileged to visit her,” LIFE joked in 1964.

But she continued to cause panda-monium throughout the 1960s. The London Zoo had been trying to set her up on a blind date with the only other captive panda living outside China at the time, An-An, who had been sent to the USSR as a token of Sino-Soviet friendship in 1959. (Both pandas were variably identified with and without their hyphens throughout the years, and An-An occasionally appeared as Ang-Ang.) But the Russians “frowned on any East-West fraternizing,” LIFE reported in the July 15, 1966, issue, so it took years to make the meeting happen. Eventually, the knowledge that panda rarity and the continuing Cold War would make it nearly impossible to acquire another panda from China, both sides agreed to temporarily put their differences aside for the sake of panda breeding.

However, despite living through the historic period of sexual revolution and women’s liberation that was the 1960s, it seemed as though Chi Chi could not care less about sex. The Nov. 11, 1966, issue of LIFE detailed the “honeymoon” in Moscow that was finally arranged for the 9½-year-old “spoiled” “spinster” and the 9-year-old “bachelor” panda who loved bubble baths. The attempt at inspiring a courtship was a disaster. “Unaware of the purpose of her visit, he flew at her in anger ‘like an arrow,’ as the Russians put it and bit her on the right side,” LIFE reported. “Though he behaved impeccably thereafter, Chi-Chi never forgave him.”

Though some humans at the time were making a conscious effort not to reproduce too much, in order to address fears about overpopulation, Chi Chi’s problem was a different one. And, in a strange twist, it turned out she was more interested in human males than male pandas. As her keeper at the London Zoo, Dr. Desmond Morris, told LIFE, “One night [during her trip to Moscow], Chi-Chi started bleating, a sure sign of interest. Imagine my surprise when we discovered she was bleating not at An-An, but at me. From that moment on, I knew it was all over. Chi-Chi was humanized.”

Or maybe Chi Chi was just more comfortable in her own digs. Two years later, An-An was allowed to pay a visit to Chi Chi in London. A photo spread in the Dec. 6, 1968, edition captured the two cavorting at one point in front of a crowd of up to 40,000 people, as the magazine reported. When she wasn’t chewing An-An’s ear, he could be seen climbing up and down poles in her enclosure. Their fling was only supposed to be just a little over two months long, but the Russians let their panda stay a while longer.

As LIFE put it, “Love might yet conquer all.”

Though the attempt to mate Chi Chi and An-An was ultimately unsuccessful, the international cooperation fostered by the animals did not pass unnoticed.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Chi Chi munched on wheat, which she held in her unique six-clawed paws.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Heini Demmer, Chi Chi’s owner, lifted her from a packing box.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chi Chi enjoyed attention from her owner.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chi Chi, at a year and a half old and 130 pounds, was expected to become a full-grown 200 pounds by age three.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chi Chi climbed in her cage.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chi Chi from China, 1958.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chi Chi from China walked on a stone wall, 1958.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chi Chi, 1958.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Giant panda Chi Chi looked out of her cage, 1958.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Heini Demmer with his giant panda Chi Chi.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chi Chi, 1958.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Giant panda Chi Chi looked in her cage.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Giant panda Chi Chi took a nap.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post This Adorable Panda Was at the Center of a Cold War Conflict appeared first on LIFE.

Solving the Decades-Old Mystery of the Llama at the Party

Mon, 25 Apr 2016 11:00:12 +0000

A llama walks into a party, and then what?

These photographs, taken by LIFE photographer Robert W. Kelley in 1959, show a very strange party in progress. A llama, a kangaroo, a monkey, some goats, several dogs and a couple of cats are all getting a bath in what appears to be an urban backyard. Later, in the same place and on what appears to be the same day, they attend a party with the pianist Skitch Henderson. The photographs never ran in the magazine, and nor did the story for which they were taken.

So what’s going on here?

Another LIFE story about a llama, published two years before these pictures were taken, offers a clue. It was a short one-page item about Animal Talent Scouts, a company run by Bernard and Lorrain D’Essen in New York City, who provided animal actors for theater and television—including Linda the Llama. A small photograph of Mrs. D’Essen in her living room shows a similar assortment of creatures: several dogs, a kangaroo and a llama. Among the dogs, the breeds also overlap—a basset hound, a sheepdog, a few greyhounds and what appears to be a saluki. The dark-haired woman in the later photos mightbe the same woman from the earlier photograph.

Contemporary news reports about the business which supply the information that Lorrain D’Essen worked in advertising, where she realized there was a market for trained animals for commercials also confirm that the D’Essen’s New York City home, at 331 West 18th St., had a yard. Other, wilder animals with the Animal Talent Scouts agency lived in New Jersey.

Here’s another clue: the date on the unpublished photos was May 1, 1959, just a couple of weeks before the release of Lorrain D’Essen’s well-reviewed memoir, Kangaroos in the Kitchen. (The book became a TV movie in 1982.) Was this perhaps a book party?

Though no record exists of that particular get-together, the evidence is overwhelming. These were no ordinary animals. They were—and remain—stars.

The llama smelled a woman’s hair, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The kangaroo and llama party, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A group of animals, including a llama and kangaroo, were curious about bath time, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The kangaroo and llama party, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The kangaroo was about to be bathed.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Two cats looked down at the other animals getting a bath, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A small dog was bathed in a tub, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A llama and goat were bathed in the backyard, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Basset Hound was bathed in the backyard, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A kangaroo was dried off with a vacuum cleaner as a llama looked on, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A llama was dried off after a bath, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A llama dried off after a bath, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A monkey in the backyard, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pianist and conductor Skitch Henderson (center) enjoyed the llama’s company during a party, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Siamese cat and kangaroo at the center of a party, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The backyard llama party as seen from above, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Solving the Decades-Old Mystery of the Llama at the Party appeared first on LIFE.