Exotic Animals in Ancient Rome

[Music] hey kids I was inspired to make this video while doing research on the ancient medicine man Galen apparently he would often do experiments on animals in order to learn more about the body his favorite of which was the Barbary ape due to its anatomical similarity to humans now when I say experiments I don't mean push a button get a peanut type things I'm talking like Yusuf Mengele meets the plague dogs he'd clamp their pee tubes shut just to watch their kidneys swell cut their spinal cords in different places to see what went limp and what didn't and squeeze their brains and make him go unconscious to name a few my initial reaction was hey that's neat but then after some thought I was like whoa hold the phone in 280 you couldn't get a doorknob even yet if you had the right resources you could order a goddamn monkey many monkeys in fact by the barrelful presumably alternatively if you were born in the right place you could be the monkey poacher making a living wrestling up some primates with nothing more than a net a pokey thing a hole in the ground and a whole lot of ambition so I got to thinking what other kind of animals did ancient Rome have access to apparently basically everything that lived in this part of the map there were particularly fond of elephants and it's easy to see why sure elephants aren't that big of a deal to the average person today right you've been seeing pictures of them since you were two big whoop but imagine if you were a twenty year old man who had never seen an elephant in your life the closest thing you've ever witnessed is like horses maybe some deer now and then you get drafted you go out to battle you're a little scared but you've been trained well you're ready then over the horizon you see twenty house-sized behemoths with giant tentacles sticking out of their faces horns longer than your body sticking out of their mouths I'll scream in their weird trumpety scream making your whole body vibrate like Mars himself is [ __ ] on your very existence so naturally Rome loved to show these things off all the time just as a display of power like imagine if you're going to a speech in DC and Trump rolls up with a pack of dragons you'd listen to every word he said he's got [ __ ] dragons that's what he was like seeing the Emperor parade around with elephants back in the day of course that wasn't the only use they had for imported animals when they weren't being shown off in menagerie so many of the exotic beasts brought to Rome were used in shows called vinay shows which were basically like modern-day bullfights only instead of bulls you had whatever crazy critters the state could find lions crocodiles Gizelle's whatever around 55 BC Roman States Ben Pompey the great decided to organize one such event the feature creature of which was you guessed it an elephant unfortunately papi forgot a crucial Barnum & Bailey trade secret see you're supposed to break the elephant spirit before this show not during so the boys get to pokin and the thing starts freaking out just screaming and crying even gesturing towards the audience like it was begging for mercy now the crowd at this kind of event was mainly composed of dirty bloodthirsty peasants and even they were like holy [ __ ] this is messed up I came here for a nice family-friendly disembowelling or two but this just a pourable then they all start crying and the whole thing just ends up being a huge mess anyway these types of spectacles became larger and larger as time went on it said that Emperor Trajan once held of initio lasting 120 days during which some eleven thousand animals were killed they also got pretty elaborate a lot of creativity went into keeping things fresh for the crowd in 203 ad they had a model of a crash ship built inside the arena and an assortment of 400 animals were set loose from the wreckage and then killed that's what we should do for the next Super Bowl halftime show honestly just pack every team's mascot into a decommissioned submarine then when they all run out we have the troops gun them down while the national anthem plays in the background anyway the ingenuity of the people organizing these events really knew no bounds one time they tied together a bear in a bullet just to see what they do unfortunately all that happened was the stock market crash also fun fact one Emperor Commodus is credited with the invention of a unique crescent-shaped arrow designed specifically to decapitate ostriches and watch him run around headless for a while seriously they did that so often that they needed a device to make the job easier sometimes just to shake things up they'd have the animals killed the people which was known as damnatio ad besties this form of execution was typically carried out using lions but other beasts were used as well including dogs bears and at one point even an eagle although the guy was crucified first so it wasn't much of a fight so moral of the story if you ever end up in ancient Rome and you want to see some animals you'll still have access to almost all the same creatures we see in zoos today and the only catch is that something has to die at the end until next time I'm salmonella and thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Sam O'Nella Academy

Views: 9,073,591

Keywords: Damnatio ad bestias, venatios, galen, ostrich, colloseum, arena

Id: 5JcZsNxT2BM

Length: 4min 31sec (271 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/AstonMartinZ]

There were lions in Europe when the Roman Empire existed.

[u/Plasma_000]

That fucking crocodile

[u/______LSD______]

Fun fact: In ancient Rome, meat was considered to taste better if the animal died in agony or with fear in its heart. There were certain butchers who would brutalize and kill animals in public spaces as a means to advertise that their meat was the best.

[u/ElagabalusRex]

This is what Cicero writes to a friend who missed the Games:

There remain the two wild-beast hunts, lasting five days, magnificent—nobody denies it—and yet, what pleasure can it be to a man of refinement, when either a weak man is torn by an extremely powerful animal, or a splendid animal is transfixed by a hunting spear? Things which, after all, if worth seeing, you have often seen before; nor did I, who was present at the games, see anything the least new. The last day was that of the elephants, on which there was a great deal of astonishment on the part of the vulgar crowd, but no pleasure whatever. Nay, there was even a certain feeling of compassion aroused by it, and a kind of belief created that that animal has something in common with mankind.

[u/[deleted]]

I like his idea for the Superbowl half time show except I would substitute real bullets with paintballs because, you know, people will be eating.

[u/AliTheGOAT]

Not condoning it but I would love to have to watched the one where four hundred different animals fought each other at once

[u/thatwasnotkawaii]

Wow, Sam upgraded his style

[u/radio_breathe]

Anyone else think he sounds exactly like Jadooby Dubs?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlSF0dtDRD8