Abstract
The wildness of a wild animal is characterised by unfettered behavioural repertoire within its natural habitat, rather than by physiognomy. With reference to the historical and current opinions of trainers, critics and scientists, it is argued here that on capture, confinement and coercive training, such animals – typically the great cats – lost their wildness in proportion to the removal and replacement of their natural behavioural repertoire; being at the same time undomesticated, they suffered as a result. Spectators then became willing victims to an illusion of wildness, a deception that was an important part of the economy of the circus in early popular visual culture.
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