Posted by QuickReadAbout.com Staff in The most famous of all magic acts using animals is, of course, Siegfried and Roy and the most famous magic trick is pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Animals have had a prominent place in magic shows since Merlins time.
As the tiger attack on Roy Horn painfully showed, it is a tricky balancing act between the illusion of danger and real danger for performers who use large wild animals that must be constantly conditioned not to attack, and their audiences.
Horn, half of Siegfried & Roy, was mauled by one of his own tigers (a 600-pound, 7-year-old, male white tiger) while performing at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. He lost enormous amounts of blood and suffered a small stroke after a tiger grabbed his throat during a live performance. Roy is still partially paralyzed and has never returned to the stage.
There have been questions in the show business community about the safety of stage shows using wild animals. There are only a handful of magic acts using wild animals in Las Vegas, and not many more in the rest of the country. Michael Giles and fiance Stacy Jones, who perform as The Majestix, continue to use two Bengal tigers and a cougar in their Las Vegas magic act.
Many magicians use small animals in their magic shows like rabbits, doves and pigeons….even guinea pigs, snakes(non poisonous) and fish. These animals pose no threat to the magician or the audience and are great crowd pleasers especially crowds of children. Kids love animals.
It’s easy to use a rabbit and there are a lot of possibilities for both production and vanish. Using doves or pigeons works but there’s a little more work involved.
Fish can be fun and are easy to care for. Guinea pigs and snakes are both great escape artists in their own right and are the most difficult to use.