Killing the bull, called "the moment of truth," is the most dangerous maneuver of all. The man must run at the bull at the same time that the bull runs at him, and plunge the sword between the shoulder blades. When this is done correctly, the bull will drop over dead almost instantly. If the matador has done his job well, the crowd applauds, and he is awarded the ear of the bull as a trophy. If he has done a superior job, he is given both ears and the tail. The meat of the bulls is sometimes given to the poor, but usually the animals are butchered in back of the arena and sold for steaks.
Joselito and Manolete, two of the greatest bullfighters of the 20th century, were killed by bulls. Joselito died when he was only 25; Manolete at the age of The ambition of most bullfighters, who usually come from poor families, is to make enough money to buy a bull ranch and retire at about the age of In Portugal the only ring of importance is in Lisbon.
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View not found. Download the PDF from here. Related Subjects. Ceremony and Tradition European and Europeans in America. About Us. In the past, meat from fighting bulls was used for dog food or animal feed, but today, "the meat is being rediscovered as part of, like, the whole organic craze," DeSuisse said.
Fighting bull flesh has uses beyond the butcher shop: It is also processed for pet foods, animal feeds and processed foods for humans, Alexander Fiske-Harrison, author of "Into the Arena: The World of the Spanish Bullfight" Profile Books, told Live Science. Beef cattle flesh also has multiple uses, he added, but "because the toro bravo [fighting bull] is neither bred nor reared for the flavor and texture of its meat — it is leaner and tougher, living much longer and living wild — a lesser proportion of its flesh is used for unprocessed human consumption as opposed to as gelatin, processed foods, animal and pet feed than that of cattle bred and reared exclusively for that purpose.
The meat certainly has an unusual history, from farm to table, often with a stop at the bullring. Fighting cattle, of breeds distinct from cattle farmed for eating, are raised on specialized ranches. Early in their lives — and the age varies from ranch to ranch — the breeder determines which bulls will fight, which cows will be selected to breed and which ones will be slaughtered, DeSuisse told Live Science. Most of the time, the bulls' moms cows are tested for their fighting qualities, partly because some people speculate that a bull's fighting qualities are inherited from the mother, DeSuisse said.
In addition, ranchers are hesitant to physically test bulls' fighting abilities because they can fight only once; after a bull has fought, it retains "instinctive memories" of the fight, and its behavior changes, DeSuisse said. In such a test, known as a "tienta," a matador puts the cow through her paces, using a cape and typical bullfighting maneuvers, DeSuisse said. The matador looks for an animal that charges the cape in a sustained and somewhat predictable way, he added.
After these tests, cows are selected to breed, and the others are sent to be slaughtered. The male healthy offspring of the selected cows will fight, entering the ring at age 4 or 5. After the fight, the bull is dragged off and processed at a slaughterhouse, but the specifics of this process vary from city to city, DeSuisse said.
In the northern Spanish city of Pamplona, a team of Percheron horses drags off the dead bull, and at a plaza outside the bullring, the animal is further bled into a bucket and then trucked away to a slaughterhouse, butcher Javier Soto Zabalza told writer Paul D. Spanish and Mexican bullfight advertisers lure American tourists with mystique. They claim the fight is festive, artistic, and a fair competition between skill and force.
What they do not reveal is that the bull never has a chance to defend himself, much less survive. Many prominent former bullfighters report that the bull is intentionally debilitated with tranquilizers and laxatives, beatings to the kidneys, petroleum jelly rubbed into their eyes to blur vision, heavy weights hung around their neck for weeks before the fight, and confinement in darkness for hours before being released into the bright arena. A well-known bullfight veterinarian, Dr. Manuel Sanz, reports that in more than 90 percent of bulls killed in fights had their horns "shaved" before the fight.
Horn shaving involves sawing off several inches of the horns so the bull misses his thrusts at the altered angle. The matador, two picadors on horses, and three men on foot stab the bull repeatedly when he enters the ring. After the bull has been completely weakened by fear, blood loss, and exhaustion, the matador attempts to make a clean kill with a sword to the heart. Unfortunately for the suffering bull, the matador rarely succeeds and must make several thrusts, often missing the bull's heart and piercing his lungs instead.
Often a dagger must be used to cut the spinal cord and spare the audience the sight of a defenseless animal in the throes of death. The bull may still be fully conscious but paralyzed when his ears and tail are cut off as the final show of "victory. Mexican bullfighting has an added feature: novillada, or baby bullfights. There is no ritual in this slaughter of calves. Baby bulls, some no more than a few weeks old, are brought into a small arena where they are stabbed to death by spectators, many of whom are children.
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