Bullfighting how does the bull die

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So how dangerous is bullfighting, asks Tom de Castella. Bullfighting is a "supremely dangerous art", says Garry Marvin, professor of human-animal studies at Roehampton University. What do the figures say? Bullfighting in Spain is run by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport - but surprisingly no statistics on injuries are kept. Some unofficial figures do exist, however.

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. Thacker for an article published on the cooking website Lucky Peach this August.

Every year, approximately 35, bulls are tormented and killed in bullfights in Spain alone. Although many bullfight attendees are American tourists, 90 percent of these tourists never return to another fight after witnessing the relentless cruelty that takes place in the ring.

Spanish bulls and their many counterparts in Mexico and other countries are victims of a savage display disguised as "art" or "entertainment". 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.