According to Felix McDonald, a Brit expat who was raised in a circus and worked as a lion tamer for three decades, the most expensive animals desired by exhibitors and collectors in fin de siècle New York were the giraffe and the gorilla. He would have been privy to such information as he managed a wild-animal farm in New Jersey which stocked circuses and private zoos and such. Of course, as he pointed out in an article in the February 11, 1900 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, domesticated animals capable of producing revenue regularly sold for more than the rarest of species.