She was a sweet little innocent brown bear who never hurt anyone...but sometimes she had trouble balancing on the high wire. She was then beaten with long metal rods until she was screaming and bloody. She became so neurotic that she would beat her head against her small cage. She finally died.
(Excerpts from an interview with Gene, a former Ringling Bros. Circus employee, as interviewed by The Elephant Alliance, 1993)
Most of us believe that circuses are wholesome, fun entertainment for all concerned. Children and adults have been decieved into thinking circus animals are happy. Most people only see them unchained and uncaged under bright lights, surrounded by music and glitter. Little do they know that the animals they love so much are kept chained and caged in dark, gloomy tents, denied sunshine and fresh air most of their lives.
The happy image of circus animals is deliberately perpetuated by circus promoters and would lose all of its appeal if the horrible details of the animals' treatment, training, confinement and life of suffering became known.
Gene told of monkeys kicked and hit in the face with riding crops, of chained elephants beaten with axe hankles and bull hooks, often grabbed with sharp insrtuments by the trunk, hind legs, and ears. Except when they perform, elephants are chained by two legs and left to sway and rock for hours on end, pulling hopelessly at their chains. He told of horses denied exercise, whipped behind the ears and on their noses. He witnessed llamas and camels bleeding from welts on their legs.
Henry N. Ringling, in his book "The Circus King," states "it is not usually a pretty sight to see the big cats trained...they are all chained to their pedestals and ropes are put around their necks to choke them down and make them obey. All sorts of other brutalities are used to force them to obey the trainer and learn their tricks. They work from fear."
Circus train cars for the animals are not temperature controlled, and the animals suffer greatly because of this. Animals accustomed to colder climates have difficulty in the summer when outside temperatures soar to over 100 degrees Fahrenheir or more. Tropical animals find cold winter weather extremely hard to endure.
When we went to unload the elephants, we found the long trip and the cold had been too much for one of the oldest, Queen. She was lying dead inside a car. That night another elephant, Albert, came down with pheumonia and died the next morning.
(From "Elephant Tramp" by George Lewis)
Often while travelling, fresh supplies of drinking water are not available and animals suffer enormously.
From Tulsa to Tucson, a distance of 1,545 miles (a four-day trip), the elephants stand chained in the same spot for over 100 hours.
It is simply not justifiable to remove animals from their natural habitat by stealth, nor to breed them through captive programs and to force them to perform for the benefit of others.
Elephants are highly social animals who live in close family units in large herds. In the wild, elephants walk 20 to 25 miles a day gathering food and water. A favourite daily elephant activity is wallowing and playing in the mud.
Elephants are known for helping comrades in distress; younger ones often travel alongside the elderly, guiding them along the way. If an elephant is old or ill, the herd will form a circle around it for protection. There is a lifetime attachment of a mother to her daughter. Family bonds are for life.
The truth is that circus animals suffer immensely to entertain an uninformed audience. After years of balancing on balls, jumping through hoops, riding bicycles, walking on tightropes, and enduring many injuries, these old, sick, tired animals are executed or sold to other circuses, zoos, private menageries, research laboratories, or game farms to be shot by hunters as recreation.
Do we want to promote such cruelty? Do we want to allow such violence to continue? Do we want our children to believe this behavior is acceptable? Don't we want the truth to be known?
The only lesson children learn from watching circus animal acts is that man is capable of dominating these beautiful wild animals and can force them to do unnatural tricks. Only when people know that whips, hooks, electric prods, deprivation of food and water, and even the use of drugs are methods used to force the animals to perform will this barbaric "tradition" end.