Ken et al…
Let me start of my saying, I am not going to get into this verbal bashing anymore, this is about the circus and the abuse of animals, so I have tried to present some of the facts… please take some time to read them and then you can make up your own mind whether or not you think that circuses are good places for animals to be, and whether or not you want to support that…
Animals used in circuses live a dismal life of domination, confinement, and violent training. It is standard practice to beat, shock, and whip them to make them perform ridiculous tricks that they cannot comprehend.
Most elephants used by circuses were captured in the wild. Once removed from their families and natural habitat, their lives consist of little more than chains and intimidation. Baby elephants born in breeding farms are torn from their mothers, tied with ropes, and kept in isolation until they learn to fear their trainers.
Big cats, bears, and primates are forced to eat, drink, sleep, defecate, and urinate in the same cramped cages.
Elephants often suffer crippling injuries from constant chaining and performing physically difficult tricks.
The circus deprives animals of their basic needs to exercise, roam, socialize, forage, and play. Stereotypic behaviors such as swaying back and forth, head-bobbing, pacing, bar-biting, and self-mutilation are common signs of mental distress.
Using dangerous animals in performances jeopardizes public safety and often puts children at greatest risk. Since 1990, 57 people have been killed and more than 120 seriously injured by captive elephants.
Animals in circuses are hauled around the country in poorly ventilated trailers and boxcars for up to 50 weeks a year in all kinds of extreme weather conditions. Access to the basic necessities of food, water, and veterinary care is often inadequate.
A growing number of cities are restricting or banning the use of animals in entertainment.
For example…..here are just some of the cities that have outlawed animals in the circus: Pasedena CA, Stamford CN, Hollywood FL, Quincy MA, Takoma Park MD, Estes Park CO, Redmond WA and Revere MA, to name but a few
According to congressional testimony provided by former Beatty-Cole elephant keeper Tom Rider, “In White Plains, N.Y., when Pete did not perform her act properly, she was taken to the tent and laid down, and five trainers beat her with bullhooks. PETE IS NOW DEAD.”
The bullhook is a tool used to punish and control elephants. It is also called an ankus, elephant goad, or elephant hook. The handle is made of wood, metal, plastic, or fiberglass, and there is a sharp steel hook at one end. Its shape resembles a boat hook or fireplace poker. Some bullhooks have long, "shepherd’s crook" cane-style handles, allowing the trainer a firmer grip so that greater force can be exerted while pulling and yanking the hook deeper into the elephant’s flesh.
Both ends inflict damage. The trainer uses the hook to apply varying degrees of pressure to sensitive spots on the elephant’s body (see diagram), causing the elephant to move away from the source of discomfort. Holding the hooked end, the handle is swung like a baseball bat and induces substantial pain when the elephant is struck on the wrist, ankle, and other areas where there is little tissue between skin and bone.
The thickness of an elephant’s skin ranges from one inch across the back and hindquarters to paper-thin around the mouth and eyes, inside the ears, and at the anus. Their skin appears deceptively tough, but in reality it is so delicate that an elephant can feel the pain of an insect bite. A bullhook can easily inflict pain and injury on an elephant’s sensitive skin. Trainers often embed the hook in the soft tissue behind the ears, inside the ear or mouth, in and around the anus, and in tender spots under the chin and around the feet.
While performing in the ring, an elephant responds to verbal commands from a trainer carrying a bullhook and moderate pressure from the bullhook because the elephant has been conditioned through violent training sessions that refusal to obey in the ring will result in severe punishment later. Moments before entering the ring, while out of view of the public, trainers may give the elephants a few painful whacks to remind them who's boss and ensure that the elephants perform the specified tricks on command.
Because a dispirited elephant submits to a dominant trainer toting a bullhook, circuses mislead the public with spurious claims that a bullhook is only used to guide or cue an elephant. The difficult tricks that elephants are forced to perform place a great deal of stress on their muscles and joints. They are physically strenuous and no elephant would perform these grotesquely exaggerated maneuvers on command, over and over, hundreds of times a year without the constant threat of punishment. In the wild, an adult elephant would lie down in slow, gradual movements no more than once or twice per day. A typical circus act requires that they lie down and rise very quickly several times in a single show. If it were possible for an elephant to simply be "guided" to perform rapid successions of headstands, hind-leg stands, lying down, tub-sitting, crawling, and twirling, the trainer would be carrying a soft, cotton wand, not a hard, pointed object
That’s the facts……make your own mind up….
