"Bears, elephants, tigers, and other animals do not voluntarily ride bicycles, stand on their heads, balance on balls, or jump through rings of fire. They don't perform these and other difficult tricks because they want to; they perform them because they're afraid of what will happen if they don't."
This is true. At The Ringling Bros. Circus, everything seems happy and fun. Go onto their website, and they even play joyful music. But this is about as far away from the truth as it can get. At this circus, elephants are hit, prodded, poked, kicked, beaten and jabbed with sharp hooks, sometimes until they are bleeding. The circus trainers cruelly force baby elephants to learn new tricks, and it's not even based on a reward system. They said so themselves.
The life of a baby elephant at the Ringling Bros. Circus is horrible.
First, when a baby elephant is born, the handlers take it away from its mother, who grieves for her child. The baby is then taken to a confined room, where it is bound by chains that sink into the animal's skin and flesh. It may take up to six months for these poor babies to give up and stop struggling. This is what they call, "breaking their spirits." And break their spirits it does.
The next thing these horrible people do to the baby elephants is train them. Training arenas are confined to only the trainers and handlers. They are heavily fenced to stop people from seeing what goes on inside. The baby elephants are tied to "anchor" elephants, sometimes the walls, with chains and beaten. The trainers then tie a rope to the trunk and lift it up, to teach the baby to sit up. Or, they tie the stronger ropes to their hind legs and lift them up, to teach the baby elephant to do a headstand! How horrible is that!?
After all this suffering, they are forced to perform in front of thousands of people, where the spectators laugh, and sometimes tease, the elephants. And at the end of the day, they get no love, comfort, or reassurance. And to think they probably can't even remember their mothers because they were taken away from them so early.
Please help stop this barbaric treatment of these innocent animals at Ringling Bros. Circus.
