Ban The Use Of Exotic Animals In American Circuses

Can you honestly say that the animals you have observed in circuses actually looked like they liked what they were being made to do? Don't they look stressed to you? Is this fair?

Circuses that do not travel are still allowed to keep exotic animals. Circus animals are forced to learn these behaviors through inhumane training techniques, forced to perform them, and that is the bulk of their sad, unfair lives. As if that’s not enough, they don’t get enough exercise and many don’t get fed properly.

Circus elephant’s life spans are notably shorter than other elephants and it is no wonder why once you have seen what they go through every year. Elephants in the circus are often made to spend too much of their lives chained to cement floors or kept in facilities where they do not have enough room to roam or get enough sunlight. Elephants will continue to be tied up, and then either shocked, beaten, starved, or a combination of these torments unless we fix the problem from the very top.

The use of these techniques for training wildlife have been made illegal, however, this won't stop every circus trainer! Domination and abuse is part how trainers get their elephants and other large wild animals to do all those fancy tricks! It would be impossible to take elephants and lions from the wild and train them without using forceful and cruel acts against them.

Tigers and jaguars are endangered. Lions are threatened. Like elephants, big cats are not usually born into the circus, they are kidnapped from their wild homes and sold into their lives of slavery in animal circuses. Big cats enslaved in the circus are subjected to brutal "training" techniques including beatings, whippings, burnings, electrocution and isolation. When they're not being forced to preform unnatural acts of exploitation, these big cats live in cramped boxes, which are often filthy, and within the confines of these tight quarters the cats become severely neurotic.

We need to stop the cruelty of exotic animals at the source and have them banned from all circuses in the United States! We have so many other things out there to entertain us, to amaze us, to put us in awe. Let the circus be about human acts from people who have chosen to be there, not animal acts, from animals forced to be there, and forced through cruelty to entertain! Please, help stop the suffering these animals go through. Sign this petition and share it with others over the next few weeks.

Animal Welfare is a a growing concern as I am sure you already know. The Animal Welfare Act was a large step for animals, and the fact that it has been revised a few times since it was created to resolve issues and help animals that it originally did not is wonderful. However, there are many more animals out there that the Animal Welfare Act does not cover, like the exploitation of Circus animals. 

I do realize that the circus is a part of the American history in entertainment, but as time goes by things change, we learn more, and our world changes in the way it operates which has the "domino effect" of just about every thing in it. Today, we know that you cannot take an animal that is not domesticated, like a tiger, or elephant and teach it to do tricks without force... the kind of force that has a negative effect on their lives.

Restraining, beating, electrocuting, even starvation and solitary confinement... that's the lives of these animals that fall victim to circus leaders, all for money, some fame, and to feel powerful to have dominated these helpless creatures who have no way of defending themselves. I know that's not what you see when you take your family there, that's not what your children see, but that's what the circus's animal acts are all about. 

We must not turn our heads on these amazing creatures after the show is over, we must see and feel what happens when the crowd clears from the Big Top. Only then will we be willing to do what is right. Thousands of people want to see this babaric treatment, this abuse for exploitation, stop. Please, follow the U.K. and put a ban in place on using animals circuses and other entertainment operations.  

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