Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Exotic Animals Are Not For Our Entertainment


When I was around five or six years old, my mother and my grandma took me to the Ringling Bros. circus. My grandmother, who was in a wheelchair, had to take a separate entrance to the arena in order for us to get to our seats. We got to go behind where the backstage of the circus was set up, but there wasn’t much to see. Everything was blocked off with curtains. It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder what was behind those curtains, but looking back, I know why the circus had them there.

We are taught from a young age that the circus is fun. There are so many children’s books about spending a day at the circus and how fantastic it is. However, the circus is not what it is perceived to be. It is time that we stop glorifying circuses such as that of the Ringling Bros. and start spreading the word about what really goes on.

Many traveling circuses have exotic animals such as elephants, lions, and tigers as parts of their acts. These animals are taught tricks and to do other things that they obviously do not naturally do. Violent methods are used to train these exotic animals and there have been many investigations of traveling circuses that have trainers who yell at or beat the animals they are training. Elephants are struck with painful elephant hooks, and some are even shocked. In order to train elephants to do tricks such as sitting on stools or standing on their heads, they are physically tied up and pulled into those positions. If they do not cooperate, they are struck painfully with elephant hooks. Without the use of pain and intimidation, these animals would not perform tricks.

In a video, Tim Frisco, an elephant trainer for the Carson and Barnes circus can be heard saying “hurt ‘em, make ‘em scream” in order to get them to carry out their commands.

Wild elephants are among the most beautiful animals to witness. They are graceful, strong, and have a very unique relationship with their family members. From my own experience in the Tanzanian savannah, I can say with confidence that the family structure among elephants is very clear. Of all the young elephants I had seen, not a single one was far away from its mother.  In the wild baby elephants are very close to their mothers and aunties for the first decade of their lives rarely being out of reach of physical touch with their mothers or another relative. Even as adolescents and adults they remain in close family groups.


In the circus, this important social structure among elephants is ignored. Baby elephants that are born into captivity are taken from their mothers almost immediately. On the second day of their life, they are taught to get used to having humans around. In the wild, baby elephants stay by their mothers and can still be nursed up to an age of four years.  However, in confinement, baby elephants are physically separated from their mothers with ropes, where people literally pull the babies away. This method is so violent that in a Ringling Bros. elephant training facility, two baby elephants less than two years of age had large visible legions on their legs. These elephants experience much trauma due to the separation from their mothers, and brutal training methods do not help. For elephants, the psychological attachment to their families is similar to humans and the psychological as well as physical suffering for them in circus training, starting at a young age, is profound. 

Elephants, however, are not the only ones who suffer greatly in circuses and are forced to act against their natural instincts. Big cats, too, are forced into situations that seem foreign to them. Tigers, which usually stay with their mothers until around two years of age, are forced to begin training in the circus away from their mothers at around eight months old. In the wild, lions spend most of their days sleeping and lounging in the shade to ensure that they do not overheat, and hunt at night when it is cooler in the savannah. In yet another Ringling Brothers incident, a two year old lion named Clyde died of extreme dehydration. Clyde was in a circus train boxcar crossing the Mojave Desert and circus officials did not want to stop to cool Clyde and the other animals off by hosing them down. Unfortunately, Clyde’s case is not uncommon. According to a report for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, PETA claimed that situations such as Clyde’s happen frequently, the public just does not find out.


One of the biggest issues with traveling circuses is the severe confinement that animals face. In an Animal Defenders International investigation, it was found that horses and ponies spend roughly 96% of their time tied in stalls or tethered to trailers. The other 4% is their “exercise”, or actual performance in the circus. In addition, tigers and lions spend 75-99% of their time in small, cramped cages. It is no surprise that this is unnatural for them, especially tigers, who are naturally solitary.

It is evident through their behavior alone that traveling circus animals are experiencing stress. Elephants, for example, are often found swaying back and forth in their confinements, a known reaction to stress. Tigers pace in their cages. But, because of the constant traveling that these circuses do, permanent, spacious and healthy confinements for the exotic animals would be inefficient and difficult to manage.

The glorification of circuses will never be justified as long as these practices are allowed. Thankfully, our country will hopefully move in the right direction with the passing of H.R. 3359, also known as the Traveling Exotic Animal Protection Act. Introduced on November 3rd of 2011, H.R. 3359 is an amendment to the Animal Welfare Act. The amendment says it will “restrict the use of exotic and non-domesticated animals in traveling circuses and exhibitions” if passed. The Animal Welfare Act does have some restrictions on exotic animals and circuses already, but due to the mobile nature of circuses, it is hard for law enforcement to monitor what truly goes on.  However, H.R. 3359 would allow exotic animals to be in permanent confinements for outreach, education, and non-mobile exhibitions in order to guarantee safe habitats for them.

Animal welfare includes the freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from discomfort, freedom from pain and injury, freedom from fear and distress, and freedom for an animal to exercise their natural behaviors. In traveling circuses, the animals do not have most of these freedoms. It is now the time to put an end to the injustice these creatures face for people’s entertainment.

The first step we can take to eliminate these practices is to stop attending traveling circuses. As long as people are going, the circus will continue.

The second step we can take is to contact our representatives in congress and urge them to say YES on H.R. 3359. As of today, the amendment has only 29 cosponsors. By showing support for the act, hopefully it will be reintroduced to congress.

To send an automated email to your representative, you can go here.

To write your own letter to your representative, see some helpful guidelines here.     

In addition, you can call the U.S. House of Representatives switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask to connect with your congressperson. When calling, remember to mention that you are a constituent and that you support H.R. 3359, the Traveling Exotic Animal Protection Act.


The travel of exotic animals is already banned in Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Czech Republic, Peru, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, and India. In the words of animal rights activist and TV show host Bob Barker, “animal acts in circuses are antiquated and belong in the past, in a time when humans were ignorant about the needs of the other species who share our planet”. It is now time for these acts to be banned in the United States.




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