Circuses – How Animals Are Trained and Treated?
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.
For animals in circuses, there is no such thing as “positive reinforcement”—only varying degrees of punishment and deprivation. To force them to perform these meaningless and physically uncomfortable tricks, trainers use whips, tight collars, muzzles, electric prods, bullhooks, and other painful tools of the travel.
Constant travel means that animals are confined to boxcars, trailers, or trucks for days at a time in extremely hot and cold weather, often without access to basic necessities such as food, water, and veterinary care. Elephants, big cats, bears, and primates are confined to cramped and filthy cages in which they eat, drink, sleep, defecate, and urinate—all in the same place.
This is the undercover video on training elephants from the Ringling Bros. Circus done by PETA
“Ringling Bros. beats elephants so viciously with bullhooks that handlers have to use a gray powder called Wonder Dust to conceal the wounds from the public,” says PETA Foundation Deputy General Counsel Delcianna Winders. “PETA is advising parents and grandparents that if their children love animals, the last place they should take them is to the circus.”
Another video – ‘Ringling Bros – Baby Killers’