Animal Cruelty in Circuses
Animal Cruelty in Circuses
The atmosphere is unimaginable. Bright reds, greens and blues adorn every wall; the loudspeakers boom, filling your ears with the sweet, delightful music that can only mean one thing - the circus. The enthralling ‘buzz’ is reflected in the eyes of the children who eagerly await the obscure and excellent sights that they could only have previously imagined. But behind the silky scarlet curtain, under the Big Top, the whips are ferociously flaying and the bullhooks are violently stabbing as the circus performance is not always as it seems.
Circuses show an extremely distorted view of wildlife. To the viewer the animals are beautiful, ornately decorated and extravagantly treated. However, behind the scenes many of the animals have a depressive life full of human dominance, aggressive training and solitary confinement. They often live in squalid conditions, with insufficient food and water, as a travelling circus cannot easily accommodate the needs of their animals at a reasonable price. As the business continually moves from place to place, cages have to be as cramped as possible to make transportation of the animals easier. Cages are also small to enable them to be disassembled quickly and with ease, so the majority of the animal’s lives are spent travelling in meagre sized wagons. This means they cannot display their natural instincts and behaviour as they need a similar amount of space as they would have in the wild, to have any semblance of normality in their lives.
Cruelty to circus animals has been well documented. There are many examples of baby elephants being captured rodeo style, roped round all four legs, tied to a submissive adult elephant, known as an ‘anchor’, and dragged from their mothers. Bear cubs are put on hot coals causing excruciating pain to their paws, all in an attempt to make them dance for peoples’ tasteless entertainment. From then on, every natural instinct is subjected to the discipline of the trainer. The
The atmosphere is unimaginable. Bright reds, greens and blues adorn every wall; the loudspeakers boom, filling your ears with the sweet, delightful music that can only mean one thing - the circus. The enthralling ‘buzz’ is reflected in the eyes of the children who eagerly await the obscure and excellent sights that they could only have previously imagined. But behind the silky scarlet curtain, under the Big Top, the whips are ferociously flaying and the bullhooks are violently stabbing as the circus performance is not always as it seems.
Circuses show an extremely distorted view of wildlife. To the viewer the animals are beautiful, ornately decorated and extravagantly treated. However, behind the scenes many of the animals have a depressive life full of human dominance, aggressive training and solitary confinement. They often live in squalid conditions, with insufficient food and water, as a travelling circus cannot easily accommodate the needs of their animals at a reasonable price. As the business continually moves from place to place, cages have to be as cramped as possible to make transportation of the animals easier. Cages are also small to enable them to be disassembled quickly and with ease, so the majority of the animal’s lives are spent travelling in meagre sized wagons. This means they cannot display their natural instincts and behaviour as they need a similar amount of space as they would have in the wild, to have any semblance of normality in their lives.
Cruelty to circus animals has been well documented. There are many examples of baby elephants being captured rodeo style, roped round all four legs, tied to a submissive adult elephant, known as an ‘anchor’, and dragged from their mothers. Bear cubs are put on hot coals causing excruciating pain to their paws, all in an attempt to make them dance for peoples’ tasteless entertainment. From then on, every natural instinct is subjected to the discipline of the trainer. The