Animal Cruelty
Essay by 24 • April 3, 2011 • 548 Words (3 Pages) • 2,132 Views
For many, the word "circus" reminds of popcorn, candy, "wild" animals, and fun. However, behind the glitter of the circus lies a cruel world of animal suffering. Animals used in circuses are unwilling participants in a show that puts in danger their health and mental well-being and the lives of audience and performers.
Pain treatment
Circuses force animals to perform tricks that have nothing to do with how these creatures behave in the wild. Training animals to perform acts that are sometimes painful or that they do not understand requires whips, tight choker, electric prods and other tools. Elephants are trained through the use of an ankus--a wooden stick with a sharp, pointed hook at the end to discourage undesired behavior. An elephant handler will never be seen working with an elephant without an ankus in one hand or discreetly tucked under his arm. Although an elephant's skin is thick, it is very sensitive--sensitive enough to feel a fly on her back.
Traveling is torturing
Animals in circuses either travel in large trucks or by train. During transport and between performances, tigers, who in the wild would take 75-2,000 square miles, are kept in cages with barely enough room to turn around. Elephants, which walk up to 25 miles a day with their families in their natural habitat, are chained up by their front and back legs so that they can't take a step forward or backward. Circus schedules are created to maximize attendees, not to accommodate the animals from which they profit.
Life in imprisonment
Elephants, tigers, chimpanzees, and other animals used in circuses are complex creatures--not robots to be stacked in boxes and hauled to the next show. Animals have relationships with other members of their species and would naturally live in social groups or families. Baby elephants generally stay with their mothers for fifteen years if they are male and their entire lives if they are female. Yet in circuses, baby elephants are ripped from their mothers' sides as young as one year old because baby elephants
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