WHY DO WE STILL HAVE THE ANIMAL CIRCUS?
By Dr. Michael W. Fox
After reading a little history of the human race and of the Roman Empire in particular, upon which Western industrial society is founded for better and for worse, most people pause and contemplate the public atrocities of the Coliseum and Circus Maximus. In these arenas man fought man and beast, as beast fought beast, the entire spectacle being one of domination through power and control, and great suffering. Perhaps the imperialist message of the times was ‘might makes right’.
The Coliseum and Circus Maximus that made a spectacle of animal cruelty and suffering are not entirely gone from this modern age. Laws protecting human rights put an end to human bondage, to slavery and many human cruelties as the Roman Empire transitioned into the present judicial and cultural state of affairs of Western civilization. But cruel forms of animal exploitation, sanitized to varying degrees, and protected by the normative consensus of custom and cultural values, endure.
Our ‘progressive’ new world civilization is fundamentally little more civilized or compassionate than any Roman community and authority. This is because it still has not totally abandoned the ethos, the spirit, of the Circus Maximus and the Coliseum, nor the vicarious enjoyment of spectators, innocent and ignorant as they surely must be to buy tickets to the Animal Circus. The Animal Circus of today is a vestige of imperial Rome, and is as ‘all American’, as some claim, as slavery and chauvinism.
The parents and their children who pay to go to the Animal Circus do not knowingly witness any evident animal cruelty, unlike their ancestors of ancient Rome, and those around Europe’s Bull Rings, and Cock and Bear Pits, like those empathy- challenged people today who, in rural and urban America, pit dog against dog, and in Spain and other countries enjoy seeing a bull tortured to death by matadors and picadors; and modern Asians who pit bull against bull, stallion against stallion, and village dogs against a tethered bear.
The cruelties of the modern Animal Circus, that is big business for the entertainment industry, are hidden from public view. This is because what the wild animals do, trained to perform unnatural acts in public in the brightly illuminated circus ring---which is my definition of zoo-pornography--- gives the illusion that they are not suffering. They seem eager, even happy to please and enjoy the applause, the pathetic, often obese and arthritic elephants with rotting feet balancing precariously on tubs, giant balls, and even each other, and tigers leaping on command to the cracking whip, not into their jungle night but into hoops of fire. The cruelties are in the training, the domination, and especially how the elephants are treated after the show is over.
Then these dispirited, soul-crushed animal performers go back to their real lives in cages and chains, then on the road again, never free, to the next dumb town where no one sees or feels their plight except perhaps some of the circus staff hired to essentially keep these slaves of the entertainment industry alive long enough to earn their keep and replacement cost, and prevent them from injuring and killing their handlers and innocent spectators as long as they live. Like some of the poor men on the killing line at Swift’s slaughter house in Amarillo, Texas, whom I once observed with my friend Temple Grandin, the elephant handlers and the care-takers of other wild animals in the Animal Circus become numb, desensitized. They do their jobs, beating and chaining to discipline elephants who rebel against a life of almost total restraint. In the process they become intertwined with the plight and fate of these poor animals, not occasionally abusing them as a way of venting deep frustrations, like the man on the killing line at the slaughter house who tries to cope by getting drunk, and goes home and beats his wife... Rather than suffer with and for these poor, helpless animals, and rebel with them against such culturally sanctioned exploitation and institutionalized cruelty, it is easier to treat them as things without feelings, and to abuse them and others accordingly.
The elephants in the Fourth of July parade, and the circus coming to town, are still perceived by many as ‘all-American’. So were the enslavement of Afro- Americans and the genocide of American Indians, the first people. This ‘all American’ pro-animal circus ethos is the ethos of the Roman Empire’s Coliseum and Circus Maximus. Like the animal circus, it has no place in a civil society or civilized community. It is time for all people of good conscience to stand up and say ‘No’ to the Animal Circus, and ‘Yes’ to animal freedom, respect, dignity, and compassion. The Animal Circus will only endure so long as those values from the dark side of human history continue to be accepted, unexamined, and condoned where money rules, and ignorance and indifference prevail.
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CIRCUS ANIMAL ABUSE IS CHILD ABUSE
By Dr. Michael W. Fox
According to CRY, the Circus Reform Yes! organization, based in Minneapolis MN, some 50 municipalities across the US, from Marin County CA and Stamford CT, to Weymouth MA and Tacoma MD prohibit circuses from coming in to the community if they have performing elephants and other wild animals on exhibition and display.
The City Council of Minneapolis chose obedience to the dictum, ‘money rules where ignorance and indifference prevail,’ over reason and compassion, when petitioned by informed and concerned citizens not to permit any circus to come into town with performing elephants, tigers, and other wild animals.
The Council’s reason for not acting in the name of compassion and respect for these captive, exploited wild creatures was that the Target Center would lose money because, as the Circus lobby insists, nobody wants to come to a circus where there are no performing elephants, and tigers, leopards, and lions leaping through hoops of fire. But the Cirque de Solei draws huge crowds and the only animals performing are human.
Many members of the public see elephants and other performing animals being in the circus and the town parade as something all-American, a cultural tradition. But they are not informed about the miserable existence of these poor creatures in chains or cages and on the road most of their lives, which is no way to treat any wild creature as noble as lion and as dignified as an elephant. Some chose, perhaps, not to know. But once informed, like the Minneapolis City Council, ---and indeed they were informed by animal welfare specialists, veterinary and animal behavior experts that no circus can possibly provide the right environment and thus properly care for such creatures—and then chose to do nothing is surely unconscionable. Such indifference is unacceptable in a civilized society.
Parents have told me that they do not take their children to the circus where there are performing animals because they ‘feel bad’ about the animals. They know intuitively, empathically, that it is wrong. From my perspective as a veterinarian, animal behavior and welfare scientist, and former professor of psychology, it is not good to expose children to such covert animal cruelty and overt domination, control and exploitation.
Making wild animals do tricks in a noisy, brightly illuminated circus ring is demeaning of both them and of our own humanity. It is a derivative form of quasi-pornographic, vicarious entertainment that teaches children that this is culturally acceptable, and the norm, to subjugate other sentient beings and make them perform unnatural acts---that they would never do in the wild—in public as a spectacle of entertainment and purported ‘educational value.’
The only education, as I see it, is a kind of brain-washing of children to accept the demeaning exploitation of other creatures for private profit and public enjoyment that is but one step away from the horrors of Rome’s Coliseum.
To expose and subject sensitive and impressionable children to the wild animal-abusing circus is child abuse. It desensitizes them to the real plight of these captive creatures being trained to perform and endure a life behind the stage in cage and chains, and on the road much of the year from town to town across the country. The child’s nascent capacity to empathize with other living beings is certainly not enhanced by going to the circus, and is more likely to be crippled as the infant psyche witnesses pure human domination and control over other living beings as the norm: As how we, as humans, should and do relate to other non-human beings. Surely it is child abuse to inculcate the values and perception of the wild animal circus into the developing psyche of the next generation. It can only further impair their ability to address their responsibilities for the state of the natural world they are to inherit from those who will still let the wild animal circus in to town.
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WILD ELEPHANT TRAINING
Statement by Dr. Michael W. Fox
All circus elephants are wild, since they are not a domesticated species. They are either born in captivity and are torn too soon from their mothers for training, or are wild-caught and subjected to the same cruel training methods.
Along with Asian elephants, the brutal, traditional methods of training them, that I have witnessed and documented in India, of breaking their spirits at an early age and forcing them to submit and obey, were exported from India and other Asian countries and adopted by circuses in the West over a century ago. No significant progress has been made since then to improve on these methods of training and handling circus elephants. This fact underlies the growing consensus among elephant experts, including ethologists/animal behavior scientists, conservation biologists, veterinarians, and animal welfare scientists, that elephants do not belong in circuses because humane methods of training, transportation and housing, with provision of an environment that satisfies elephants' physiological and psychological requirements and behavioral and social needs, cannot be implemented.
As one Ringling Brothers elephant handler confided to me, (and wished to remain anonymous) "Ringling Brothers don't mean to harm elephants---they can't avoid it".
Discussing these concerns with officials in India, where elephants are considered sacred, I was repeatedly told that 'No one wishes to deliberately harm an elephant, but delinquent behavior must be corrected, and rogues, like criminals, punished" (Krishnamuthy, 1994).
I have seen and documented the wounds on elephants who have been so "so disciplined", even blinded in one eye, and reduced to standing skeletons in shackles after months of being starved for killing or injuring an often abusive handler at India's claimed "best" elephant camp at Theppakadu, in the Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu, S. India. But regardless of the cultural context in which elephants are kept, cruelty is cruelty, and the animals' suffering to the degree documented by impartial observers cannot be condoned. The means do not justify the ends---public entertainment, profits and jobs for elephant handlers---and can never be condoned by a civilized society with established animal protection, anti-cruelty and endangered species conservation laws. Nor can such mistreatment be rationalized as unavoidable and necessary if elephants are to learn to do tricks and perform in the circus, be safe to handle, be reliable in public places, and to be saved in captivity and not become extinct in the wild.
As for never using negative reinforcement or punishment that circus spokespersons have claimed, positive reinforcement only being the rule, is documented fiction. The breaking and training of performing elephants follows the traditional "Carrot and Stick" approach, entailing the use of negative reinforcement---pain and fear--- to make the elephant submissive, coupled with intermittent reward or positive reinforcement (usually a food treat) for good behavior.
The high incidence of handlers/trainers being killed or injured by their elephants, (22 deaths in 7 years between 1990 and 1997) and elephants becoming "rogues" and going berserk are all a consequence of negative reinforcement, pain, fear and intimidation. According to Parrott, (2000), "You cannot predict when an elephant will explode.
Tranquillizers are useless. ---As long as people are allowed to be in close proximity with elephants, people will continue to be hurt and killed. ----When an elephant attacks, the difference between a minor injury and death is pure luck." Chaining can result in aggression toward keepers, the practice of chaining increasing the likelihood of keeper injury and death, ( Roocroft and Zoll, 1994).
In India, according to Dr Jacob Cheeran (2003) when an elephant is given over to a new mahout (elephant keeper or handler/trainer), the elephant must first be severely beaten so that the new mahout can then assume a dominant relationship with the animal. Prof Gary Varner (2003) likens this relationship to the so called Stockholm syndrome where the captive becomes bonded pathologically to the abusive captor.
The traditional performing elephant training techniques set up a conditioned state of chronic fear/anxiety that is called "learned helplessness" ( Seligman 1975, Overmeier 1981)) that shares some characteristics of human depression and despair.
Former USDA veterinarian and inspector Larson, (2000) concludes that "USDA compliance is at best hopelessly ineffective. You should not rely on USDA inspections to provide you with an answer to the problems of circus animal health and care".
The high mortality rates of circus elephants collated by Lambert, (1998) ---24 deaths between 1994-1998, and at least 31 deaths between 1994-2004 (API, 2004) indicate the seriousness of the performing elephant's plight and their non-viability as a population since mortalities are greater than the birth-rate in Ringling Bros. circus-elephant replenishing breeding facility, ( 16 offspring produced between 1992 and 2003) The most common cause of death is from painfully crippling osteomyelitis---chronic bone infections from diseased feet, reflecting the consequences of a life on concrete and wet cement, often soaked in the animals’ own excrement.
Show me one trained elephant who has never been beaten, or screamed in terror when separated prematurely from her mother. In order for people to ride on their backs and to learn to do tricks on command, elephants are broken, made dispirited and obedient through pain and reward, fear, intimidation, and learned/conditioned helplessness.
Children are lied to by the circus and uninformed adults perpetuating the myth that the elephants enjoy performing in the ring.
Elephants are never totally safe to handle in the circus setting; are never wholly reliable in public, because even if captive bred and raised, they are still wild animals and are not domesticated. They can carry diseases transmissible to humans, notably tuberculosis and anthrax. So no elephant should ever be in a circus, and no community should allow circuses with performing elephants in to town.