How do circuses train animals?

Joel Parrott, executive director of the Oakland Zoo, testified before Congress that training “can be severe, using techniques that include prolonged hitting by the elephant trainer with clubs, stabbing with the point of the ankus, pitchforks, electricity, electric prods, prolonged chaining, and food deprivation.”

Tigers and lions spend most of their lives in cramped transport cages, barely able to take a step in any direction. They learn to fear the whip and often cringe and cower as trainers approach. Elephant babies, ripped from their mothers’ sides, perform under threat of punishment night after night, eyes always riveted on the person with the metal hook or the whip.

Circuses that exploit animals have no place in a compassionate society. It’s time for all of us to stop patronizing animal circuses—and to demand that the animal performers be sent to sanctuaries, where they can live out their lives in dignity. For more information, please click here.