How Circus Animals Are Really Trained to Perform ‘Incredible’ Tricks

It would be really difficult to find someone who didn’t grow up thinking the circus was the

most exciting and magical show on Earth. Really, you mix bright lights, magic tricks, and animals and it’s a recipe for every little kid’s dreams. But sadly, while these events look entertaining from the outside, there is an enormous amount of cruelty that goes into making all those “unbelievable” tricks reality. Simply put, life in the circus is no life at all for animals.

Many animals who find themselves performing in the circus were captured from the wild as infants and then forced to endure brutal training that involves physical abuse and starvation. An investigation into Ringling Brother’s circus revealed that baby elephants were removed from their mothers at 18-22 months and anchored to one another by ropes that are fastened around their necks, forced to stand still for 23 hours a day.  This process can last for up to six months and is designed to “break” the animals so they lose their desire to fight back against captors. Ringling has decided to retire their elephants from performances, but they are hardly the only circus that employs such methods.

The only way to guarantee that a wild animal, who – despite what few may believe – was not born to perform tricks like standing on their heads or balancing on balls, is to condition them to associate a misstep with fear. We recently saw the horrific way one tiger was trained to perform via whipping, and a new investigation from PETA shows the true extent of the cruelty that goes into training wild animals to perform.

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/how-circus-animals-are-really-trained-to-perform-tricks/?utm_source=Green+Monster+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=067cf70e37-NEWSLETTER_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbf62ddf34-067cf70e37-106919241