"Make 'em Or Break 'em"

“The exhibiting of trained animals I abhor. What an amount of suffering and cruel punishment the poor creatures have to endure in order to give a few moments of pleasure to men devoid of all thought and feeling" - Albert Schweitzer.

We are not sure what were Albert Schweitzer's conclusion and solution. You know what ours is.

When most people hear the word circus, they think of popcorn, candy, "wild" animals and fun. However, behind the glitter and the glitz of the circus lies a cruel world of animal suffering. The animals are unwilling participants in a show that jeopardizes their health, their mental well-being and their lives.

Humans tear nonhuman animals out of the wild where they belong, put them in circuses, careless to their needs and wants, they only think about the money these poor traumatized animals make for them.

Some circuses still catch animals in the wild. even if animals have been born in captivity, it does not mean they have no natural inclinations. It takes many thousands of years – far longer than the circuses have been in existence – to alter instinctive responses in animals. The circus deprives animal of their basic needs to exercise, roam, socialize, forage and play. In the wild, bears don’t ride bicycles, tigers don’t jump through fiery hoops. Elephants do not stand on their heads. Baboons do not wear pants; horses do not walk on their hind legs; llamas and zebras do not live solitary lives - they live in groups. Animals will run and jump in the wild if they choose to, not when forced to. Animals in circuses live unnatural lives in a cruel artificial environment.

Circus tigers and elephants never get to wash in water ponds, monkeys never get to climb trees or stay in a troop and bears never have the comfort of a den. Babies never live with their mothers. They are taken away before they are weaned. Circus animals never have the choice of what to eat or when to sleep. Circus elephants are chained for life, they don't even get to lie down to sleep.

Wild animals have complex social and biological needs and depend upon many factors for their physical and psychological well being – all of which are thwarted in circus. Compare the existence of captive elephants to those left in the wild. Elephants in the wild live as long as 70 years. Wild elephants live in herds and have a large extended family with strong social bonds. Elephants have also been known to stay with their dread for hours, in what can only be described as a state of mourning, during which they will bury their dead under branches, grass and earth. Baby elephants stay very close to their mothers for the first three years of their lives, and the females remain with their extended families throughout their lifetime. They roam up to 25 miles a day foraging for food and water. They take dust baths and find comfort during hot weather by wading in water and standing in the shade.

Lives of constant confinement and frustration of natural instincts force animals into a state of neurosis. Elephants constantly sway back and forth in their chains and the tigers constantly pace in their cages. These repetitive behaviors are symptoms of deep psychological distress. Elephants in the wild walk many miles a day and travel in groups. In the circus, these animals are chained by two legs, unable to take one step forward, except when performing.
Most elephants used by circuses were captured in the wild. Baby elephants experienced the trauma of seeing their families killed, and may have been tied to their dead mothers before being collected and sold to a dealer. Once removed from their families and natural habitat, their lives consist of little more than chains and intimidation.
Baby elephants born in breeding farms are torn from their mothers, tied with ropes, and kept in isolation until they learn to fear their trainers.

Elephant training is based on fear and intimidation. Trainers "must" break the spirit of these magnificent animals in order to control them. It is not uncommon for an elephant to be tied down and beaten for days at a time while being trained to "perform". Large exotic cats used in the circus don't fare any better. In the wild, large cats roam for miles each day; they hunt for food, sleep in the sun and lead a fairly solitary existence. Exotic cats used in the circus are allowed none of these behaviors. They live and travel in small cages in close confinement with other cats. They have little room to move around; they are never allowed to exercise nor are they provided with any environmental enrichment.

Circuses travel constantly, which means the animal’s cages are designed for transporting, to maximize attendees, not to ease suffering of the animals.

Animals in circuses are forced to travel up to 50 weeks each year. They either travel in 18-wheelers or by trains. Tigers, horses, monkeys, elephants, and other animals used in circuses are confined to filthy railroad cars without temperature control even in very high temperatures and as low as freezing. In the cars, they are either chained or kept in confinements barely large enough to allow them to even turn around. Chained in place for up to 100 hours while being transported from one show to another. The only time they are unshackled and brought out of the cars is to perform. Often the animals are not let off the railroad cars immediately, either because of traffic conditions or because the train arrived too early or late. Then the animals are forced to wait inside of the railroad cars for hours even in the extreme temperatures. Circuses often travel for hundreds of miles with no stops for the weary animals to rest. The circus animals spent up to 23 hours a day in cages or confined, forced to defecate, urinate, eat and sleep all in the same tiny area.

Circus elephants spent 60 percent of their time hobbles, with one front and one back leg on a short chin. Lions and tigers are shut in their cages over 90 per cent of the time with only half a cubic meter of space for every animal. During the winter off-season, animals used in circuses may be kept in traveling crates or in barn stalls; some are even kept in trucks. Few circuses have the funds or the desire to put much money into comfortable winter shelters, since off-season housing is used for only a few months per year. Such unrelieved physical confinement has very harmful physical and psychological effects on animals. Stereotypic behaviors such as swaying back and forth, head bobbing, pacing, bar biting, and self-mutilation are common signs of mental distress. Cats will pace up and down in their beast wagons or may sway from side to side whilst elephants will rock back and forth, literally driven mad by their captivity.

Often, fresh supplies of drinking water are not available, and animals accustomed to water-filled habitats, such as elephants, suffer enormously. The cleaning of cages becomes low priority when water is not readily available and thus animals are often forced to stand in their own waste, which can rot the feet of elephants.

Circuses and other traveling animal acts go through a great deal of trouble to bring us such "entertainment" as tigers jumping through fire, elephants standing on their heads, and seals playing musical horns. However, the same circuses are desperate to hide the fact that the animals perform solely out of fear. In contrast to the glitter often associated with circuses, the life of most animals forced to perform is little more than a dismal and utterly pathetic existence.

As forcing animals to perform unnatural acts such as balancing on a high-wire or riding a bicycle is an extremely difficult feat, physical punishment and negative reinforcement are the norm in the world of animal training. In order to crush the spirits of newly captured elephants, they are tied down and subjected to routine beatings and other tortures on a daily basis, usually for up to one month, until they learn that there is no use in fighting back.

Trainers routinely use bullhooks, muzzles, whips, goads with concealed spikes, chole ropes, heat and deprivation of food and water and electric prods to "encourage" animals to perform behaviorally unnatural and suffer cause acts. Even drugs are used to force frightened animals to obey. Bears have their noses broken and their paws burned to "teach" them to walk on their hind legs. Elephants are controlled by the use of bullhooks on the sensitive areas of their skin, such as around their eyes and behind their knees and ears, vagina, mouth and anus.

Circus animals, besides being denied their freedom, are often denied the company of others of their kind. They suffer from endless boredom. They have no opportunity to engage in natural behaviour, which in many animals, causes emotional stress and frustration, resulting in aggressive or moody behaviour, compulsive changing environments and feed, traffic, noise and pollution upset animals. Specialized veterinary care for exotic animals is not available everywhere circuses perform. A lion, or any other animal, would not naturally leap through a ring of fire unless afraid. The circus lion is forced to act against its natural inclinations. In the wild elephants do not balance on one foot on stools while tossing a ball aloft. Forcing an elephant stand on a ball is like forcing a human stand on a marble. In the wild, bears do not roller skate or ride bicycles or do anything remotely resembling these so-called tricks.

Monkeys kicked and hit in the face with riding crops, and chained elephants that were beaten with axe handles and pointed hooks. Often these majestic creatures were grabbed with sharp instruments by their trunks, mouths, ears (often torn and tattered by such callous handling) and hind legs, and left to neurotically sway and rock in stereotypical fashion for hours on end. The latter condition, known as 'elephant autism' is comparable to a nervous breakdown in humans.

The circus industry itself refers to training measures as "make em or break em" procedures.

Once animals have outlived their "usefulness" to circuses and other traveling animals’ acts, they are either relegated to permanent winter quarters (usually cages), or are sold to other circuses, roadside zoos, canned hunting facilities to be shot for recreation, sold to exotic food restaurants and sometimes even animal research laboratories. Still in confinement, most animals used in circuses live out their lives in the same misery they were subjected to during their "performing" years.

There is nothing to be learnt from seeing an elephant struggling to stand on his/hers head whilst assailed by loud music under the glare of circus lights. The idea of publicly humiliating an animal to prove that man is capable of this sort of dominance is not fun. It is sad, depressing and immoral. Nothing of value can be learned by watching bears in tutus riding bicycles, or tigers jumping through flaming hoops. On the contrary, circuses present a distorted and misleading picture of wildlife, and do nothing to educate children or help them to develop compassionate and moral attitudes toward animals.

Humans promote such exploitation and cruelty, and teach the children that the domination of other beings should unquestionably be accepted as a cultural norm.

Animals in circuses do not provide a realistic educational tool for children because the animals are forced to perform tricks that are not normal for them. Children are seeing broken-spirited animals reacting to a stressful and unnatural environment.

Imagine how you would feel if you had to watch your mother being beaten every day. What if you had to see and hear her wailing, crying and begging for mercy. Imagine how hopeless you would feel if you couldn't help her.
You can help her. You can end her and everybody else's suffer. There is only one thing that will really end their suffer. Everybody's suffer. Eliminate what cause the suffer. Eliminate the human race!