Essays and Musings on Animals and Society

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Ringling Victims 

From circuses.com:

  • Riccardo, an 8-month-old elephant, was destroyed after he fell from a pedestal and fractured his legs.

  • Nineteen elephants—three of them babies—have died at the hands of Ringling Bros. over the last decade alone.
In each city and town on Ringling's itinerary, animals are forced to participate in a media-oriented "animal parade." The elephants are unchained and unloaded from the boxcars in which they often spend days at a time. Being barely able to move for so long takes it toll: Some elephants, apparently suffering from arthritis, limp down the ramp and along the route from the rail yard to the arena. It's an unsettling scene—elephants, horses, and even zebras are herded down bustling city streets, flanked by trainers wielding sharp metal bullhooks. Oncoming traffic in adjacent lanes is often not stopped, and the animals are trailed by a caravan of police cars and flashing lights, causing an extremely chaotic environment that stresses out these sensitive animals and is light years away from their natural habitat. In 1999, a horse collapsed and died during the march, and PETA captured the horse's collapse on videotape, despite Ringling workers' attempts to obstruct the camera. No veterinarian was on duty.

Years ago, before the public learned that elephants and other animals were trained by being beaten into submission, the animal parade was announced in advance and took place during the day, and children were encouraged to watch. After PETA called attention to the bullhooks, scars, bloody wounds, and injuries, Ringling started to sneak into town and walk the elephants unannounced, often late at night, hoping to conceal the signs of abuse under the cover of darkness.

This fact sheet lists Ringling's animal deaths, violations of state and federal humane laws, documented cases of improper animal care, incidents that endangered people, efforts to impede animal welfare investigations, criminal activity, and more.

Excerpts:

October 28, 1999: A 52-year-old endangered Asian elephant named Teetchie was euthanized due to multiple joints affected by osteoarthritis and an M. tuberculosis infection of the lung. Captivity-induced foot problems and arthritis are the leading reasons for euthanasia in captive elephants. The circus did not announce this death.

July 26, 1999: Benjamin, a 4-year-old endangered baby elephant who had been removed from his mother before she could teach him to swim, drowned when he stepped into a pond while the circus was traveling through Texas. Benjamin drowned as he tried to move away from a trainer poking him with a bullhook. According to the Asian Elephant Studbook, published by the American Zoological and Aquarium Association, Benjamin was removed from his mother when he was only 1 year old.

[According to the fact sheet, almost none of the animal deaths were announced by Ringling Bros.]

August 25, 2001: California humane officers charged Mark Oliver Gebel, son of animal trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams, with cruelty to animals for striking and wounding an endangered Asian elephant with a sharp metal bullhook. Gebel allegedly inflicted the injury when the elephant, named Asia, hesitated before entering the performance ring at the Compaq Center in San Jose, Calif.

July 12, 2000: The USDA cited Ringling for failure to provide adequate care in transit, failure to provide drinking water, and failure to maintain transport enclosures. The inspector wrote, "...Tiger transport design has allowed excessively high temperatures during routine transport....Vent failure pushed these temperatures to a point of immediate danger to the animals."

May 6, 2001: Ringling subjected a tiger in advanced stages of pregnancy to stressful conditions associated with transport. Four tiger cubs were born on the road while the circus was performing in Columbus, Ohio. April 8, 2001: According to The New York Times, a Ringling spokesperson admitted that a trainer who had been videotaped tormenting elephants was elephantelephwant duty.

March 29, 2005: The New York Times reported, "They are still the ones cracking whips as Bengal tigers (beautiful but a little fat) walk in circles, occasionally roar and run in and out of cages that look too small for them. Their trainer, Taba, did not seem worthy of them. But our consciousness has changed. We worry about how the animals are trained and treated."

April 19, 2005: According to the Centre Daily, Ringling animal trainer Sacha Houcke was charged with simple assault in University Park, Pa., after "two employees of the Bryce Jordan Center called police and reported witnessing Houcke choke his daughter, push her to the ground and punch her in the face while they were working with the circus horses." On May 25, 2005, Houcke entered a guilty plea to harassment and disorderly conduct citations and paid a $300 fine.
Posted by: Gary / 10:35 PM
Comments:
You people are plain stupid when it comes to elephants and the care these animals receive. Your writings are full of inaccuracies and plain propoganda with no substance in reality. Just go away and leave animals in the hands of those who really care, because you sure don't.

Brian Liddicoat
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 11:29 AM
 
Evidence of circus abuse of animals is widespread, abundant, well-documented, and verifiable. If animal advocates were spreading false claims about the circus, the circus industry would sue for defamation. That will never happen, because the allegations are true.

Standard practice in circuses is to hit and poke elephants with bullhooks to force them to do stupid tricks. Why the use of force? No elephant is interested in balancing on three legs on command. They're interested in roaming with their herd - the herd that is taken away by the circus. Trainers have to use fear and pain to break elephants' independent spirits. Some trainers even use fear-based methods to force elephants to defecate before a performance.

The propaganda all comes from the circus industry. They want your money, so they have to hide and lie about their severe mistreatment of animals.

Ringling and other circus companies have a long string of animal cruelty violations, as well as convictions for crimes against humans. This is all public record. The actual amount of cruelty is far higher. The Animal Welfare Act that supposedly protects circus animals is extremely weak and under-enforced. For example, inspectors don't inspect training methods or facilities. Inspections are also infrequent due to the relatively tiny number of inspectors.

You can see circus animal abuse yourself. Go to any circus during non-show times. You'll see the elephants - who walk up to 50 miles a day for enjoyment and exercise when given a chance - kept in chains. You may see the elephants neurotically swaying back and forth to fight off the boredom and madness of severe confinement and the frustration of having to perform stunts that are utterly meaningless and unfulfilling for them.

Elephants form herds and derive great psychological and social benefits from them. Herds are the elephants' families. The circus destroys these families and denies elephants the opportunity to be in them. This amounts to a slow and long-term psychological torture.

Circus animals may have to travel up to 11 months of the year as part of their involuntary servitude to the circus. That's a horrid way to treat animals.

Animal circuses are also dangerous to humans. Since 1990, animals held captive by the circus have killed 12 people and injured over 125, including children.

Former Ringling employee Archele Hundley is one of many ex-circus (and ex-animal entertainment) employees to speak out against the industry's horrible mistreatment of animals. Here's some of the abuse she witnessed:

- An elephant was beaten with bullhooks so severely in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2006 that she bled profusely and cried out in pain.

- A trainer viciously whipped a camel and punched a miniature horse in the face.

- Trainers jabbed horses with pitchforks and gave them extremely painful "lip twists" to force the animals to obey commands.

- An elephant with painful arthritis was kept on the road.

"The abuse was not just once in a while—it occurred every day," she said. "The elephants, horses, and camels were hit, punched, beaten, and whipped by everyone from the head of animal care down to inexperienced animal handlers hired out of homeless shelters."

Are those example of the "caring" you were talking about?

This is just the top of the iceberg. Check out www.circuses.com for much more information.

It may be difficult to acknowledge that an activity you thought was harmless and fun is in reality harmful, cruel, and exploitative. But that's no reason to be in denial. By supporting the circus, you perpetuate animal suffering and the notion that it's ok to exploit animals for pleasure.

We're not going away. In fact, we're growing in number. Opposition to animal circuses is increasing, and slowly but surely the number of animal circus performances, as well as the circuses' emphasis on animals, is dwindling.
# posted by Blogger Gary : 1:04 PM
 
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