The Horrifying Abuse of Circus Elephants

Thousands and thousands of people attend circus shows throughout the world every year. Amazing acts and stunts bring smiles to faces of people in the crowd, especially children. Although this seems like something that is innocent, the truth is that it's far from it, and the torture and abuse that circus animals endure is beyond disturbing.

In order to train large animals, such as elephants, they are routinely beaten at a young age. Due to their enormous size, it's important that the animals grow up fearing their trainer. Their whole lives revolve around being chained at the feet, unable to take steps. Seeing nothing more than the walls of a small trailer surrounding them, they often struggle with extreme temperatures. Slowly but surely, it's a life of torture.

In the wild, elephants typically live sixty to seventy years, or even longer, but sadly, circus elephants die prematurely due to poor conditions. Being very social, they frequently touch and caress one another, even entwining their trunks. Amazingly, you can see their personalities shine when they are socializing with others. With such behavior, you can imagine how painful it must be to lose another elephant companion. They have been known to grieve as humans do.

With such high levels of intelligence and complex social structure, you can imagine the importance of having a healthy lifestyle as they would in the wild. Unlike zoos and rescue sanctuaries, circus's do nothing to embrace this behavior.

Not only is this dangerous to the elephants, but it is to the humans attending. For many years, we have heard of attacks by elephants during circus shows. To be honest, as sad as these stories are, and I feel for the humans affected, can we truly blame these elephants? Having to endure what they are put through every day is heart breaking, and this is their attempt at escaping. Wild animals were intended to be just that, wild. They deserve to have a natural life as they were intended to. These elephants are trying to tell us that this is not what they were meant for, and many are refusing to listen. The sad fact is that these elephants are then killed, for simply defending themselves and trying to escape.

So those who are now learning the reality of circuses are questioning how they can attend these shows and not support such abuse. There are many circuses available that are animal free, and still entertaining for families and children of all ages. It's important that abusive trainers get the message that animal abuse will not be tolerated, and these elephants deserve far more than they are receiving, and that's happiness.