Given the history of slavery in this country, modern-day Americans should be especially sensitive to all situations that resemble it. This country lagged behind in abolishing the enslavement of Native Americans and imported Africans. Our government failed to legally ban child labor, another form of slavery, until 1938. And now we are lagging behind in abolishing nonhuman animal slavery.

Finland, Israel, Sweden and Singapore have all banned the use of nonhuman animals in circuses. How far have we come in this country? We encourage circuses to enslave sentient beings and brutally force them to entertain us. Circuses inflict a life of torment on elephants, lions, monkeys, bears, and other animals for the smallest of pleasures. These animals suffer unnecessarily their entire lives to bring audiences a few laughs and gasps under the big top. How can we justify this?

Circus animals aren’t trained the way we train pets—that is, unless you try to teach your dog to leap through rings of fire. Whips, tight collars, muzzles, electric prods, bull hooks, and other tools are the motivation for circus animals to perform, not a Scooby Snack. When a huge, ferocious-looking bear performs ridiculous stunts and calmly obeys every whim of the trainer, it is not because the bear loves the trainer. The bear has been conditioned to be very afraid of humans, especially this one, and it obeys to avoid being physically punished. Not that the abuse stops when the bear learns a trick.

What are the cruelties that go on? Here’s a small sample:

According to The New York Times, a Ringling Brothers spokesperson admitted that a trainer who had been videotaped tormenting elephants was still on elephant duty (4/8/01). The USDA cited Ringling for failing to provide veterinary care to an elephant named Tillie who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis (9/6/00). Benjamin, a 4-year-old baby elephant who had been removed from his mother before she could teach him to swim, drowned when he stepped into a pond (6/26/99).

(Go to http://www.wesleyan.edu/wsa/warn/circus.htm for links to more extensive lists and other information about circuses.)

Many of the targeted viewers of a circus are innocently unaware of the suffering inflicted on the nonhuman animal performers. Small children aren’t likely to think about what happens to the animals when they aren’t performing. Nor do they recognize that the rigors of the training process involve such physical pain and fear. If they were made to think about how those cute and talented animals are forced to perform night after night for up to 50 weeks a year, traveling in poorly ventilated boxcars and trailers in all kinds of extreme weather conditions, children would not tolerate a circus that uses animals. Likewise, educated parents would not want to teach their children that the abuse and enslavement of nonhuman animals for the entertainment of human ones is morally acceptable.

Perhaps if the public was made fully aware of the conditions under which circus animals are kept, these types of circuses would be banned all over the U.S. instead of in just a few localities such as Pasadena, CA and Stamford, CT. If parents thought twice about the lesson circuses teach kids about the role of cruelty and enslavement in entertainment, the demand for circuses like the Ringling Brothers’ would sharply decrease. Help make that change by joining in the peaceful and educational demonstration in Bridgeport, CT on Wednesday, October 24 against the visiting Ringling Brothers’ circus. Contact Joel at jsbartlett@wesleyan.edu or x5698 for more information.




Bartlett and Knight are members of the class of 2003.