Don't Patronize Cole Bros. Circus—And Here's Why

The Cole Bros. Circus is going to be visiting the area this week, and I strongly encourage everyone to not attend, until they discontinue the extremely inhumane wild animal acts.

Here is why:

People who are unaware that having elephants (and other wild animals in traveling circuses) is inhumane need to educate themselves, or just use your common sense and think about things for a minute. Simply go online and read up on it.

If you don't want to do that, like I said, think logically. Think of the size of the elephant. Think about how and where the elephant would have to be kept during various times of a typical day, 365 days of the year, as part of a traveling circus.

The FACTS are that elephants (and other wild animals) are horribly and cruelly confined in order to be transported about the country and only temporarily kept at the various locations for usually a day or two.

They are typically chained by the ankle and forced to stand such that they can move only a step or two in any direction, and kept this way almost every hour of each 24-hour day. Sometimes after setting up the circus tent is completed they may have an extremely small outside area surrounded by a electric fence. During the night, and in bad weather, they are forced to spend it inside a truck.

And of course when they are en route to their next location they are confined and hauled around in the back of trucks for hours and hours, and then when arriving at their destination have to stay in those trucks typically for many more hours while waiting for things to get setup.

Ringling Bros. transports most of the time via trains 50 boxcars, with their Red and Blue Units each covering 16,000 miles annually to perform in 30-plus cities. Data in court case testimony regarding Ringling revealed that the elephants traveled 26 hours straight on average. Some legs extended beyond 70 hours without a break. The longest stretch: 100 hours on a 1,830-mile journey from Lexington, Kentucky, to Tucson, Arizona.

Up to five elephants are crammed in each boxcar. The average elephant produces approximately 15 gallons of urine and 200-plus pounds of solid waste in a 24-hour period. Former circus workers described the unbearable stench when they opened the cars for water stops—during which they typically replenished supplies without letting the animals out. For more on this read this Pulitzer Prize-winning article: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2011/10/ringling-bros-elephant-abuse?page=1

So I have only touched on the confinement. There also is the extremely well documented, and admitted to, physically abusive training techniques that are how the elephants are forced to do the "tricks" for the circusgoer's amusement.

Just educate yourself by visiting any one of countless respected websites, such as those of ADI (Animal Defenders International), www.circuses.com, www.morebeautifulwild.com.

Also, there is an excellent, extensive publication by Animal Defenders International on the Science of Suffering regarding wild animals in traveling circuses which you can read: https://www.ad-international.org/admin/downloads/SCS_US_rep_FINAL_Jun%2015%2008_LOW%20RES.pdf