Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus and TNT are teaming up for a new reality series that is to follow the circus train on onme of it's tours of America. What almost certainly won't be shown is the oppresive conditions that the circus animals, especially the elephants, must live under and the abuse they must endure for people's enetertainment.
Elephants, tigers, and other circus animals travel 11 months of the year, more often than not on long trips in cramped quarters. When they arrive at the next city they are, for obvious public safety reasons, not allowed to raom but are kep shackled. In nature elephants roam up to 25 miles in a single day. If you went to a zoo and saw the animals kept in the conditions that circuses keep them in you would be outraged and shocked and almost certainly moved to action.
Training these animals is esepcially cruel. To train elephants, circuses frequently make use of a bullhook, a long stick with a sharp pointed hook at the end.
The purpose is of course to instill obedience by inflicting pain on the animal. The following video graphically exposes the cruelty.
On YouTube you can find dozens of videos of animal abuse at the hands of their trainers. This is just the tip of the iceberg, elephants and other wild animals are also a threat to the public. Elephants and tigers are not meant for the life they are forced to lead in the circus.
Do you think for a second TNT will show off this aspect of Ringling Brothers? Of course not, Ringling Brothers wouldn't allow access if they did. No, this will almost certainly be a highly sanitized presentation that will only serve to legitimize the animal circus.
What can you do? Tell TNT not to do this by sending them a letter
letting them know that animal abuse of this nature is not acceptable.
Apart from TNT there is more you can do. Of course not attending animal circuses would be the best thing you could do. There are many circuses do not use animals in the acts.
More information on creulty in animal circuses and what you can do can be found at Born Free USA united with Animal Protection Institute.