Elephant Life in U.S. Circuses

While we all enjoy the glitz, glitter and acrobatics of the circus, few of us think of what circus life means to the animals.
Elephants, tigers, bears, camels, zebras and other animals spend their lives on the road virtually year round, shuffled from parking lot to parking lot, locked in tiny cages and on train cars or trucks for days at a time. They are trained with physical punishment: bullhooks, whips, electrical prods and other devices are routinely used to inflict pain and fear to force the elephants, tigers and other animals to perform.


Elephants in circuses lead miserable lives.

Enslaved in circuses, far removed from conditions they need to thrive, elephants:

  • Frequently contract or are exposed to a human strain of tuberculosis (TB). TB is known to thrive in the cramped, close quarters that they are forced to endure day in and day out. In several instances, elephants known to be suffering from TB have been used to give rides to the public.

Circuses tear families apart


Most of the elephants performing in circuses today were captured from the wild, violently separated from their mothers, and shipped to the U.S. when they were very young. Every Asian elephant taken from the wild has endured a brutal breaking process (“the crush”), which involves beatings with nail-studded sticks, sleep-deprivation, hunger, and thirst to break the animals’ spirits. Elephants born into captivity in circuses are routinely torn from their mothers as infants younger than two years old, for training and performance.

Circuses do not promote conservation

The population of Asian elephants is highly endangered, with few remaining in the wild today. African elephants are also threatened. Wild elephants are victims of habitat loss and illegal poaching, and are killed as a result of human-elephant conflicts in their ever-dwindling home ranges.

The circus is a consumer rather than conserver of elephants. The brutality of circus life kills elephants so quickly that the death rate exceeds the birth rate.
No baby elephant born to a circus will ever be returned to the wild. The few captive breeding programs that exist in circuses are all about replenishing the supply of tormented performers who will die prematurely as the result of their treatment and living conditions.

A life of heartbreak

For anyone who knows how elephants are meant to live and act, seeing these complex, family-centered individuals chained and broken, and performing demeaning tricks, is simply heartbreaking, so imagine how the elephants themselves feel.

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