"There is something biologically immoral about keeping animals in enclosures where their behaviour pattern, which has taken millions of years to evolve, can find no expression...until this knowledge is applied all we can hope for is to see animal lunatic asylums."

Dr. Desmond Morris

In the wild, elephants live in close-knit family units of between 25 to 30 individuals and travel approximately 25 miles a day. Their natural diet consists of grass, leaves, fruit, and other delicacies of their choice and a favourite daily activity is wallowing and playing in the mud.

Elephants are known for helping comrades in distress and younger ones often travel alongside the elderly, guiding them along the way. If an elephant is old or ill, the herd will form a circle around it for protection.

Despite their bulk, elephants are agile on their feet and able to move without a sound on the tips of their toes. The trunk, besides being used to give themselves frequent dust and water baths, is also a keen olfactory organ, capable of detecting supposedly odourless poisons.

Surprisingly, an elephant’s hide is very sensitive and has a velvet kind of quality which even bleeds if a horsefly stings it. With its funny hairs the elephant feels what it doesn’t see and the animal is quite conscious of even light jabs at certain areas of its body. The skin needs a lot of care in the wild, with the elephant using leaves, sand or earth to cool the body and retain the moisture of the skin.

Performing elephants are denied almost everything important to them, including family relationships, privacy, mental stimulation, physical exercise, and emotional outlets. Once in captivity and thus deprived of the intricate social customs of the herd, they become prone to neurosis, and can be driven insane. The use of bull hooks on their delicate skin is deliberately cruel.

In many cases, to break captured juvenile elephants, their captors bring them to their knees, chain them immobile by all four legs and beat them daily for as long as a month. The chaining of elephants mean that they are forced to stand in their own excrement for most of the day. The urine causes rotting on the pads of their feet and burns on their legs.

Other foot problems observed in captive elephants are foot rot, sole cracks, interdigital calluses, hoof overgrowth, cracked nails, infected cuticles, overworn soles and puncture by foreign objects. These problems result from chronically wet, unsanitary conditions combined with inadequate exercise and wear.

In the wild, elephants walk for about the same amount of time as they spend in chains in captivity.

Stereotypic behaviour

Most wild animals, including those considered "tame", retain a need to engage in their instinctive behaviour patterns. The continual frustration of being deprived of these patterns can lead to serious psychological problems and the pressures of captivity may lead to the development of abnormal behaviour.

Hyper-aggression, apathy, self-mutilation and stereotypic movements such as head weaving, rocking from side to side, bar licking, cage rubbing and pacing are relatively common in performing animals and are usually indicative of a problematic physical and social environment.

A study conducted by the Born Free Foundation found that confined elephants spend 22% of their time in abnormal actions, such as repeated head-bobbing or swaying.

Public safety

Dr. Gordon Glover, Wildlife Veterinarian:

"The animals which we commonly consider as ‘domestic’ were selected because of their inherent ability to be trained and they have only achieved the domesticated status through generations of selective breeding for preferred attributes....Wild animals are generally accepted as being ‘wild’ because they are difficult, if not impossible to be consistently handled safely and with minimal stress. The definition of wild animal should consider the potential strength and danger of the animal if uncontrolled. Their size and strength renders them extremely dangerous when, for some reason, handler control fails."

Much documentation exists of performing animals pushed to the brink of insanity - or madness - through loneliness, boredom and environmental depravation. In many cases, flimsy barriers are all that separate wild animals from visitors and a growing number of reports cite elephant rampages and tiger maulings which have killed and seriously injured trainers and spectators.

• A partial listing of attacks on people worldwide by captive elephants since 1990 reveal 39 deaths and more than 100 injuries.

• On April 25, 2000 a British tourist was killed and her sister and father severely injured by a bull elephant at an animal park in Pattaya, Thailand.

• Keepers in Sri Lanka are injured and killed through forcing elephants to perform unnatural tricks for public entertainment.

• In 1994 an African elephant ran amok in Hawaii killing her trainer and injuring 13 others before police shot her dead. Five days earlier another elephant pinned eight children plus parents under a fence that separated the first row of spectators from the circus ring.

Public health

"If tuberculosis is diagnosed in an elephant, there are clear public health implications as the disease can be spread by close contact with infected animals and people." Veterinarian Dr. John Lewis.

According to the American Association of Zoo Keepers, in their publication Zoonotic Diseases (1990), of the 200 known zoonotic diseases, tuberculosis is one of several persistent infections that continue to pose a threat to humans. They recommend that all zoo and aquarium employees in contact with animals should be tested regularly as part of a preventative medicine measure.

The implications for members of the public, of all ages, but especially children, visiting circuses with elephant acts are considerable. A January 1997 edition of PULSE, a publication of the Southern California Veterinary Medicine Association, warns that clinical diagnosis of TB is usually only possible after the disease is advanced and individuals have become "shedders of the agent".

In March 1998, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service required that elephants in captivity be tested for tuberculosis.

Children are more susceptible than adults to tuberculosis and may develop tuberculous meningitis if left untreated after contact.

Entertainment versus education

• Wild animals performances rarely portray behaviours that are representative of their wild counterparts. It is doubtful that anything of value can be learned except being able to see the size, shape and colour of the animal involved.

• Behaviour patterns, social interaction, intelligence, hunting instinct, maternal care, food gathering, movement patterns are all absent in the performing animal arena.

• When circuses remove animals from their natural ecological context they convey a negative educational message to the public by creating a distorted picture of the animals and confusing the status of endangered species like the Asian elephant, chimpanzee or Bengal tiger which are at serious risk of extinction in the wild.

• The only lesson children learn from watching circus animal acts is that man is capable of dominating wild species and can somehow force them to do unnatural tricks. Only when people know that whips, sharp hooks, electric prods, deprivation of food and water and even the use of drugs are some of the methods used to force these animals to perform will this barbaric "education" end.

"I do not feel that the confinement of an animal which normally will range hundreds of square kilometres, to an area less than 2 square metres is adequately meeting that animals’ space and shelter requirements." A. Grant MacHutchon, M.Sc. Wildlife Biologist.

"I saw the love, attachment, compassion and camaraderie that these incredible animals display toward each other." D. J. Schubert, Peace Corps volunteer, West Africa.

Legislation

Australia: 35 councils have banned visits from circuses that use exotic animals.

Austria: The County of Salzburg passed a decree in 1998 prohibiting the keeping of wild animals in circuses.

Norway: Federal prohibition against exhibiting all wild animals in public.

Denmark: Federal prohibition against exhibitions and performances of all wild animals in place since 1962.

Honolulu, Hawaii: As a result of the killing of a trainer by an elephant an ordinance was introduced to ban all wild animals in circuses from being brought into the city.

Sweden: Wild animal performances banned.

Finland: Wild animal performances banned.

India: Five wild animals banned from performances

Singapore: Wild animal performances banned - from January 2002

"The time will come when public opinion will no longer tolerate amusements based on the mistreatment and killing of animals." Albert Schweitzer.
— Animals AsiaFoundation