the animals

Meet the Animals

• Elephants are sensitive and intelligent animals. They can remember the location of a waterhole for 20 years! Elephants visibly grieve over the loss of family members. They live in matriarchal groups and form complex social bonds. In the wild they can live up to 70 years and may roam up to 30 miles per day foraging for food and water.  Learn more about elephants in captivity. 
   
• Lions are the only big cats that are social rather than solitary. They live in groups called "prides", which can vary from 4-30 individuals. Prides are typically made up of related adult females and their offspring. The lionesses do most of the hunting; females and the young eat first, then males. Lion cubs are very small at birth and are entirely dependent on their mother for food until they are about 6 months old. Female lions raise their young together and will nurse cubs other than their own.
   
• Tigers are the largest species of the cat family. With the exception of a mother tiger rearing her young, tigers are solitary animals that hunt at night. Tigers' eyes have a special design that makes their night vision six times better than that of humans! Unlike a typical house cat, they are good swimmers and enjoy bathing, especially in hot weather, which they seem to dislike. Tiger stripes are like human fingerprints: no two tigers have the same pattern of stripes.
   
• Bears are shy, wild animals, who prefer quietly foraging in their forest homes far away from people. Bears share a form of communication that they use with each other to signal their emotions. Bear cubs, in particular, like to make their feelings known and will cry when in distress, whine when approaching their mother, and hum when they are nursing or content. Like human babies, bear cubs need their mother's love, nourishment and protection in order to survive. A bear cub will stay with its mother for a few years before setting off to make a life of its own. Many bears live in cold climates and spend the bitter winter months hibernating. During this period of hibernation bears do not eat, drink or go to the bathroom!

When wild animals are forced to live and perform in traveling circuses and shows, they are not allowed to express their natural behaviors and they are deprived of social bonds and their native environment. Due to the stress of living in unnatural conditions, many animals exhibit suffering through what are known as stereotypic behaviors. For example, circus elephants sway and bob their heads, large cats pace continually, and bears have been known to beat their heads against their cages repeatedly. Clearly, the life of a circus animal is not as exciting as the circus industry would like us to believe.

(Source:  www.circusspotlight.org)

Circus Animal Facts

• Circus animals are forced to endure an unnatural and painful existence. Many were taken from the wild; others have been bred in captivity; all have been removed from even a semblance of their natural habitats.
   
• As part of a traveling menagerie, it is often necessary to separate socially bonded animals, like mothers and their babies, and unnaturally pair up animals that are typically solitary in nature. Exposed to constant noise, travel, prolonged restraint, and rigorous training techniques until they are either too sick or too old to perform these animals suffer both physically and psychologically.
   
• Training regimens can be extremely severe. Since bears don't naturally ride bicycles and an elephant would panic if a tiger jumped on its back, trainers often employ brutal methods to compel the animals to override their natural behaviors, fears and instincts. Beatings, food and water deprivation, and electric shocks are used to force these suffering creatures into submission.
   
• Circus animals spend the majority of their lives on the road, working up to 50 weeks out of a year in appalling conditions. During transport from one city to the next, which can take several agonizing days, the animals are chained or crammed into cages that are too small, lack fresh air and an adequate water supply, and are surrounded by their own excrement.

(Source:  www.circusspotlight.org)