I was in Honolulu in 1994 when Tyke the African elephant was executed by Honolulu Police officers. His crime: being an elephant. Travis the chimpanzee was executed this year for being a chimp. It's sad that humanity is not evolutionarily mature enough to respect the majesty of other intelligent creatures on this earth. Chimps were sent to space before humans were. On the 40th anniverssary of the moon landing, humans are hailed as heroes while chimps who participated in the space program were locked away and subjected to the most fiendish experiments. Chimps, dolphins, elephants and other intelligent creatures can't speak out on their own behalf. Who will stand up for them?

Beyond the special kind of psychologically deranged cruelty that it takes to handle animals at an instiution like Ringling Brothers Circus, I wonder what is the point of a circus anyway?

Zoos (another questionable institution in our "civilized" world)learned a long time ago that providing animals with a habitat as close to their wild origins as possible allows them to live longer and mate more successfully. The best zoos in fact put the people in cages and let the animals roam free

The existence of the circus makes about as much sense as a traveling "inquisition" complete with thumb-screws, racks, gullotines, and Jesuit priests administering the whole affair.

Poet

All life is sacred.

The diversity of Nature's manifestations upon this planet are a celebration of ourselves, and vice versa. Human beings are gifted with the consciousness of knowing of this is so. This does not give us right to dominance; it gives us responsibility.

What living heart would do such evil upon another knowing that - intrinsically, subtly, and by the signatures of life itself - every body of life comes from the same source?

What, Ms. Newkirk, can we do?

Elephants are impressive animals and beings, both in their appearance and in their social life.

The treatment of particularly African elephants in captivity - and in the wild - is sadly symptomatic of humans' mindless relationship to our founding premises in living Nature. In this I'm a "bleeding heart liberal" and proud of it.

At basic fault is our model of Nature - eco-systems, plant, animals and even humans - as mechanically dead rather than organically alive. This "clockwork"-model was fine when introduced by Descartes ca 400 years ago to improve our understanding of natural processes, but has now long exceeded its validity and outgrown our need to understand. It has been extended into mindless exploitation. This mindless exploitation logically parallels the mindlessness we view nature, and indeed our selves, as carrying.

We need to see, collectively, that any thought and model of nature is an aid covering but some always small part of Nature, different from and subordinate to mysterious, organically living Nature itself.

They showed the Tyke incident on Fox's When Animals Attack but they did show the police executing the elephant. Peta does an animal rights seminar where they spend a day showing every sort of atrocity committed against non human animals and the Tyke execution is shown in full. It took a half hour to kill him.
One of the earliest and most famous cases was Topsy, who was tormented by human abusers and because the elephant dared to fight back, was electrocuted courtesy of Thomas Edison. An Electrocution of an Elephant was shown in theaters at the time.

Circuses came out of the Roman Coliseum. Bread and Circuses.

Zoos are no better though. They were always meant for human entertainment and only when animal groups started to question whether humans have the right(of course they dont) to put members of other species in cages did they start to talk about education.
Same with aquariums.
Its an atrocity to stick a whale meant for long travel inside a prison-and when there is a storm or a war, the animals are abandoned. Happened in Dresden, happened in Florida during Hurricane Andrew, happened in Kuwait in the first gulf war, happened in Iraq under the sanctions when a captive bear's only source of water was a dirty pool and when a tiger that survived the initial bombardment was shot by an imbecilic American soldier. Or when Israeli soldiers executed the captive animals in Gaza's zoo.

Elephants in particular have to be treated quite viciously when young to scare them into being afraid of a human. But, every now and then you get something like the glorious footage of Tyke bashing the head of his trainer into the ground in front of families. Some humans really ask for it.
Its just unfortunate it doesnt happen more often-and when it does, the circus or zoo or aquarium always try to say the animal wasnt getting revenge. Ironic too--since hunters and other idiots always try to claim that animal rights people think nature is like Disney--and yet that is the image that circuses and aquarium shows sell to the public.

The current effort in circus law is not to ban elephants from captivity, but to make the abuse they face less severe. Gary Francione is right--this is putting wall paper in Auschwitz. It doesnt address the real problem.

As Ambrose Bierce said, a circus is a show where lions, tigers and bears travel around watching humans acting the fool.

"Civilized" Man believes he/she is above Nature. With animals it is more obvious, with our eco-system, less so.

Both will eventually rebel.

Elephants have the largest brains of any mammal on the face of the Earth. They are creative, altruistic and kind.

You're talking about the actual animal here, not the Republicans. The Republicans have the smallest brains of any mammal on the face of the earth. They are destructive, selfish and will kick your ass or even kill you if there's a couple of dollars in it for them. Ditto the Democrats.

Newkirk is quite incorrect when she wrote that elephants have the largest brain of any mammal on Earth: that distinction goes to the Blue Whale. PETA does a lot of admirable things, but its' overweening desire for publicity lurches it quite often into the ridiculous.

it's funny but there is a stark contrast:

where it is traditional to have these large powerful animals , which can be cooperative if treated well, to "work" for humans - in asia it is also the attitude that animals that are made or "asked" to work - are to be treated properly . at least generally unless there are of course unscrupolous individuals that a community will ostracise.

where elephants are indigenous, such as in india, thailand, burma etc...elephants seem to actually be "worshipped" or doted over in awareness of how they need to be treated if they people expect to have them "cooperate" with humans..such as in hauling trees, or being decorated to be the wedding "carriage" in many towns and cities. in return they are protected and washed, played with . etc.

We should only have open preserves, not zoos or circuses in which animals are confined, chained up or abused. Zoos and circuses with animals should be abolished.

Animals must be protected to promote their survival, but allowed to live free in their own environment.

It is only the humans, especially the violent criminals, the pedophiles and greedy, selfish politicians , CEOs and banksters that should be chained up and put in a cage.

I hate to always harp on organized religion, but this is yet another example of the harm the big 3 religions do. They've instilled the notion that Humans are "out of nature". That there's this division between natural and supernatural, and that we humans in virtue of our supernatural God take part in the supernatural and that anything earthly, i.e. natural, is bad.

My girlfriend and I climbed the Honolulu Zoo fence one fullmoon night many years ago. After wandering around a bit, greeting the animals awake and up, such as a couple giraffes, a pacing hyena, we were delighted to find a baby elephant behind a low iron fence and spent about an hour talking and petting and, maybe in a sense commisserating with this child about captivity. We felt close and sharing of a common life on earth. We went home in a joyful state.

Later in the morning when we got up we saw the story in the paper. We were totally shocked and bewildered. That baby elephant had died!

Years later, in an animal communications magazine, I read the story of a healer woman who was called in to the Honolulu Zoo to work with an elderly elephant whose feet were cracked and very painful to stand on from years of living on concrete, so that she continually moved supporting herself from one foot to another. After spending some time with the elephant, the woman was able to report her comforting had resulted in a peaceful death. This story resulted in some restoration of my peace of mind about the former incident. And I was reminded that my girlfriend's and my agreed-upon resolution of "guilt" that morning was that our consultation with the baby elephant had provided a choice of futures...

Circuses, like rodeos and almost all zoos, are anachronistic (expletive deleted for fear of divine retribution, and because the moderator might suffer a coronary). Only cruel, doltish morons love things as sadistic as these. Don't get the picture? Picture NASCAR with slave labor. If this insults you, go get drunk and beat up your wife. After all, doesn't the (reptilian mid-brain induced misogynist epithet removed here) deserve it? Usually I can produce a coherent response to even the most shocking of things, but cruelty to such a majestic creature makes my blood boil. If I have offended anyone, at least I have made them ponder the situation and try, perhaps unsuccessfully, to understand my point of view. This is both more tidy and legal than the grievous bodily harm animal abusers surely deserve, but which, sadly, I do not have the right to enjoy personally inflicting upon them, not that this illogical and immoral act would fix anything, mind you.

Blue whales have the biggest brains and Repug elephants have shit for brains.

The only circus that should be allowed is Cirque Du Soleil. As far as I know it is the only circus where the animals have a choice in joining it.

In the human world, words and money are used in place of bullhooks and bullwhips – at least since the abolition of slavery – on adults who can understand the language and are compelled to perform and obey to survive. Similar methods still obtain with human children, however, while their grasp of the language remains insufficient. If only authority could starve, humiliate, confuse, and brainwash animals and children into voluntary compliance as is done with adults, it would not be necessary to unseemly prod and beat them. When will they get with the program?

Yes, I believe man is the "crown of creation" in the whole epistemological scene. He has the capacity for the most good and the most evil in the same template. Man can do the most good, say build free hospitals, and then again use those same hands to build crematoriums thereby doing the most evil, something the animal kingdom could not even imagine. Gandhi and Hitler came out of the same genetic code with most of us falling somewhere in-between.

Why is man the top of creation? Some mystics say that only in the human form is one able to make the inner step to god realization and thus break the cycle of 84 lack species ( a lack is one hundred thousand in hindi, therefore 85 lack species would be 8,400,000 species that man must cycle through before he gets the human species in which he is then capable of stepping into the godhead of which he devolved from eons ago.

Many become so intoxicated with the "intelligence," power, freedom and choice of the human species that they completely blow the opportunity by becoming totally egocentric and pleasure driven there pursuits and will suffer the inevitable consequences of their negative karmic actions by being again cast back into the cycle of lower species to learn more lessons.

In the extreme form these people see no relationship between themselves and the lower species (and of course even their own species). They use there cunning and even religious justification to lord it over lower helpless animals and other creatures (say trees). They think everything in the creation is there for there enjoyment, tastes and amusement. Thus we have scenes of the spectacle in american of the early transcontinental trains stopping so men would slaughter hundreds (maybe thousands) of buffalo and just let these sentient beings turn into a stinking pile of death. Like wise some of the early white hunters in Africa would shoot whole herds of elephants just for the "sport" of it.

Apparently these individuals religion failed to teach them the simple and obvious law of recompense; that as you sow you reap; for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction... etc. That by killing just for sport they would suffer the karmic law and get nothing out of it (no flesh, no hide, no horn) in return except the simple and perverted thrill of killing. If you steal a car you suffer the karmic debt of the crime... but you might actually be able to use or sell the car and get something for your acquired karmic debt. But if you vandalize a car, say set it on fire, you again suffer said karmic debt but get nothing out of it but some negative thrill.

So in short there are individuals that are growing in the direction of realizing the man as the top off creation (made in god's image and likeness) and should be a custodian and caretaker of the world and it's lower species and not lord it over them with cruelty and death. This is the true garden of eden or peaceable kingdom we have so many myths about.

Vegetarianism and a low eco footprint cannot be far behind for such an individual of evolving consciousness.

IMO, ironically, circuses arise from a basic primitive impulse shared with the animal kingdom: the urge to strut one's stuff.

But since humans only have so much stuff to strut, to really satisfy the urge they ingeniously came to treat the animal kingdom itself as "our stuff".

The Latin word "circus" comes from the Greek word "kirkos", "circle, ring". So in essence, it's an amusing and entertaining promenade of "exotic" creatures performing riveting stunts for the amusement of connoisseurs and slack-jawed yokels alike.

I've never studied the history of the modern circus, but it surely is linked to the imperial parades of Roman times, in which human and animal spoils of conquest from faraway lands were publicly displayed for the edification of the people, and to reflect the glory-- the Stuff-- of the emperor.

It's a "natural" art form, as long as the culture practicing it presumes that man has the absolute right to dominate and control animals by any means necessary.

I believe it's past time to abandon the atavistic impulses that sustain the modern circus, and even "zoological gardens". Yes, I loved going to the Philadelphia Zoo as a kid-- but I don't think that animals ought to be kept captive simply for amusement's sake, even for educational purposes. (By zoos; I'm not advocating the elimination of school-based hamsters, turtles, etc.)

And I think there's a case for "non-destructive" captivity of animals in beneficial non-commercial scientific research, with an ethos mandating the least invasive procedures possible.

Then I remember that the world is full of people who really savor things like cockfights and dogfights and pigeon shoots, and realize how wussy all this would seem to them-- in the unlikely event they could even read it. They're the ones who belong in the zoo cages.

· Yr Obd't Servant

Elephants should no longer be used for circuses; it is cruel treatment for these intelligent animals.

I went to a circus once when I was about 10. I was horrified
even at that age at the way the animals were treated. I never bought another circus ticket again (except for Circ du Soleil in Vegas), and never will.