Animals Are Not Ours To Use For Entertainment
Most people go to circuses, zoos, or marine parks because they “love animals” and have no idea what happens behind the scenes or how unnatural it is for animals to be captured, confined, and forced to perform for our entertainment.
Undercover investigations have shown that elephants, tigers, and other animals on the road with Ringling Bros. and other circuses are electro-shocked, beaten with long metal rods called “bullhooks,” and denied proper veterinary care. Animals used in circuses spend most of their lives chained inside boxcars and never get to live freely with other animals, as they would in the wild.
Life in a zoo isn’t much better: Animals often live in barren enclosures—hundreds of times smaller than their homes in the wild. To make money, zoos breed animals in order to have babies to showcase, and sometimes older or less popular animals are even shipped off and replaced with cuter ones. Even under the best of circumstances at the best of zoos, captivity cannot begin to replicate wild animals’ habitats. Animals are often prevented from doing most of the things that are natural and important to them, such as running, roaming, flying, climbing, foraging, choosing a partner, and being with others of their own kind. Zoos teach people that it is acceptable to interfere with animals and keep them locked up in captivity, where they are bored, cramped, lonely, deprived of all control over their lives, and far from their natural homes.
Similarly, marine parks like SeaWorld give orcas and dolphins nothing more than what is essentially a concrete bathtub to live in. Forced to perform for large, noisy crowds, orcas become frustrated, bored, and aggressive.
If zoos, circuses like Ringling Bros., and marine parks like SeaWorld really cared about animals, they would let them live freely in the wild and wouldn’t force them to suffer for profit. You can show these industries that YOU care about animals by never purchasing a ticket to a zoo, a marine park, or a circus that uses animals and by spreading the word to your friends and family.