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Ringling Bros. To Retire Its Elephants Far Ahead Of Schedule
Posted On Jan 12 2016
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“The Greatest Show on Earth” is a year and half ahead of schedule in eliminating Asian elephants from its performances. While the organization has previously held the opinion that elephants are vital to the success of a circus, the superstar Cirque Du Soleil has proven this idea to be false.
Kenneth Feld, Chairman and CEO of Feld Entertainment, called the decision to retire the elephants “the most significant change we have made since we founded the Ringling Bros”. Producer and Executive Vice President said in a statement.
The company will unveil plans for an elephant-free show in April.
The animals will live at Feld Entertainment’s 200-acre Center for Elephant Conservation in central Florida, where the company aims to save their endangered species through breeding and medical research.
News reports that all of the Ringling Bros. With the number of local ordinances of “anti-circus” and “anti-elephant” enforced throughout the country, it became increasingly hard for Ringling to plan their three traveling circuses in 115 cities each year. Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida by May 2016. Ringling Bros. went as far as to hire a private investigator to secretly film LCA’s President; but the investigator switched sides, and now openly acknowledges Ringling Bros.’ cruelty to elephants, as seen in the video here. “We have one gentleman who has been working with one elephant for her entire life”, Payne says.
The city of Asheville, North Carolina, also nixed wild or exotic animals from performing in the 7,600-seat U.S. Cellular Center.
As for the elephants, they will be studied in cancer research, as elephants rarely get cancer. The former circus elephants are all female, because, as spokesman Stephen Payne puts it, “You can not make 9,000 pounds of female elephant do what it doesn’t want to do and you certainly can not make 14,000 pounds of full grown male elephant do anything”. That’s a paradox known among scientists, and now researchers think they may have an explanation – one they say might someday lead to new ways to protect people from cancer.
