Circus elephants are denied almost everything important to them: family relationships, privacy, mental stimulation, physical exercise and emotional outlets. They are extremely intelligent, highly social animals that, when free, live in close-knit families.

Circuses are concentration camps for elephants. It is standard practice to hit, beat, shock, chain and whip them to make them perform confusing and sometimes dangerous tricks. To break the spirits of newly captured baby elephants, some are tied down, beaten and starved for up to a month.

Elephants spend up to 95 percent of their lives in chains. They are often forced to sleep standing up in cramped trucks and boxcars, subject to extreme heat and cold, living in their own excrement. They must perform while ill and are under constant threat of punishment with bullhooks, which are jabbed into their sensitive skin. The Humane Society of the United States has even discovered bullhook wounds on the genitals of several elephants in circuses.

To learn more about the plight of circus elephants, go to www.elephants.com, www.savetheelephants.com, www.circuses.com and www.bornfree.org.

Susan A. Kamuda

Arundel