After more than 160 years, elephants will no longer perform under the big top of North America’s biggest circus.
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Elephants once used by the Ringling Bros. live out their retirement years on a 200 acre tract of land in rural central Florida, halfway between Orlando and Sarasota.
The final performance leaves the 11 pachyderms with one last road trip, this time to Ringling’s Center for Elephant Conservation, where they will join a herd of 29 elephants already in residence. The circus announced it would phase out elephant performances as the public voiced more and more opposition to the practice.
The circus has faced torrents of criticism from animal rights groups, including widely circulated videos from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that show a male handler hitting elephants with a pointed-stick, known as an ankus, before a performance. When they are moved, 42 Asian elephants will call the conservation center home.
In 2014, Feld Entertainment won more than 25 million U.S. dollars in settlements from animal rights groups, including the Humane Society, over unproven allegations of mistreated elephants.
The elephants’ last show was in Providence, Rhode Island, on Sunday night.
An Asian elephant performs during the national anthem for the final elephant performance during the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, Sunday, May 1, 2016, in Providence, R.I. The circus closes its own chapter on a co… And for now, hopefully just getting off the road will be an improvement in the lives of these much-deserving animals – and a signal to the world that elephants don’t belong in the circus.
But with the last elephant show ever in the past, there could a new future ahead for these exhausted animals.
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The circus will still feature other animals including tigers, lions and horses.
