After more than 160 years, elephants will no longer perform under the big top of North America’s biggest circus.
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The Ringling Bros.’ elephant-conservation center sits on 200 acres of land in rural Florida, halfway between Orlando and Sarasota.
They will be moved to the circus’ 200-acre Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida. The circus had used the animals for synchronized dances and tricks for the past 145 years in spectacles across the United States.
The elephants were trotted out during the show on in Providence for a final “goodbye” to the audience, during which they propped themselves up on each other’s backs and performed headstands for the crowd. There they will join the rest of the Ringling Bros. herd of Asian elephants, for a total of 42 at the Conservation Center.
The giant pachyderms’ last act follows decades of protests by animal rights activists claiming the methods used to train and house the elephants are cruel. Their sperm is collected for breeding purposes, and sometimes a female is put into their enclosure for breeding, or they are sent out to other facilities to mate.
Behind the scenes, trainers and performers who have spent years working with the elephants were also sentimental.
“The asian elephant has been the treasured symbol of Barnum and Bailey’s for nearly 146 years”, says Stephen Payne, Vice-President of Corporate Communications for Feld Entertainment. Ringling Brothers says it will continue to use other animals like lions, tigers, and horses in their acts. They always just look super depressed when they’re performing, kind of just moping through trained movements with dead eyes covered in jewels, exactly like runway models.
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Ringling maintains those practices are humane and not only for the safety of the humans who work with the animals but also for the elephants themselves.
