To the editor:

Circus season. It’s a tradition. I remember circuses as a child. Because of what I know now, I won’t take my children.

Family entertainment shouldn’t include animal cruelty. The use of animals in circuses is barbaric. Elephants, bears and tigers live chained, in cages, inside boxcars 50 weeks of every year. These animals are intelligent, feeling beings that deserve to live where nature intended them. When one circus is done with them, they’re sold to another. The animals are born in captivity or are stolen from their natural habitat. Elephants develop strong bonds with family members, and females stay with their mothers their entire lives. Elephants are also known to walk 25 miles daily. Circus life is very stressful.

Ringling and other circuses don’t use positive reinforcement. Primates wear shock collars. Bull hooks and whips are used on elephants. Animals don’t perform because they enjoy it; they do it out of fear. Obviously it is unnatural for an elephant to walk on two legs or bears to walk tightropes. Recently a lion died in a Ringling boxcar while traveling through Arizona.

There are many human-only circuses. Animals aren’t born to perform bicycle acts wearing tutus. Children should learn about wild animals for what they really are. The only thing Ringling teaches a child is the misconception that animals are ours to do with as we like. I’d rather my daughter learn by watching National Geographic than in real life at a circus.

Kris Taylor,

Tonganoxie