Circus Elephant Analysis

Words: 1543
Pages: 7

This article written by Mike Jaynes looks at the training of circus elephants, and in particular the abuse they face. He discusses why it is so terrible by comparing their natural habitat with that of the circus. He also goes into detail about the abuse the trainers inflict which is important in order to make a point in how horrible the elephants are treated. This is useful in the section of my paper that exclusively speaks of the abuse. The author is writing an academic journal, but his feelings on the issue are not well hidden. He does offer an excellent solution on this topic. He advocates for circus’ to become human only like Cirque du Soleil which is fairing quite well. He also points out how trends are showing humans are moving away from …show more content…
The author clarifies that this was “unreliable bestiary”. He uses this to break away from what we think we know about the animal in order to look at an animal we don’t know at all. Humans can list off scientific facts about elephants, but our relationship with them is one-sided in our favor. We use them for our entertainment and curiosity. They do not gain anything from humans and face extinction. In order to actually know elephants we must look at them with a fresh perspective and on equal footing. The best relationship at this point would be none. This ties into my paper with the idea of elephants being released from the circus. I wonder if the next form of captivity after the circus will be any better, since we do not freely let aniamls go. The ideas of captivity in this story interest me. It is justified that we are protecting endangered species. Although, I wonder if the human-animal relationship in the past was better we would have this large extinction problem now. This commentary is signifigant because it makes me think about how I am going to tie the humanities aspect into my paper. I can tie human-aniaml relationship into the section of my paper about the circus’ orgin and