477 Years of Suffering July 30, 2009

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Hey everybody! Well, the mathemagicians over at PETA.org have crunched the numbers, to help us put the suffering animals face at the hands of the Ringling Bros. circus in perspective. Pretty astonishing stuff, eh?

477 years ...

animalrights.about / cc

That's the grand total of years that the 18 elephants used and abused by two of Ringling's touring units have been forced to endure beatings, chaining, and standing in cramped, sweltering boxcars. If you break that down, Ringling has tormented just these elephants—they have dozens more—for a total of 5,724 months, 24,804 weeks, or 174,105 days.

To put this in perspective, 1968, the year that Baby, Sarah and Banana—three of the elephants who are traveling with Ringling—were forced to perform for the first time, was the year that Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. We've come a long way since then—or have we?

Ringling talks a big game about "elephant conservation," but the reality is that Ringling has actually removed more elephants from the wild than it has bred. Most of the elephants you see pirouetting and standing on their heads in Ringling performances at one point in their lives roamed vast jungles. You might call it Ringling's other dirty secret (besides that little issue of beating the @#$% out of elephants when they think nobody's looking).

Ringling's elephants are also dying faster than they are breeding: At least 26 elephants, including four babies, have died since 1992. Eight were under the age of 40 (which is just about half an elephant's natural life expectancy of 70 years). Oh, and those babies Ringling does manage to breed are only used to replenish its dying stocks—they will never be released in the wild—ever.

Pretty depressing, isn't it? Ringling must be using some kind of new math to make all that add up to "conservation."

Red Unit

Name	Year Acquired by Ringling	Year Born and Where	Length of Time with Ringling
Asia	1990	1968 in the wild	19 years
Tonka	1989	8/23/1983 in captivity	20 years
Luna	1989	1984 in captivity	20 years
Assan/Aussan	1968	1957 in the wild	41 years
Banana	1968	1957 in the wild	41 years
Sarah	1968	1957 in the wild	41 years
Toby	1972	1961 in the wild	37 years
Banko	1980	1976 in the wild	29 years
Siam	1980	1978 in the wild	29 years
Baby	1968	1961 in the wild	41 years
Angelica	1997	1997 born into Ringling	12 years

BLUE UNIT

Name	Year Acquired by Ringling	Year Born and Where	Length of Time with Ringling
Kelly Ann	1996	1996 born into Ringling	13 years
Sara	2001	2001 born into Ringling	8 years
Bonnie	1994	1994 born into Ringling	15 years
Juliette	1992	1992 born into Ringling	17 years
Minyak	1984	1966 in the wild	25 years
Karen	1969	1969 in the wild	40 years
Nicole	1980	1976 in the wild	29 years

Posted by Alisa Mullins

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