Hail the circus elephant

By John M. CRISP

Tribune News Service

Last week, the same edition of my local newspaper reported good news and bad news for animals.

First, the good news: The Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus announced that by May it will permanently retire its last 11 performing elephants from life on the road.

For more than a century, trained elephants have been Ringling Brothers’ essential emblem, but in recent years local governing bodies have begun to pass “anti-elephant” and “anti-circus” ordinances out of concern for the welfare of these traveling beasts.

According to the Associated Press, Los Angeles and Oakland, Calif., have outlawed bull hooks, the heavy spiked tool used by handlers to control elephants, and Asheville, N.C., abolished all wild animal performances in its municipal arena.

Feld Entertainment, owner of Ringling Brothers, began to have difficulty booking its three traveling circuses, and in March it announced that it would retire its entire elephant herd to a preserve in Florida by 2018, a task that Ringling Brothers managed to accomplish a year and a half ahead of schedule.

This will be good for the elephants. You don’t have to be a bleeding heart animal lover to imagine the tedious, unhealthy misery of life on the road for intelligent social animals like these.

So, never mind the economic motivation behind this humane action. Good for Ringling Brothers for retiring their elephants into a healthier, more natural habitat.

Bad news

Now for the bad news: The front page of the same issue of my local paper announced that the Texas State Aquarium, perched on Corpus Christi Bay, has acquired two new Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, Liko and Schooner, who will be joining the two current residents of Dolphin Bay, Kai and Shadow.

The Aquarium’s CEO likes to refer to these dolphins as “tremendous ambassadors for marine wildlife,” but, of course, these free-ranging natural hunters – in the wild they swim up to 100 miles per day – are confined in a featureless 400,000 gallon chlorinated tank through no choice of their own.

Nor do they represent “wildlife,” at all. Liko and Schooner were born eight years ago at SeaWorld Orlando, and they’re unlikely to have had a single glimpse of the natural niche into which their species evolved. They were bred for entertainment, and all other suggested purposes ring a tad hollow.

The anthropomorphism is laid on thick. Liko and Schooner will acclimate to their “new digs,” a “bachelor pod,” before they’re “formally introduced” to Kai and Shadow. But the “bachelor” part is correct; all four dolphins are males. In the wild, males associate in small groups, but bonds among individuals are self-selected and fluid, and males regularly move into larger associations for, of course, sex.

There are lots of good reasons not to confine wild animals in unnatural conditions for our amusement. Or to create animals – such as Liko and Schooner – for entertainment. Last year SeaWorld put an end to its captive killer whale shows. Like Ringling Brothers, SeaWorld bowed to public and economic pressure, but at least it did the right thing, if for the wrong reasons.

Elephants and killer whales are huge, spectacular animals that are clearly out of place in confinement. I hope that the dolphin, cursed with a goofy grin that gives the audience the misperception that he enjoys performing, isn’t overlooked because his misery isn’t as obvious.

John M. Crisp, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas.