Issue 131 - May 2012 (2nd Edition) - Page 12

Circus Cruelty to Animals Protest Message - Baby Elephant Photograph

Outline
Circulating message protesting the cruel treatment of circus elephants features as evidence a photograph of a baby elephant beside its mother.

Brief Analysis
The continued use of animals in circus acts is certainly controversial and the often cruel treatment of circus animals has - quite rightly - been the subject of ongoing condemnation by animal protection groups around the world. However, as a protest, this message fails rather dismally. The elephants in the photograph are not cruelly treated circus elephants at all but rather a mother and baby being tended by curators soon after the baby's birth at Oregon Zoo in 2008.

Detailed analysis and references below example.

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Last updated: 7th May 2012
First published: 7th May 2012
Article written by Brett M. Christensen
Research by David White, Brett Christensen
About Brett Christensen and Hoax-Slayer

Example

Baby elephants are taken from their mothers, often at the cost of the mother's life because a mother elephant does not give up her baby easily. The babies are beaten nonstop to break their will, then go through a training process of more cruelty and abuse. That is how they get a 10,000-pound elephant to perform the unnatural tricks they do for the audience's pleasure.

EDUCATE YOURSELVES!!! Circuses are hell on earth for animals!!! - Trainers use bullhooks, whips, sticks, circus animal cruelty electric prods, and other tools that intentionally cause pain and injury in order to force animals to perform. Undercover footage of behind-the-scenes training shows elephants beaten with bullhooks and shocked with electric prods, big cats dragged by heavy chains around their neck and hit with sticks, bears whacked and prodded with long poles, and chimpanzees kicked and hit with riding crops. Trainers have to break their spirit; they have to tear the animal down psychologically before the trainers can actually teach them �tricks.� This type of training is usually done when the circus animal cruelty elephant is just a baby. However, there are instances where grown elephants are taken from the wild and �broken.� This is done by restraining the elephant with short chains to a small area as someone repeatedly beats the animal with a bullhook.

Detailed Analysis
This message, which is currently circulating rapidly around Facebook, protests the cruel and abusive treatment of elephants and other animals in circuses. The message describes how baby elephants are taken away from their mothers and beaten to break their will before being mercilessly trained to perform for circus audiences. As evidence, and to highlight its claims, the protest message features a photograph of a baby elephant besides its mother along with two men. The clear implication in the message is that the attached photograph depicts circus trainers about to remove the baby from its mother as described in the protest.

Certainly, the treatment of circus animals has been a matter of grave concern for animal protection organizations around the world for many years. The continued use in circuses of elephants and other animals has been roundly condemned by such organizations, with good reason. The issue has been widely debated over many years.

That said, however, this particular protest message has a fatal flaw that effectively destroys its credibility. The photograph which forms the primary focus of the message does not depict a baby elephant about to be hauled off by cruel circus trainers at all. In fact, the image depicts then baby Samudra with his mother Rose-Tu, much loved - and well treated - residents of the Oregon Zoo in Portland. The men in the photographs are zoo curators, not circus trainers and the baby elephant is simply being weighed. The same photograph is featured on the Oregonian Gallery website with the following caption:

Gilbert Gomez, assistant curator, left and Dimas Dominguez, elephant keeper, get a good grip on the Oregon Zoo's new baby elephant as they weigh him Thursday, August 28, 2008. He weighed 284 pounds. Rose-Tu, background, gave birth to the little guy on Saturday, August 23, 2008.

More images and videos depicting Samudra and Rose-Tu are featured on the Oregon Zoo website.

Moreover, despite the implication in the message that the baby elephant in the photograph was about to be taken away from his mother, both Samudra and his mother still reside at the zoo. And an October 2011 KATU.com news article reports that Rose-Tu is again pregnant.

However heartfelt or relevant a protest message might be, it loses credibility and greatly diffuses its effectiveness if it is based on false or misleading information, as this one is. The text of the protest message has apparently been lifted from other online resources and tacked onto the photograph. Given that some simple research reveals a great many images of young elephants being harshly trained for circus acts, it seems rather curious that the creator of this protest message has used an image that is not related to circuses at all.

References
PETA - Circuses
Oregonian Gallery - Baby elephant
Oregon Zoo - Asian elephant
Oregon Zoo - Samudra 8 Months
Oregon Zoo - Rose-tu and Samudra
Zoo Experience: elegant elephants
Elephant Rose-Tu at Oregon Zoo is expecting again

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