Time to ban animal acts

It’s time for circus acts involving animals to end (“Circus column was misleading,” in the Sun, June 1).

In the wild, elephants roam in large social herds for miles per day, eat fresh vegetation and bathe in mud holes. In circuses, they live lives of confinement, shackled in boxcars, fed bland diets of hay and denied everything natural to them. They travel in weather extremes that are unsafe and unnatural to them. Taking elephants from the wild to perform in circuses often means separating baby elephants and their mothers, which is traumatic for animals with such strong social bonds.

Elephants are trained with torture — beaten with an ankus (bullhook) and shocked with electric prods even though an elephant’s skin is so sensitive, she can feel an insect bite.

Numerous countries have banned or severely restricted circuses that use animals, including Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Peru, Mexico and India, just to name a few. With the many circuses today that only use willing human performers, it’s time for the U.S. to be next.

There is a bill pending in the U.S. House to ban circuses that use animals, HR1759, The Traveling Exotic Animal and Public Safety Protection Act. We need to write to our federal representatives urging the passing of HR1759.

William Mcmullin, Royal Oak, Mich.