Center for Elephant Conservation

Animal Care: Our Greatest Performance


Ringling Bros. has more than 141 years of experience working with and caring for exotic and domestic animals. Because animals are an essential part of everything we do, we are committed to ensuring our animal family receives the highest standards of care. From employing an expert team of animal care specialists, to building facilities designed specifically with animal comfort and safety in mind, animal stewardship is top priority at Ringling Bros.
Commitment to Caring Animals that perform with Ringling Bros. are provided with fulltime preventative veterinary care, nutritious meals, and a clean and safe home. They are stimulated by all the exciting activity around them, have time for play and social interaction with other animals, and have a chance to use their physical and mental skills every day.
Our Expert Staff The Ringling Bros. animal care staff provides the very best round-the-clock attention and quality care for our animals, including regular examinations and vaccinations. On our traveling units, we employ a full-time veterinary staff, animal behaviorists, and veterinary technicians who administer veterinary care to all the animals. A local veterinarian is also on call 24 hours a day in each city where our show performs.
At the Ringling Bros. Center for Elephant Conservation, the elephants are cared for by a staff of skilled individuals who dedicate themselves seven days a week to the elephants’ care. Led by director Gary Jacobson, this team of 13 men and women has more than 100 years of combined experience working with elephants in exhibition and performance.
Positive Reinforcement Relationships between animals and humans at Ringling Bros. are built on mutual respect, trust and affection. Our training methods are based on continual interaction with our animals, touch and words of praise, and food rewards. Performance routines are created to showcase the animal’s natural physical abilities and beauty, as well as their distinctive behaviors.

Animal Transportation Ringling Bros. operates the largest private train network in the United States. These trains, which are used to transport all of our human and animal performers, as well as all of the props and equipment required to put on the show, are subject to regular unannounced inspections by the Federal Railroad Administration, Amtrak, the Association of American Railroads and individual railroad inspectors.
The trains’ stock cars are specially designed and custom-built to meet the needs of each animal species. Our animal handlers travel in the stock cars, when space permits, or otherwise in accordance with USDA requirements and as needed during longer train rides. When arriving at a new venue, our animals disembark the train and are led by their handlers to the venue’s animal facility, where they remain for the duration of our stay in each town.
Animal Feeding Ringling Bros. animals are fed and watered in prescribed measures on a regular schedule as determined by our animal programs team. Fresh food, including protein-enriched grains, fruits, vegetables, meat, bread and a special vitamin- and mineral-enhanced granular mix, is shipped directly to the arena from local sources in each city to ensure the freshest food available.
Regulations and Inspections In the United States, the display and care of performing animals is subject to animal welfare laws and regulations at the federal, state and local levels. Federally and internationally, Ringling Bros. is held to the animal welfare laws determined by the Animal Welfare Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. In each city that we visit, we are also governed by a network of state and local permitting requirements and animal welfare laws.
	Ringling Bros. aims to exceed even the highest of these standards for care and treatment of our animals. We maintain an open-door policy for unannounced inspections by internal and external animal care inspectors and regulators.
Animal Advocacy In addition to providing a healthy, safe and secure environment where humans and animals live and work together in partnership, Ringling Bros. is deeply involved in the conservation of exotic animals. Our performing animals serve as ambassadors for their species and we have emerged as a leading advocate for the conservation and continued preservation of many different species that are currently threatened or endangered, most notably the Asian elephant. The cornerstone of this commitment is our Ringling Bros. Center for Elephant Conservation, but our contributions to the greater conservation good have taken other forms as well:
Ringling Bros. has contributed corporate resources including time, effort and funding to supporting efforts within the international conservation community and the US Congress to enact legislation for Asian elephant conservation, including the historic Asian Elephant Conservation Act, which was signed into law by President Clinton in 1997 Since 2005, Ringling Bros. has announced more than $300,000 in funding to the Smithsonian Institution's National Zoological Park supporting research products on endotheliotropie herpes viruses, the single greatest health threat to the Asian elephant, and a reproductive study aimed at increasing the captive population of the endangered Asian elephant. Ringling Bros. and our expert team of elephant conservationists participate in conservation efforts in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia

Another Bundle of Elephant Joy: Our 25th Calf, Nate!