Bears don’t ride bicycles, tigers don’t jump through fiery hoops, elephants do not stand on a ball, hippos do not walk on their hind legs, seals don’t carry dogs on their backs And goats don’t balance on a wire with monkeys on their heads, unless they are violently forced too.
Life of absolute confinement and extremely abusive training for nonhumans so almighty humans could enjoy themselves for about an hour.

Circuses are not an opportunity for humans to see the animals they love, they are profit-driven businesses for their operators and more importantly they are an opportunity for humans to express their control and difference from nonhumans.
Circuses are a public humiliation of animals, exhibiting humans’ superiority and dominance.
Humans’ instrumental view of nonhumans is so extreme, that extremely violent suppressive actions, such as an elephant on a ball or a bear riding a bicycle and a tiger jumping through a ring of fire, are viewed as entertainment.

Deprivation of Basic Needs

The circus deprives animals of their basic need to roam, socialize, exercise, forage and play. Circus elephants never get to wash in water ponds, monkeys never get to climb trees or stay in a troop and bears never have the comfort of a den.
Babies never live with their mothers. They are taken away before they are weaned. Circus animals never have the choice - what or when to eat, drink, rest, play or sleep.

Continuous Confinement

In the wild, elephants walk 20 to 50 miles a day and take mud and dust baths as part of their natural behavior. However, in the circus, except for when they are on stage forced to do idiotic tricks, elephants are shackled at all times, including during the night.

Constant Traveling

Circuses travel nearly year-round, in all weather extremes, sometimes for days at a time. Ongoing travel means that circus animals are confined to boxcars, trailers, or trucks for days at a time in extremely hot and cold weather, often without access to basic necessities such as food, water, and veterinary care. Elephants, primates, big cats, and bears are confined to cramped, filthy cages in which they eat, drink, sleep, defecate, and urinate- all in the same place. The climates circus animals encounter during their exhaustive travels are often very different than that of their natural habitats. Bears are forced to endure extreme heat in the summer, and sometimes even walk across hot concrete on their way into the performing arena. Lions, on the other hand, find the cold very difficult to bear. Some circus animals freeze to death.

Physical Injuries and Illnesses

Animals in circuses suffer from a variety of physical maladies. These include lions suffering from joint problems, horses with hoof problems, injuries from chains, cage doors and bars, injuries from abusive workers, infections and lameness.
Elephants commonly get arthritis from standing chained on concrete and from performing unnatural tricks.

When traveling for long periods of time, animals develop sores from rubbing against the wire bars.

Physiological Damages

As a result of the constant confinement in such tiny cages with no stimulation and for such a long time, animals develop neurosis and exhibit neurotic behaviors. Being deprived of their natural environments, behaviors, and stimuli, animals start to mentally shut down to cope with the overwhelming stress. This manifests itself in a number of abnormal physical displays, such as, stereotypic rocking back and forth, incessant grooming, bar biting, pacing, and self-destructive behaviors including refusal to eat, and self-harm. These stereotypical behaviors are often called "circus madness".

Beaten Into Submission

Forcing animals to perform unnatural acts such as balancing on a high wire or riding a bicycle is an extremely difficult feat. Physical punishment and negative reinforcement are the norm in the world of animal training. It is standard practice to beat, shock and whip animals to make them perform over and over again, tricks that make no sense to them. Trainers drug some animals to make them "manageable" and remove the teeth and claws from others.

Bears have their noses broken and their paws burned to "teach" them to walk on their hind legs. Elephants are controlled by the use of bullhooks on the sensitive areas of their skin, such as around their eyes, behind their knees and ears, vagina, mouth and anus.

Training is based on fear, pain and intimidation. Trainers "must" break the spirit of the animals in order to control them. It is not uncommon for an elephant to be tied down and beaten for days at a time while being trained to "perform".
The circus industry itself refers to training measures as "make’em or break’em" procedures. Elephants "breaking" process can take six-month and by the end of it the elephants lose all will to fight back.

Circus animals are becoming zombies, obeying only to avoid more brutal punishment. Starvation, thirst, drugs, hot irons, spikes, goads, fire, bullhooks, muzzles, steel-lined whips, steel forks, electric shocks, spiked collars and other violent tools force the animals to 'act' no matter how they feel. Whips are visible in the ring but the use of screws hidden in the base of walking sticks, spikes hidden in tasseled sticks, sticks and electric shock devices inside a flower bouquet, are not.

Besides punishment, neglect, and deprivation are "training" tools. The animals have no access to food and water until they perform.

Because these animals have been conditioned by violent training sessions, they know that refusal to obey in the ring will result in severe punishment later. Moments before entering the ring, while still out of public view, trainers may painfully beat the elephants to remind them who’s in control and to ensure that the elephants perform the specified tricks on command.

Constant Servitude

Many circus animals are killed or abandoned when they become too old or ill to perform. Alternatively, they will be sold on to other circuses, private exotic animal collections and even to laboratories for research.
When big cats can no longer perform, they are often sold to the highest bidder. This means they are sold to taxidermists, canned hunt businesses, and illegal animal parts traders.
Generally the lives of animals exploited in circus, end in reclusion, under coercion and in misery.

Circuses are not one of the abusive industries that animal liberation activists focus on and for many understandable reasons. However the circus is one of the most speciesist enterprises in the sense of exemplifying humans’ control and dominance over the biggest and most powerful animals that live today. It is also extremely speciesist and characteristic of humans in the sense of animals being tortured all their lives for humans to enjoy for a tiny and extremely insignificant part of their lives. For the animals, life in the circus is a monotonous and brutal routine of boredom, stress and pain day after day after day. For humans it is fun for about half a day.

Many activists argue that nothing real can be learned from such unnatural actions. But children are learning a very important lesion from visiting the circus, that it is their world, for their amusement and no matter the price for others.

Every intelligent person knows that circuses are cruel. It is not very difficult to figure that one out. The problem is not of knowledge but of compassion.

Humans don’t go to the circus because lack of knowledge about circus’ cruelty or about animals in general. They don’t go to the circus to learn about wild animals. They go to be amused by them. By the salvers of entertainment. Children may go to see animals but the parents who take them know there is nothing natural and wild about the acts of animals in the circus, they are taking their children and themselves to be entertained and don’t care what their children are learning about animals’ true nature. What they do learn is speciesism. They learn from a very young age and from first hand that animals exist to entertain them. They also learn that it is human world. They control it and so the bigger and scarier are the animals the bigger and dipper their control and dominance.

Along with Zoos, Circuses and are probably the "best" lessons about speciesism.
By promoting this exploitation and cruelty, humans teach their children that the domination over other beings should be unquestionably accepted as a cultural norm.

Circuses teach humans that they can use sentients as means to their ends.
They teach humans that it is o.k. to take absolutely everything from someone in order to provide entertainment to someone else.