US Circus Holds Final Performing Elephant Show

One of America's biggest circuses has held its final shows using performing elephants, ending a practice that is more than 130 years old.

Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus will no longer use elephants because of changing public attitudes and a campaign by animal rights activists.

Six Asian elephants danced on platforms, sat on their hind legs and balanced on each others' backs during a show in Providence, Rhode Island.

"This is a very emotional time for us," ringmaster Johnathan Lee Iverson told the crowd as he paid tribute to the elephants' years of service.

"We love our girls," he said.

"Thank you so much for so many years of joy ... That's history tonight there, ladies and gentlemen, true American icons."

PT Barnum added the African elephant Jumbo to his circus in 1882, but Hackaliah Bailey added an elephant to his show in the early 1800s.

Five elephants also performed for the last time on Sunday at a Ringling Brothers show in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.

The animals will now live at its 200-acre Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida.

Its 40 Asian elephants - the biggest in North America - will be a part of a breeding programme and a cancer research project.

But animal protection group the Humane Society has called for elephants to be retired to one of two larger 2,000-acre sanctuaries in California and Tennessee.

More than a dozen circuses in the US still use elephants, according to the Humane Society, but Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey is the most famous and tours most widely.

Ringling has said it will still use other animals in its shows, such as horses, lions, tigers and dogs.

The end of performing elephants at the famous circus comes a month after Sea World announced the end of live killer whale shows and its breeding programme.