The life of a dancing bear
Over the centuries the ancient tradition of dancing bears in India has caused terrible suffering to thousands of sloth bears poached from the wild as cubs.
Female sloth bears are fiercely protective and mother bears would often be killed while trying to defend their young. The tiny cubs were stuffed into sacks and smuggled to Kalandar settlements to be sold. Many didn't even survive the journey.
The Kalandar tribespeople are some of the poorest people in India and relied for centuries on dancing bears to scrape a living by entertaining the Mughal emperors in the courts. In more recent times the bears were forced to dance on the streets to beg money from tourists.
Training a dancing bear in India
A bear cub's 'training' meant being beaten and starved into submission by his handler and learning to obey him out of fear and pain. At only six months old a red-hot iron needle was forced up through the young bear's nose and driven out through the roof of his muzzle. Then a coarse rope was pulled through the open wound. The agony of the torn and swollen tissue when the rope was jerked soon taught the bear to submit to the Kalandar handler. The bear's claws were cut down to the quick and his canine teeth smashed with a metal rod or a hammer, rendering him completely defenceless. Some bears were given alcohol to subdue them, while young male bears were often crudely castrated.
Abscesses would often form in the gaps in the bear's gums and the weeping wound in his muzzle was likely to become infested with maggots. Wracked with pain and riddled with diseases such as tuberculosis, leptospirosis or rabies, most dancing bears only survived for a few short years on the streets. A number of them also went blind as a result of malnutrition or after beatings to the head.
The dancing bear lived his life at the end of a short rope, trailing along the hot dusty streets or tethered miserably at the roadside. He was unable to express any of the natural behaviour of a wild bear, causing boredom and frustration and often leading to severe stereotypical behaviour.