Riccardo
Riccardo, an 8-month-old baby elephant, was destroyed on August 5, 2004, after suffering severe and irreparable fractures to both hind legs when he fell off a circus pedestal at Ringling’s breeding and training compound in Florida. Riccardo was undersized when he was born to Ringling’s elephant Shirley.
Failing to wait until Shirley was 18, when she would have been a more capable mother, Ringling used Shirley for breeding when she was only 7 years old. Riccardo was afflicted with metabolic bone disease, likely caused by malnourishment, since his mother was unable to nurse him. Elephant calves who are weaned or separated from their mother at an early age often start showing symptoms of bone disorders and seldom survive.

With five other elephants born at Ringling since 2001, circus personnel should have been able to find a nursing mother to adopt Riccardo. But Ringling routinely pulls unweaned infants from their mothers, so these five mothers were probably no longer producing milk.

Riccardo was apparently engaged in a training exercise when he fell. Being forced to perform hind-leg stands or other physically difficult circus tricks would have further stressed his already fragile bones and may have contributed to his fall from a dangerously high platform that ultimately proved fatal.


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