RENE CASSELLY JR: They’re like my family and my pet as well. I grew up with them, I
don’t know anything else, they’re like my brother and my sisters.
RENE CASSELLY JR: I like to go in the pools
with the elephants, swimming together with them; I have like really close relationship
with them and also think that’s what allowed me to do the stunts what I do.
RENE CASSELLY JR: My act with the elephants
is like a unique act. I’m the only one in the world doing the combination between tumbling
and working together with elephants.
COMM: 20-year-old Rene Casselly Jr. is a 7th generation animal trainer and has grown up
with his five African elephants. Currently, in his fourth year performing for the National
Hungarian Circus, he insists that his elephants aren’t made to do anything they don’t
want to do.
RENE CASSELLY JR: Elephants are really smart beings and they learn really fast. You have
to see the talent what the elephant has already when he is young. You can’t teach him anything
that he doesn’t really have the initial talent for.
COMM: Online videos of his acrobatic tricks
with the elephants have garnered both admiration and criticism. Rene explains how he has trained
his animals.
RENE CASSELLY JR: The only thing you can get elephant with is food. You know, they need a lot of food.
They love to eat. There are bananas, apples, watermelons, strawberries,
everything. When the elephant once knows what to do, then he likes to do it. Because then
he knows, oh if I do this right, I get more food. So, this is the only way to do it.
RENE CASSELLY JR: I don’t do any negative
enforcement. The only thing I do is natural treatments. You can see that my elephants
are happy, they are calm, they’re not forced to do anything and I think that’s also the
best way to do it and it should be the only way to do it.
COMM: Rene claims that the conditions for
the elephants are paramount, when it comes to choosing the circuses, he would work for.
RENE CASSELLY JR: Like this is how it’s
always is and it’s also how it should be. I mean, it shouldn’t be on a stone place
or an asphalt place; that’s not how you treat an elephant. Every circus place, every
circus ground we have is like this: with the grass and with the trees and it’s also how
it should be. Every circus who hires elephants or animals like us, they know that they can’t
hire them if it doesn’t give you the good treatments and the good places.
RENE CASSELLY JR: Of course, there is always
positive reactions and negative reactions. But negative reactions is because I think
the people doesn’t know really how the people are treating. I mean here, there is nothing
negative to say, there is just positive I mean the elephants are happy; they have the
mud bath, they have everything they need and that’s what we’re trying to show us to
people is that animals and elephants can have a good life in a circus too.
RENE CASSELLY JR: I shower every elephant
with a water pipe and a brush and the shampoo and yeah, and after that they are here on
the fields all day.
RENE CASSELLY JR: If we have a show then five minutes before the show, I take them to the
circus, they do a little routine for six minutes and then they come back to the fields.
They’re loose all day, all night; doesn’t need to tie them or anything.