A circus trainer almost met his end in front of a live audience when a performing bear turned on him during a show in front of hundreds of children and parents.
“Towards the end of the act, the bear snapped at Sergei and wrestled with him,” Nikita Mikhailov, head of the Moretti Circus, told reporters after the incident. “Their performance continued.”
The female brown bear, named Donut and weighing around 490 pounds, was riding a hoverboard when she suddenly turned and jumped at her trainer, Sergei Prichinich, at the circus in Russia.
Donut pinned Prichinich to the ground and snapped at him for about half a minute before a worker outside the cage prodded the bear and allowed the trainer to get back to his feet.
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Mikhailov noted that the tamer “waited for the bear to calm down, got up, continued the routine with her, sealed it with a kiss, and that was it – the show continued as usual,” according to East2West.
In video footage released on Telegram and obtained by the media, the bear gnawed at a stick that the trainer held up to protect himself, and once the worker prodded her, she lost all aggression and walked away from him.
Mikhailov praised Prichinich for not losing his cool and allowing Donut to let out her aggression.
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“This is an animal, and they can behave differently, they may not like something, they can express their emotions this way,” Mikhailov said. “Every trainer understands this.”
Russian animal rights campaigner Yuri Koretskikh noted that while the incident ended safely, it could have gone awry, and he called for a ban on live animal performances.
“While modern world circus art is rapidly moving towards humanity, banning the use of animals in circuses, the Russian circus lobby is actively resisting progress, defending its commercial interests,” Koretskikh said.
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Russia has struggled with animal rights as a high-profile issue in recent years, leading Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018 to sign a bill banning all forms of animal cruelty, according to TASS.
The law, however, did not cover animal performances, which have remained a focus for animal rights activists.
The Russian governing body, the Duma in 2023 proposed a bill that would ban the use of circus animals in the country, with the bill moving to the lower chamber in October, according to Russian outlet Vet and Life.
Alexey Nechaev and Vladislav Davankov, the co-authors of the bill, stressed the desire to “protect the lives and welfare of animals involved in circus performances,” citing examples of more extreme animal abuse in circuses.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office in 2022 published a report that found 116 cases of illegal use and 48 cases of animal cruelty in a review of over 500 animal shelters.