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  3. We have known the elephants, the greatest land mammal of them all—highly sensitive, intelligent, family-oriented, big-toothed cr

We have known the elephants, the greatest land mammal of them all—highly sensitive, intelligent, family-oriented, big-toothed cr

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问题     We have known the elephants, the greatest land mammal of them all—highly sensitive, intelligent, family-oriented, big-toothed creatures—for a very long time, and they have known us. It has been a tortuous relationship, and one that is still evolving. 【F1】We have looked up to elephants as gods, but killed them for their ivory, and captured and enslaved them to be our beasts of burden in work and war, and for our entertainment.
    Earlier this month, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced that it had decided to phase elephants out of its public spectacles, retiring its remaining forty-three working elephants to a park it owns in Florida, where twenty-nine elephants already live. 【F2】The decision follows years of pressure from animal-rights groups, and is part of a trend that has been gathering strength for years. Most other circuses in the United States and Western Europe have stopped using the animals because the routine use of prods, cages, and chains, both to transport elephants and to force their obedience, has come to be seen by growing numbers of people, including circus goers, as cruel.
    The Ringling news is striking. 【F3】In our gradual awakening to the idea that we must protect the elephant from enslavement and cruelty, it may be possible to hear echoes of other dawnings of conscience. As someone born at a time of widespread consensus that human slavery was one of history’s most despicable and shameful practices, 【F4】I’ve always been intrigued by the realization that, during the life of my great-great-grandfather, there were a significant number of otherwise intelligent and sensitive white Americans and Europeans who apparently did not see it that way.
    And then I recall the excitement that I felt at going to the circus as a child. There were at least flashes of discomfort when I watched as trainers used prods to make elephants hold each other’s tails with their trunks and sway back and forth to music, or shouted commands for them to kneel, to put their bottoms in the air. But, in the end, 【F5】the spectacle, the noisy excitement of the crowds, and the presence of grownups all signaled an acceptance of things as they were, and one’s awareness of the elephants’ humiliation became somehow less acute. As an adult, it has been easier to perceive the treatment of circus elephants for what it is cruel.  
【F4】
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答案我一直对一个问题感到很好奇，那就是，我发觉，在我高曾祖父生活的时代，为数众多的美国白人和欧洲白人聪慧而又善解人意，却唯独在这件事情上明显不这样认为。
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