‘Exploiting Animals is MediEVIL’: PETA’s ‘Beaten Elephant’ to Protest Renaissance Festival

For Immediate Release:
October 15, 2026

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

This Saturday, a life-sized “battered elephant” and PETA supporters will rally at the entrance to the Texas Renaissance Festival to remind gentlefolk that beating, chaining, and exploiting elephants for rides must be relegated to the history books. Trunks and Humps—the festival’s notorious exhibitor that offers elephant rides—has a long history of endangering animals and the public, and PETA urges festivalgoers to demand that elephant acts be banned.

“Elephants are social, thinking, and feeling individuals, yet the ones dragged to the fair—denied all that is important to them, including freedom and habitat—are poked, prodded, and threatened with sharp, steel-tipped bullhooks to keep them under control,” says PETA Foundation Managing Director of Captive Wildlife Debbie Metzler. “PETA is calling on the public not to get taken for a ride and on the Texas Renaissance Festival to end these shameful, cruel spectacles.”

Where:           Texas Renaissance Festival, 21997 FM 1774, Plantersville, TX 77363 (at the intersection of Ren Fest Drive, near the entrance to the Texas Renaissance Festival)

When:            Saturday, October 17, 12 noon

Why:              At this summer’s Texas GOP convention, a Trunks and Humps handler was seen yanking Paige—an elephant now being used at the Texas Renaissance Festival—with a bullhook. Trunks and Humps also has a decades-long history of federal Animal Welfare Act violations, including a critical citation last year after a camel kicked a woman in the head at a church Nativity event, apparently knocking her unconscious.

In nature, elephants spend their days socializing, swimming, browsing, and playing, but those used at fairs can spend much of their lives in shackles. They’re chained in trailers, hauled from event to event, and sometimes forced to stand on concrete for long periods. They routinely suffer from painful, debilitating joint and foot problems and may sway endlessly—a sign of psychological distress.

PETA encourages everyone to help end elephants’ suffering by urging the Texas Renaissance Festival to end cruel elephant rides.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—points out that when it comes to the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, an elephant is a dog is a boy. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.