Most circuses take very good care of their animals. Beating an animal to teach them a trick doesn’t really makes sense. If an animal does a trick and you beat it, you’ve actually taught the animal not to do the trick because it will associate the the trick with pain and will not do it. If you beat an animal because it doesn’t do a trick it still doesn’t teach the animal to do the trick. The animal still doesn’t know what it didn’t do. And then that teaches the animal to be generally afraid/have hatred towards the trainer because they associate the trainer with with pain which in effect would prevent them from being able to work together in the future.

Take care,
Logan