If petitioners have their way, the man-eaten-by-a-snake stunt may get pulled before being aired.
Remember that time there was a gas leak and you began hallucinating that the Discovery Channel was a producing a show that would feature a man being eaten alive by a snake?
Well, good news and bad news. The good news is, you weren't actually being poisoned by a gas leak. Hopefully. To be safe, open a window.
The bad news is you also weren't hallucinating.
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The show is appropriately called Eaten Alive, and the man who is set to be an anaconda buffet is "snake whisperer" Paul Rosolie. Paul will apparently be wearing a snake-proof suit and, according to the sneak peek Discovery aired earlier this month, the suit looks like a cross between bomb disposal gear and futuristic soldier armor in a sci-fi film.
As you might imagine, this hasn't gone over super well with PETA, or really anyone who likes animals. Detractors of the planned freak show-like spectacle have taken to Change.org to start a petition in hopes of convincing Discovery to pull the plug on this fever dream of a TV show.
The petition has already amassed over 27,600 signatures in a little under a week, but Discovery has yet to respond to such protests.
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"This is animal abuse to the highest degree and absolutely disgusting," writes Ben Paramonte, who started the petition. "And [it] could kill the snake -- an adult green anaconda cannot fit the width of an adult man's shoulders into its body."
Rosolie responded to the claims made in the petition's mission statement, pertaining to the danger the stunt poses to the anaconda, by tweeting out a photo of an anaconda eating a whole cow.
He tweeted: "Paul says: Anacondas stretch a lot. This 1 is eating a cow - an animal much bigger than me! #EatenAlive @Discovery."
Paul says: Anacondas stretch a lot. This 1 is eating a cow - an animal much bigger than me! #EatenAlive @Discovery pic.twitter.com/lUQ9rSYbNt
— Paul Rosolie (@PaulRosolie) November 11, 2014The next mystery is why Rosolie would refer to himself in the third person in his tweets. Maybe someone's tweeting for him while he's busy spending time inside different animals? Also, are there people who don't understand how big a cow is in relation to an adult male?
On his website, Rosolie also wrote: "All I can tell you now is that all my work is based around the fact that wildlife and ecosystems today, across the globe, are at a critical moment. No group of animals so much so as apex predators. From sharks, to tigers, to anacondas – across the globe the biggest and baddest, some of the most iconic creatures on our planet are vanishing because of us. The snakes that I work with are under threat from hunting and habitat destruction, and need help. Anacondas are a major player in the Amazon ecosystem that provides 1/5 of our planet’s oxygen and contains 1/5 of the planets fresh water."
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That all being said, he does not go on to explain how crawling inside of a giant snake while pretending to be food sheds any light at all on the plight of apex predators.
If you do have the morbid desire to watch a man get Eaten Alive, the show airs December 7 on Discovery, unless the network chooses to heed the wishes of those who signed the petition.
In which case, we may never know what it looks like when a full-grown adult gets consumed by an anaconda.
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Speaking of anacondas (you had to know we would end up here, right?), Nicki Minaj had her biggest hit of the year with the controversial, sexy music video for her song "Anaconda." Check it out below and get the deets on Nicki's revealing, NSFW video.
You can follow Zach Seemayer on Twitter @ZachSeemayer.
