The
American naturalist who filmed himself getting eaten by an anaconda for a
highly-anticipated television event has spoken out about what inspired
him to take part in the risky stunt.
This past
summer, Rosolie donned a special suit to let a 25-foot 400-pound snake
eat him in a dangerous performance set to air on Discovery Channel this
Sunday. Overall, Rosolie was so confident in the suit’s design that he
was more worried about the snake’s safety than his own.
‘I didn’t
want to stress [the snake] out too much. I wanted to make sure that the
suit was smooth and wasn’t going to hurt the snake,’ Rosolie said. ‘ I
really wasn’t scared. We tested this suit and worked on this with
experts so we knew I was going to be safe.’
Amid a
backlash from animal rights activists who believe the anaconda was
tortured by being forced to eat Rosolie, a man much bigger than its
usual prey, Rosolie has responded to say the snake was unharmed and that
the experiment was designed to raise money to save the animal’s
habitat.
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Eaten alive: Paul Rosolie filmed himself getting
eaten by an anaconda last summer, and the stunt will air this Sunday on
Discovery Channel. Rosolie pictured above with an anaconda in
promotional pictures for the event. None of the following pictures show
the anaconda used in the stunt
Good cause: Rosolie says he participated in the
risky act in order to raise awareness of the anaconda’s habitat, which
is being encroached on by gold mining
‘I wanted to do something that would absolutely shock people,’ Rosolie told the New York Post.
‘Environmentalists, we love to preach to the choir. What I’m trying to
do with this is bring in a bunch of people that wouldn’t necessarily
know what’s going on in the Amazon.’
Fundrasier: The special to air Sunday will reportedly advertise a fundraiser to save the snake’s habitat
‘For the type
of attention that this is getting and for the type of emergency that’s
going on down there — desperate times, desperate measures.’
‘Once they
see the show, these are people who are going to be supporters’ he said.
‘It’s a cool little dissonance there — they’re all coming out against
me, but I’m the guy that’s been down there in the jungle trying to
protect these things.’
Rosolie, a
New Jersey native who first visited the Amazon at age 18, spent 60 days
hiking through the rain forest in Peru with a team of about a dozen
people searching for the right anaconda to take part in the stunt.
In the
process, the team also started the first scientific study of anacondas
in the wild, taking down the weight, length and sex of each snake they
came across. They also took samples of their skin to test for mercury, a
by-product of the gold-mining industry which is encroaching on the
creature’s habitat. The special on Sunday will be promoting a fundraiser
to raise money to save the snake’s habitat.
The
naturalist and his crew had nearly run out of the time allotted by the
Discovery Channel when they finally tracked down a female green anaconda
that Rosolie first spotted in 2008.
He says it
took 12 people fighting in water above their heads to catch the 25-foot
400-500 pound anaconda, adding that herpetologists were on site to make
sure the snake was in good health throughout its short captivity.