Ever since Discovery announced that they were producing a one hour special called Eaten Alive, airing this Sunday, December 7th, which will feature a man wearing some kind of special suit getting swallowed by an anaconda — reactions have been varied. Animal rights people have been predictably flipping the f*ck out over it, even though the network swears that the snake wasn’t harmed in the filming. But most of us are just confused as to the two main components here: what exactly does being “eaten alive” entail, as in, how does one survive such an ordeal; and how do they get the guy back out of the snake afterward?
Compelling questions, for sure. Well, Paul Rosolie, the “eatee,” has given an interview with Entertainment Weekly and although he can’t say too much about the super secret special, the man who is now being dubbed as “the Hitler of animals” (LOL) revealed enough info that at least we can sort of make sense of all of this.
First up, despite the snake’s best attempts, Rosolie did not in fact, get crushed by the snake:
My understanding is there was a lot of wrestling with you and the snake — like, she tried to crush you several times.
The snake did not want want to eat me, at first. She wasn’t interested. But once I showed myself as a predator and she got spooked, then she defended herself. She nailed me right in the face and the last thing I saw was her mouth wide open before everything went black. And then she wrapped me and I felt the suit cracking and my arms ripping out of their sockets. It was absolutely terrifying.So how long did that go on?
It was over an hour. Once they have you, they do not let go.
The burning question of how they got him back out is sort of finally answered, even though now it seems like kind of a cop-out:
Now Discovery has been vague about how far you get inside the snake. How far do you get?
I am actually not allowed to say anything. I can tell you that the thing beat the sh*t out of me and constricted me. As for as actual consumption went, I’m not allowed to say.So hypothetically, once you got entirely inside a snake, what would you have done in there?
I’m being careful how much I’m saying here, but the plan was once she got to my waist, they’d pull me back out — that’s partly for my safety, partly for the snake’s. Because once she got past my waist it would be difficult for me to get pulled out.
But in the end it was all about protecting the snake:
Personally, once my head is beyond a snake’s mouth, I’d feel eaten.
Yeah, that was everybody’s benchmark — if your head goes in, that’s a major success. Some were like, “You gotta let it go to your ankles!” I didn’t want to rip my whole body out of the snake. I was trying to protect myself and the snake.What happened to this particular snake?
Alive and well. Trust me, I’m much worse off. She beat the shit out of me.
Rosolie claims that his motivation for getting eaten by a snake, which he’s wanted to do for two years now, is to raise awareness for the disappearing Amazon. So sure, dude. You’ve certainly got our attention now. Maybe the next hard hitting Discovery Channel special can be about a man who walks around with 200 old Nokia cellphones strapped to his body to give himself cancer only to have scientists somehow miraculously pull the cancer out at the last minute, to raise awareness for cancer. It probably still wouldn’t be the dumbest thing to happen on that network.
