You may recognize wildlife expert Coyote Peterson from his Brave Wilderness YouTube channel, best known for the videos of outlandish and often times dangerous stunts he performs for the sake of “education” — such as getting bitten by a leafcutter ant, being “eaten alive” by leeches, stung by the ominous-sounding tarantula hawk, and vomiting profusely after eating something called “puke fruit,” to name a few.
Peterson’s latest stunt involves the common snapping turtle, a creature with jaws so sharp and strong it can tear through flesh and snap bone. So naturally, he decided to let one bite him! To avoid having his hand completely ripped apart, Peterson employed the use of a dowel rod to create a barrier between the beak of the turtle and its ability to scissor its jaws, which should tell you everything you need to know about the safety of this stunt.
Supposedly the reason for letting a snapping turtle take his hand to the “chomp zone” was to demonstrate to viewers how to get one to let go if bitten; methods that include dumping a bottle of water on the turtle’s face, submerging it in water, or putting rubbing alcohol in its mouth, should anyone be lucky enough to have these resources nearby or on hand.
So it sounds like he’s got this experiment completely under control, here, and it definitely won’t be a comedy of errors, right? Ha ha ha ha. Here are actual quotes from the video immediately following the snapping turtle latching onto his hand:
“He missed the wood! This is bad!”
“Just lightly drip that onto the top of his head … AH, AH, AH, he’s biting down harder, he’s biting down harder! That’s not working!”
“To lift him up and get him into the water is going to be extremely painful.”
Eventually they were able to use the rubbing alcohol method to finally get Mr. Snappy to let go while Peterson still had most of his hand intact. One would hope he learned his lesson from this, but something tells me it won’t be the last time this man screams in agony for your entertainment.