• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, December 4, 2014

Here’s something we can do for imperiled species everywhere: Stop bothering them. 

A snake maven named Paul Rosolie is now the latest in a long line of naturalists who have decided that the best way to call attention to the plight of endangered species is to disturb their peace. In Rosolie’s case, the species in question is the giant green anaconda, which lives deep in the Amazonian jungle and is considered to be the largest, strongest predatory serpent on Earth.

So for the snake’s own good, Rosolie supposedly allowed himself to be “swallowed” by one of these gape-mouthed creatures for a TV special airing this weekend called “Eaten Alive” (Sunday night at 9 Eastern/8 Central on Discovery Channel).

“I wanted to do something that would absolutely shock people,” Rosolie told the New York Post this week. “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.” He said the dire straits in which these anacondas are now living call for “desperate measures.”

This “Eaten Alive” special was filmed last summer during a 60-day expedition into the Amazonian rainforest to the habitat of this elusive reptile. There, Rosolie reportedly donned a specially constructed protective body suit of some sort and paid a visit to the belly of the beast. Or so it was reported in various stories that came out when this special was first announced last month. 

The stories gave the impression that Rosolie was swallowed whole, implying that viewers would see him literally disappear into the body of the great constrictor, to be seen then as only a giant bulge forging a passage through the creature’s innards.

It turns out that this “swallowing” was probably not “whole.” There are now indications that anyone tuning in on Sunday expecting to see Rosolie and his minicam sending video to the outside world from inside a snake are going to be disappointed.  Maybe the snake swallows a foot or the better part of a leg or Rosolie’s body clear up to his waist -- I don’t really know. But I do know this: We’ll never know what this snake felt about being involuntarily recruited for this made-for-television stunt.

Discovery has taken great pains to emphasize that the snake was not harmed physically in any way by this apparently partial swallowing. The emotional damage this snake may have suffered, if any, has not been addressed, but at least it didn’t end up killing Rosolie, who is very much alive.

That wasn’t the case for Steve Irwin, the famed television “Croc Hunter” who was killed by a stingray in 2006 after he decided to have some playful fun with it during the filming of one of his TV shows. The ray apparently didn’t think it was fun, and fatally stung him.

Another famed animal maven, grizzly bear expert Timothy Treadwell, lived among a group of grizzly bears in Alaska for 13 years until one of them killed him in 2003.

Another man who lived with a pack of animals was Shaun Ellis, an Englishman who shacked up with a group of wolves in an English zoo. His antics were the subject of a National Geographic Channel special in 2007 and an Animal Planet series in 2008.  Fortunately, he was not harmed by the wolves, but his wife left him. If you watched any of these shows, which detailed the lengths this guy would go in his quest for intimacy with his furry adopted family, you could understand why.

The most ludicrous of all these “animal intervention” stunts was one staged by another naturalist, Brady Barr, for a NatGeo series in 2007 called “Dangerous Encounters,” in which Barr wore a crocodile costume made of Kevlar so he could slither in among a group of African crocodiles to observe them up close. He came to no harm either, probably because these crocs must have found his costume to be so hilarious that they didn’t have the heart to eat him.

Let the record show that I am all for the preservation of endangered species.  I just wish there was some other way to preserve them than disrupting their lives with human antics – whether deadly or just plain silly – that these animals cannot possibly understand.

“Eaten Alive” airs Sunday night (Dec. 7) at 9 Eastern/8 Central on Discovery Channel.

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