Inhumane Factor
Contestants made to carry snakes in their mouths, risking injury to the animal unnecessarily
Today’s television entertainment industry is pulling out all of the stops to keep your eyes glued to the television set. Between ‘reality’ TV series (which are often as far separated from reality as you’re going to get) and music competitions, to shows containing games of skill to shows that play upon your fears such as one called Fear Factor. Fear Factor has always had some questionable tasks that their contestants must face to get to the next ‘challenge’. Often, they are required to eat items such as brains of cows and other farm animals, eyeballs, and other organs. Sometimes, they take the next step up and use real live insects which the contestants must consume. Recently, they had live scorpions that were eaten and ripped apart for consumption. This alone questions the moral boundaries of the show, but most people can deal with it.
On January 2nd 2012, NBC aired another episode of Fear Factor, where the contestants had to face a fear of snakes. We’ve all seen it before, someone sits in a tub and dozens and dozens of snakes are dumped on top of them and they have to last a predetermined amount of time. However, this episode was a bit different. One contestant would lie down in the tub, wherein an assortment of snakes would be dumped on top of them. In this particular case, reticulated pythons, ball pythons, and common boa constrictors of assorted sizes were included. Before the first pair of contestants began, it was mentioned that inside the container was a total of 500 snakes.
“500” snakes being jam-packed on top of each other
Five hundred snakes cramped into one location, all of them piled on top of each other is quite unhealthy and highly stressful for these animals. There are some species that can be quite content being close to other snakes and even in large numbers (especially during hibernation periods). However, for most species, especially pythons and boa constrictors, this is not the case. It is very stressful for pythons and boas to be housed too close together, much less piled on top of each other by several hundred specimens. Excessive numbers of these animals piled on top of each other, results in low oxygen quality for those who are stuck at the bottom of the pile. Furthermore, they had a mixture of multiple species (Reticulated python, Ball pythons, and Common Boa Constrictors) intermingled. Each of these species occupies different habitats in different parts of the world. Never would these species even come close to having overlapping habitat ranges. This creates even greater stress and depending on whether these animals were captive bred or if wild-caught and imported, there could be risk of pathogen and parasite transmission among them as well.
The next issue that comes to mind is the handling methods. To be fair, Fear Factor had posted on their Twitter page (which will be addressed below) what they consider to be adequate precautions to ensure the well being of the animals. Further, we can even take into account that the hosts of Fear Factor and the network, NBC, that owns the show are not animal experts and rely on those whom they feel are experts to provide them with sound advice that helps them meet their goals of the show.
“Contestants were specially fit with invisible retainers to protect the snakes from their teeth.”- Fear Factor via Twitter on 1/2/2012
It can be applauded that they seemingly had the physical well being of the snakes in mind (even if the above mentioned issues were neglected). However, retainers or no retainers, jaw pressure is a little difficult to gauge. Especially when the idea behind your show is to play upon the fears of your contestants, a retainer is very limited in its protection and comfort for the animals. Pressure being applied excessively can result in easily broken ribs, and that is even with the ‘protection’ of a rubber retainer. They have to keep in mind, that they trust these animals within the mouths of people who fear them in the first place. A movement made by the snake that made one suddenly even more uncomfortable could lead to a mistake injuring the animal unnecessarily. When a responsible handler is handling their animal, body weight is supported completely. Hands are used with gauged grips to keep the animal secure, yet not too rigidly restrained (which upsets the snakes).
“Over 300 snakes were used on the stunt and had to be taken out of the coffin each time so they didn’t overheat or get stressed out.”- Fear Factor via Twitter on 1/2/2012
Again, we can applaud their efforts to concern themselves with the well being of the animals. However, here are some more issues. The overheating is a reasonable concern and it’s great that they took that into consideration. However, in the case of their concern about “stress”, they failed miserably. First, the very conditions in which they are initially housed in from the start are stressful to the animals. Being shuffled around, picked up with a firm grip in some other creature’s mouth (predation concern) is stressful. Being tossed about as they are being moved from one box to the other in rapid succession (snakes don’t enjoy sudden movements very much) and then dropped is stressful. Follow that up with the constant removal and reshuffling them into new compartments to start the process all over again and you’ve established an environment that is highly stressful and actually increases risks to the snake’s health dramatically.
The above said, it is important to keep in mind that Fear Factor is not solely responsible in this situation. Fear Factor does not stock snakes or breed them for the sake of people’s entertainment. Instead, they search for breeders or dealers that are relatively local that can supply them with the animals for their shows. One has proudly taken credit for their involvement:
Reptile Island, based in California, is owned by Chris Giacoletti. This breeder/dealer has chosen money as his driving factor and has sold out the very animals that have supported his business and lifestyle and kept a roof over his head. The very animals that many of us are striving to get the public to understand and have some appreciation for, he has decided that all of this is not worth it and has thrown his fellow community members under the bus. It seems that breeders and dealers like this particular company have decided that our community has not had enough torment on the public stage and from animal rights organizations who feel already that keeping these animals in captivity in the first place is inhumane and needs to be stopped. They believe this so intently that they are pushing for federal regulations and bans on even 2 species that this particular individual used for his stunts, the reticulated python (Python reticulatus) and the Boa constrictors (Boa constrictor imperator). These are the bad apples in the herpetological community that we need to weed out by showing them that enough is enough.
It is time that we stand up and take our community back and stop allowing big television networks such as NBC with their show Fear Factor, Animal Planet with their plethora of horrid shows, and any others that are discovered, that the herpetological community has had enough of the sensationalism and blatant lies about the animals about which we are passionate and work so hard to educate the public on. It is time that we step up and respond to these individuals and entities and let them know that their behaviors and actions will no longer be tolerated.
Below is contact information for NBC as well as the contact information for Chris Giacoletti of Reptile Island, based in California. However, I urge you all to be respectful in your approaches to these entities and work to change things for the better and demonstrate that we *DO* care about our animals, their well being, as well as how they (and we) are represented.
Contacts:
Reptile Island
3960 Prospect Avenue, Yorba Linda, CA 92886
(714) 524-8442
Chris Giacoletti, owner
For NBC, please see their website at : http://www.nbc.com/contact/general/