Last night, millions of viewers tuned in to witness a once prestigious network dedicated to science, education and exploration of the natural world, essentially become the annoying clickbait of cable TV. As the title (and promos leading up to the program) suggested, Discovery Channel’s special Eaten Alive would feature a brave snake expert don a custom super suit and be ingested by an Amazonian anaconda. But first, the team would have to embark on a jungle adventure to find the hungry beast. Even though real animal experts called this cruelty, host Paul Rosolie claimed that this was all being done in an effort to somehow save the rainforest.
It went about as poorly as it could have gone, which is saying something. First, the team just decided to give up looking for the actual monster snake they were out to find, because, well, they were super lame. Then, an hour and 45 minutes into the two-hour tease, Rosolie provoked a slightly less monstrous anaconda, who squeezed him for a few minutes until he tapped out, saying the pressure was just too much, snake-proof suit or no snake-proof suit. In all, about an inch of his suit of armor was “eaten.” As you might expect, Twitter users did not act kindly to being duped into have their own Sunday nights eaten alive (as this Reddit user quipped). After tricking real scientists, making Shark Week a joke with fake documentaries about dino-sharks and presumably failing to save the rainforest, should we really be surprised? We just got Megaladonned …
