In his nearly 10 years studying anacondas in the Amazon, researcher and conservationist Paul Rosolie, 27, has faced his share of danger. The giant reptile is known to grow to up to 30 feet in length — and strikes its prey using its teeth and powerful jaws before crushing it with its massive body. Rosolie has been bitten by one of the snakes and seized by one in a chokehold — suffering a broken rib and a nearly popped collarbone before five people were able to pry it off him.
But none of that compares to what he endured in his first TV special, “Eaten Alive,” which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on Discovery Channel and documents Rosolie’s attempt to get ingested by a giant green anaconda — all in the name of bringing attention to the rapid destruction of the Amazon and, of course, spiking TV ratings.
“I wanted to do something that would absolutely shock people,” says Rosolie, who is tall, dark-haired, bearded and well-spoken when it comes to his passion for the rain forest. “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.
“For the type of attention that this is getting and for the type of emergency that’s going on down there — desperate times, desperate measures.”
News of the stunt swiftly went viral: A Google search for “Paul Rosolie Eaten Alive” turns up more than 250,000 results. The project has also spurred much backlash from animal rights activists — Rosolie has even received death threats — but he believes those fears will be quelled once the special airs. (Discovery has said that the snake is alive and healthy.)
“Once they see the show, these are people who are going to be supporters,” he says. “It’s a cool little dissonance there — they’re all coming out against me, but I’m the guy that’s been down there in the jungle trying to protect these things.”
A native of Wyckoff, NJ, Rosolie grew up fascinated by wildlife but hated sitting in classrooms, so at 16 he dropped out of high school in favor of saving up money to visit the Amazon. He got his GED, started studying environmental science at Ramapo College in New Jersey and, at 18, landed a research position in the Madre de Dios region of Peru.
“He was not the most traditional student, because he was always disappearing to the Amazon,” says Michael Edelstein, an environmental psychology professor at Ramapo who taught Rosolie. “This is someone who has risked his life many times, and who has a genuine sense of being an explorer and discovering things and going into situations one doesn’t know how will end. There’s a sense of pure wonder about him.”
In Peru, Rosolie learned about the Amazon from the indigenous people, which he recounts in his first book, “Mother of God,” published last March. He now splits his time between upstate New York and Bangalore, India (he’s writing a book on tiger migration in the region), and spends half the year in the Amazon jungle — going on long solo journeys or guiding groups from the eco-tourism outfit he runs, Tamandua Expeditions.
Rosolie filmed “Eaten Alive” last summer, when he and a crew of about a dozen spent 60 days hiking and camping in the Peruvian rain forest, looking for snakes in the “floating forest” (the locals’ term for dense vegetation on top of a body of water), the habitat of anacondas.
“You can’t just walk into the Amazon to find one of these things, they’re incredibly hard to find,” Rosolie says. “A lot of the most dangerous stuff that we went through was just while searching for these snakes — we came up against crocodiles, electric eels, huge falling trees, flooding rivers and poachers.”
The team had nearly run out of the time Discovery Channel had allotted for the expedition before they found the anaconda they were looking for — a 25-foot, 400- to 500-pound female that Rosolie first came across when he explored the floating forest in 2008. (Green anacondas have an average life span of 10 years in the wild.)
“I knew this snake was living in this spot, and the females don’t really move around a lot,” he says.
It took 12 people fighting in water over their heads to catch the massive reptile, and herpetologists were on site to ensure the snake was healthy and comfortable during captivity.
To withstand the anaconda’s massive force of constriction (roughly equal to having a school bus on your chest), Rosolie worked with a team of engineers to custom-design a suit made of carbon fiber using a 3-D scan of his body. It’s equipped with a three-hour oxygen supply, communication devices and several cameras. Before Rosolie went into the belly of the beast, he swallowed a high-tech pill that would transmit his vitals in case he fell unconscious.
“The most important thing was oxygen,” he says. “The idea of making it through the constriction, getting swallowed, and then suffocating inside the snake [was] terrible.”
But despite the real risk of death if something went wrong — not to mention his claustrophobia — Rosolie was more worried about the snake’s safety than his own (a sentiment echoed by his wife, Gowri Varanashi, 23, a fellow naturalist who accompanied him on the expedition).
“I didn’t want to stress [the snake] out too much. I wanted to make sure that the suit was smooth and wasn’t going to hurt the snake,” he says. “I really wasn’t scared. We tested this suit and worked on this with experts, so we knew I was going to be safe.”
The suit was doused in pig’s blood to make him smell like the snake’s normal prey of wild pig, then Rosolie imitated the movements of the prey animal, and once the snake grabbed him, he wriggled around and let it crush him — “It didn’t take long,” he says.
Rosolie is prevented from revealing what happened after that — he will only say that the stunt allowed him to feel the true power of the animal.
“Experiencing that kind of power was worth everything, because it was just amazing,” he says.
He hopes that after seeing the special, people will be spurred to action. While filming the TV show, Rosolie launched the first scientific study of anacondas in the Amazon — his team recorded the weight, length, sex and location of each anaconda they found and tested their skin samples for mercury, a byproduct of gold mining in the area. The special will promote a fundraiser to protect their habitat, the floating forest.
As for Rosolie, he has a lot of ideas for his next TV special (though he’s keeping mum on specifics) and sees himself following in the footsteps of one of his childhood idols, “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin — even though the famous nature educator died in support of his work.
“There are definitely risks in working with wildlife, but it’s totally worth it,” Rosolie says. “Today, many of the most iconic and important species we have — like tigers, elephants, rhinos, whales and so many others — are only still alive because people worked to protect them. And they will go extinct unless someone does that job.”
Get the facts about anacondas
What are anacondas really like? We consulted with Frank Indiviglio, a herpetologist and reptile blogger for That Pet Place, who worked at the Bronx Zoo for 21 years.
Where to find them
Usually, anacondas are found in the northern and central parts of South America, in rain forest rivers, swampy areas and, occasionally, grasslands. “They’re just evolved for life around water,” Indiviglio says. “They’re great swimmers.”
Eating those big meals
The jaws don’t actually “unhinge,” as many people think. They remain connected, but an elastic hinge lets the lower jaw widen as the animal is swallowing. The skin is elastic too, allowing it to ingest big prey such as pigs, deer or capybara (the world’s largest rodent, which can weigh as much as a human being). “The skin is sort of like a knit sweater that you’d pull,” he says. “That’s how it walks its way over its prey.”
Size
Though pythons can grow longer, anacondas are — pound for pound — the largest snakes in the world: Females usually range between 12 and 17 feet, but can reach lengths close to 30 feet, and they weigh as much as a half-ton. The smaller males are generally about 10 feet long and much thinner.
Mating
Don’t look up a video of anaconda sex if you’ve got a fear of snakes, because the giant mating ball of as many as 10 males battling to impregnate a female will look like a writhing nightmare machine. Researchers have evidence that anacondas’ sperm may even compete with each other inside the female.
Danger to humans?
Unless you douse yourself in pig’s blood, as Rosolie did, an anaconda isn’t likely to attack you: “They don’t go out of their way to attack people, or even large meals that they can’t handle,” Indiviglio says. “The idea that they’re predators looking for people to eat is not true.”
The only cases of anacondas eating humans have usually been children or thin-shouldered adults whom they can actually swallow.
The suffocation
Some people think the constriction of an anaconda serves to break bones or soften an animal for eating; the real purpose is to suffocate the animal by restricting its breath, says Indiviglio. However, evidence is surfacing that the intense pressure may cause heart or organ failure first, which would kill the prey faster than suffocation, he adds.
Teddy Roosevelt, snake wrangler?
Way back when Teddy Roosevelt was an early supporter of the Bronx Zoo, he started a contest in 1910: $5,000 to anyone who could bring in a snake longer than 30 feet. The Wildlife Conservation Society kept the bet going until 2002 — by then the prize had grown to $50,000 — but no one ever claimed it, Indiviglio says.
— Tim Donnelly