‘Kings of Pain’ star Adam Thorn lets giant python bite him to see if it hurts
Spoiler alert: It hurts a helluvalot.
Australian wildlife biologist Adam Thorn — of the History channel’s new unscripted series “Kings of Pain” — no doubt intensified the fears of ophidiophobes everywhere after a clip appeared of him getting chomped on the arm by a giant python.
The clip shows the professional pain glutton holding out his arm in front of a 6-foot reticulated python — the world’s longest — lying on a table with two “serpent spotters” on either side. The snake then lunges at lightning speed, biting him just above his elbow and refusing to let go — prompting Thorn’s entourage to cry out in surprise.
“Get if off! Get it off,” Thorn howls as the handler yanks the serpent free, but not before it leaves one of its needle-like teeth in his arm, causing blood to stream. “I’ve got a fang hanging out of me!” says Thorn, who needed stitches after the incident.
His co-host, Rob “The Caveman” Alleva, who was also bitten, required two blood clots to be squeezed out of his arm, the Daily Mail reports. The duo’s clip was uploaded to YouTube, where it spawned a flurry of negative reactions such as “what a pathetic show” and “next time jump in front of a speeding bus.”
The segment is from “Kings of Pain,” the “Jackass”-adjacent animal show on which Thorn and animal handler Alleva get bitten and stung by nature’s most extreme hurt merchants for viewers’ pleasure. The show has featured everything from piranha to the tarantula hawk, a sparrow-sized wasp that paralyzes its arachnid namesake with its sting.
The daredevil duo was inspired by the Schmidt pain index, a four-point scale developed by entomologist Justin Schmidt that rates the relative pain caused by insect stings. The show came up with its own scale that includes 30 pain designations.
Thorn is not the only one engaging in animal-related masochism for ratings. US-based wildlife educator Coyote Peterson has become a YouTube sensation for airing clips of himself getting bitten and stung by everything under the sun.
The eight-episode “Kings of Pain” series premieres Tuesday, Nov. 12, at 10 p.m. on History.