The man who famously tried to let world's biggest snake eat him alive 10 years ago has revealed why he did it after it soured his reputation.
Paul Rosolie a conservationist from Brooklyn, New York, has spent his career working and studying the Amazon rainforest in southeastern Peru from the age of 18.
Yet in 2014, he shot to fame as the face of Discovery Channel's 2014 film, Eaten Alive, as the show documents Rosolie's supposed almost bitter end with a ginormous anaconda.
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However, that's not quite how it was meant to go down.
He wrote in The Guardian that, at the time, he was 'grimly amused' by the trailers which showed him being 'eaten alive' by the snake, which sparked backlash from animal welfare activists to members of the public.
False rumors swirled and Rosolie feared for his 'humble' reputation he'd built in the conservation community, particularly as he'd just won a United Nations Award for a wildlife film and had released his book.
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So, why did he risk 'dousing it all in lighter fluid' with the snake-eating stunt?
The now-37-year-old explained he had spent more than 10 years working in the Peruvian Amazon, which had become blighted by an illegal gold 'mafia', in turn resulting in mass deforestation and a hike in mercury poisoning to the local wildlife and to the humans who consume them.
However, he said while the perilous effects on fish and humans is well documented, the impact on other species remains 'largely a mystery' and he had longed to study the green anaconda.
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The Amazonian anaconda can grow from two feet to more than 20 feet, weigh more than 300lbs, and is both prey and predator, making it 'perhaps one of the most influential players in the most biologically competitive terrestrial ecosystem on the planet', he added.
Rosolie said he had been monitoring the snakes for years but lacked the resources for a proper study - and the fact they're rather difficult to research, being so large, difficult to find and dangerous.
They also can't be tranquillised, meaning 'the only way to measure a 20ft mass of writhing muscle is to physically overpower it', he wrote.
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So when the Discovery Channel came knocking, it was his golden opportunity to not only secure funding his dream study but to attract the interest of the general public.
Rosolie added: "I was willing to try something risky and yes, maybe ridiculous, to bring attention to a place and a species I loved.
"I figured that if feeding myself to a snake was the price I needed to pay to try to alert the wider community about the devastation we are waging on nature, I had to accept.
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"So on a sunny September day, I spent two hours in that claustrophobic suit, being constricted by a captive anaconda."
Reflecting on the show, he said filming a 19ft female anaconda was 'one of the best days of my life' yet despite the Discovery crew documenting deforestation and even catching illegal miners in the act, Rosolie said the final cut 'haunts' him as very little of his educational research made it into the show.
Still, he was happy to see so many talking about the welfare of snakes and the Amazon rainforest, even if it were in petitions to cancel it.
He said: "For the first time in my life the media was talking about anacondas and the Amazon."
Topics: Amazon, Climate Change, Environment, Film and TV, Animals
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