Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Am i the only one that saw this!? ummmm twice? and he threw the tail on the fire?! what a show....

Are you talking about Man vs Wild? If so, it's a complete fraud anyhow. Youtube has many videos exposing him as such.
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www.frogfreaks.com

If you are referring to that episode of Man vs Wild, then yes, I saw it too. It was disgusting and cruel what he did to that monitor.

Again, for the third time this has been posted about those type shows, it is no different than what the natives do, and it happens many times every day.
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South Central Herpetological

So because the natives hold a 4 ft monitor by the tail swing it around crack its head solid on a blunt object twice Bear Giles should do it too!? Was it necessry?

bear is not a native he has no need to kill anything, why cant he come across say a lizard or snake and just say at this point id eat this like so, and let the animal go on living no wiser that he came a long such a ahole in the 1st place. and at this pont his cammera guy could give him some bread or something.so he would not be starving.

That's actually why I stopped watching the show. He does not need to kill those animals, he does it for TV. I think it makes the show much worse, as I watched those shows for outdoor survival knowledge, not to see animals killed unnecessarily to heighten their ratings.

After he catches something, it should be let go, then he should just eat a damn sandwich or something.

Except the native do it for food and not a tv show and money.
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www.frogfreaks.com

My problem with it (beside the total fraud) is that even if he is going to kill an animal and eat it, why should he do it in such a cruel manner? He has his awesome razor sharp knife with him on the show, so why not kill it with a beheading, or something that would kill it instantly instead of swinging it aroung by the tail and bashing it oveer and over. Also we only swa it get hit in the head twice, but that doesn't mean that he only did it twice it only means that he televised it twice.
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www.frogfreaks.com

I havent seen the episode, but reality is that those shows dont allow the killing of rare, endangered, or threatened species. Yes, it is for entertainment, and for instructional purposes, yes, it seems cruel to some people, animals being killed by anyone is bound to get someones goat.
The simple fact is that most of us are so far shielded and protected from reality that we get offended by normal things in life that happen everyday. These things dont just happen on TV shows, or by natives for survival, but by our own people who do far more cruel things to thousands of animals in the name of a few bucks everyday.
By the way swinging it to disconnect the spinal cord on a blunt object is far quicker and less cruel than trying to cut its head off with a knife. The neck, and backbones of even small monitors are very tough, trying to cut them off takes alot of effort and some time, the animal would suffer far worse that way.
Our own pet industry does far more cruel things everyday to these creatures, and to thousands of them in the name of selling them for a buck. The pet industry imports thousands of starving, beaten, injured, dieing, dehydrated, sickly, wild animals across the ocean to be starved, dehydrated, forced into captivity, and die slowly at the hands of any new keeper who has $5-$100 or so.

Which is better to be free and wild then suddenly have your neck broken then eaten, or to be free and wild and be forced into a cloth sack then dehydrated, and starved for a month or more, and have to share that bag with others of the same or different species to save space. Then be sent in a box across the ocean, sold at a reptile show or petstore to someone who will put you into a 10 gallon aquarium, force you to be dehydrated with a lousey environment, stressed for the rest of your life, and paraded around in public on a leash by some kid who wants to get shock value out of you among his friends and neighbors?
The other point is that when you are told how to cut up and prepare a once live animal to be eaten, or read about it, as opposed to seeing it being done you learn very little and are totally lost when you may be faced with doing the same yourself.

That would be fine if it WERE quickly done, but repeated blows to the head to kill it is not quick in my opinion, and he was not trying to snap the spinal chord he was clubbing it. The same thing he has done to many other animals. Just because there are many other cases of cruelty around doesn't make it right for others to do it for entertainment does it? If so they should free Mike Vick. How many people here are going to find themselves in a situation to eat an african bullfrog or club a monitor several times? If it is for educational purposes then why not just say "you can bash it to death and cook it" instead of wasting the life of the animals?
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www.frogfreaks.com

Because its just not the same, if you were ever in a situation where you needed to do the same you would know that seeing it done teaches you alot more than hearing about it being done.
Yes, in the past I have killed animals to eat by using the same method, its very common for domesticated rabbits to be killed that way.
Like I said before if you only knew just how tough the backbone on a monitor lizard was you would know why it was so difficult and took repeated blows.
You suggested beheading with a knife, that method would take several minutes with a monitor that size, in the process the monitor would seriously injure the person doing it. Not only that, the monitor would still be alive the entire time suffering from it. Breaking its neck is alot faster as he demonstrated than trying to hack its head off with a knife.
Seriously if the show offeneds so many people, why do they watch it?
Maybe if more people prepared their own food, butchered their own meat, killed the animals they ate, there would not be all of this crying over one monitor lizard being killed for food on TV.
Dont get me wrong, I dont enjoy (nor have I ever) killing other living things, but theres a difference between breaking your meals neck to prepare it, and real cruelty. Real cruelty is, as I mentioned, dragging the torture out over time.
Anyone who has imported monitors that are not at the least reproductive (currently producing viable young, or have reproduced sucessfully) is a hypocrite for complaining about this example as cruelty. Cruelty is keeping them in substandard conditions, and stretching the torture of life out over time until a wild animal dies.

"Maybe if more people prepared their own food, butchered their own meat, killed the animals they ate, there would not be all of this crying over one monitor lizard being killed for food on TV."

As I stated above, in my family we do all of that and have always done all of that and I think you are conveying the wrong idea about what affect this process has on the consumer (human about to eat the animal). It's really very profound. When you buy your food from the store you don't have to see the animal. You are eating an inanimate object, something that you probably don't even realize ever existed as an animal. When you kill and butcher your food you have to face the animal and realize that you have just taken a life to further your own.

This teaches you to respect nature, not become numb to killing and violence. That's the problem I have with a lot of people. Yes, there are a lot of animals suffering right now on our soil at the hands of our own people, and that is wrong. No one is trying to say that is right.

The average person whining about this subject and the actions on the show would change their mind completely only after 1 day without food in a similar situation.
The problem being that the average person is so far from the process with which their food comes from, that they become offended that they are eating a formerly living creature, and they consider the killing of animals for food as cruelty.
The responces as to better methods to dispatch the monitor quicker and more humanely so far have been perfect demonstrations of those who have no clue about the subject, therefore should not have brought it up without knowledge to back it up.

The why on another show on Discovery about some of the indigenous people who eat monitors, show them snare the monitor, then hold it down on it's belly, lift the head back and cut it's throat? Also Bear Grylls has made his knife into a hatchet before and cut limbs out of trees, so if he can do that, then why can't he do the same to the monitor. If he truly wants to show how to survive, then why did he in one episode try to catch a rabbit by throwing a stick at it several times? Of course this didn't work so he said that since he couldn't catch the hare that he had one bought and then killed it and ate it. If he wanted to show survival then he would have SHOWN how to catch the rabbit, not buy one. If in a survival situation you won't have a local market to buy one from. What good is showing how to kill the animal for food, if he can't even show how to catch the animal first?
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www.frogfreaks.com

When they hold it down and slit its throat they arent worried about how long the animals live and suffer, in fact they live for quite some time. Breaking the neck does its so much faster.
The natives slit the throat to let it bleed out,while its dies, to them its not cruel, the guy in question wanted to not have the animal suffer.