Human eating snakes

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It sounds like they're saying that he'll be swallowed alive and come back safely.

If that offends you, it's for good reason. There are several problems with this idea.

1. Size.

Even though the anaconda is the biggest snake on the planet, it still rarely gets longer than 22 feet — finding one big enough to swallow a human would be incredibly difficult. Normal the biggest prey an anaconda can eat is about 30% of its mass. For the biggest anacondas ever seen, about 29 feet long and 550 pounds, that might put a human adult into possible range, but such large anacondas are extremely rare.

2. Human shoulders are wide.

Even though the largest anaconda may be able to swallow the sheer poundage of an adult male human, snakes still don't usually eat anything wider than the largest part of their body. Since humans have broad shoulders, especially if they're reinforced with a protective suit, this is going to be extremely problematic.

In her Redorbit post Powers says a human man's shoulders are a lot wider than the animals these snakes normally eat, which include "rodents, deer, peccaries, capybaras, tapirs, turtles, aquatic reptiles like caiman, and the occasional jaguar."

She writes that "the act of trying to swallow an adult human past the shoulders (our widest point structurally) would not likely progress well and the snake would simply give up."

Eaten Alive/DiscoveryThat would be a lot to swallow3. Constriction.

While snakes can eat something that's still alive and might give that a try if their food item were small, they would likely try to constrict and suffocate an animal as big as a man before swallowing. During constriction the snake asphyxiates its prey by tightening its coils every time the meal breathes.

To deal with this, the suit would either have to stand up to the constant pressure so Rosolie wouldn't be crushed, or the snake handlers would have to forcibly stop the snake from killing Rosolie — either way making it unlikely that the creature would try to eat him.

4. Teeth.

These teeth belong to a Burmese python, but an anaconda's teeth are similar.

Anaconda teeth are recurved, or backward facing. Though they aren't venomous, they are still sharp and strong and hold and pull in whatever the snake is trying to swallow — making it very difficult to exit the snake through the mouth.

Whatever suit Rosolie wore would have to protect him from these as well — and pulling him out against these curved, hooked teeth would be particularly difficult.

5. Head first entry.

In a promo for the show, you can hear Rosolie say "you've got to go head first." Powers agrees, but she says that being swallowed would probably make Rosolie move, which would cause the snake to try and constrict him again. There's just no way the snake would continue trying to eat him after such difficulty, no matter how tasty Rosolie looks in his snake-proof exoskeleton.

Eaten Alive/Discovery6. Extraction process.

If somehow Discovery did get Rosolie into the snake, they'd have to get him out. If they didn't hurt the snake then they didn't cut it open, but Powers writes that snakes rarely regurgitate their prey, and "it is a costly process to the animal and can be quite damaging."