Eerie Virtual Reality Experience From peta2 to Bring Alien Encounters to Central Arkansas
For Immediate Release:
November 10, 2025
Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382
“Genius” and “definitely changed my perspective.” That’s how students have described peta2’s award-winning virtual reality experience, Abduction, which is coming to the University of Central Arkansas this week as part of a nationwide tour to encourage empathy for animals caged in laboratories on university campuses.
In this chilling experience, visitors will enter a mysterious truck containing a mobile virtual reality studio and find themselves seemingly stranded with a couple of fellow humans in the desert, only to be abducted by aliens, taken aboard a spaceship, and subjected to a shocking experience that mirrors what other species endure in laboratories. They’ll watch as their friends are subjected to painful tests—knowing that they’ll be next.
When: Tuesday,November 11 – Wednesday, November 12, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. each day
Where: “The Block,” Outside the Snow Fine Arts Building, Marion Ross Drive, Conway
Students have hailed Abduction as “a really effective way of getting the message across” and said that it opened their eyes to the cruelty of experiments on animals, with one student saying, “I gotta go find the labs on this campus … I can’t believe they’re doing these things here.”
Watch the trailer here. Broadcast-quality footage of the Abduction virtual reality experience is available upon request.
At the University of Central Arkansas, experimenters pierced wires through mice’s tails and suspended them with their back legs in the air for four weeks, then punctured their hearts, gassed them to death, and dissected them. Other experimenters caught wild armadillos, implanted electrodes in their necks and faces and tubes into their ears, and blasted them with bursts of noise, and still others caught wild armadillos and sliced open their heads to expose their brains, cut off their eyelids, and implanted electrodes into their brains before killing and dissecting them.
“Many students don’t know that on their own college campuses, frightened and confused animals are psychologically tormented, mutilated, and killed in laboratories with no way to escape or even understand what’s happening to them,” says peta2 Vice President Rachelle Owen. “peta2’s immersive VR experience is pulling back the curtain and moving students everywhere to join our call for a switch to superior, non-animal research.”
Studies show that 90% of all basic research—most of which involves animals—fails to lead to treatments for humans. That’s why peta2 is pushing universities to invest in research relevant to humans through Research Modernization NOW, a roadmap to better science.
Since its debut, Abduction has traveled from coast to coast, visiting nearly 100 colleges and universities, including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California–Los Angeles, and the University of Texas at Austin. Abduction was filmed in VR180 with assistance from the immersive content creation studio Prosper XR, won “Gold” and “Audience” honors in the 2023 Shorty Impact Awards, and was a nominee for the 2024 Webby Awards.
peta2—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers young people positive, empowering actions to help animals. For more information, please visit peta2.com or follow peta2 on TikTok or Instagram.
