‘Aliens’ to Turn Purdue Students into Unwilling Test Subjects in Chilling peta2 VR Experience
For Immediate Release:
October 23, 2026
Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7383
A mysterious truck is rolling onto Purdue University campus next week, and students brave enough to venture inside will be whisked away to an alien laboratory—where they’ll get a much closer encounter than they bargained for. It’s all part of Abduction—the award-winning virtual reality experience from peta2, part of PETA’s youth division—which is landing on campus as part of a nationwide tour to encourage empathy for animals caged and tormented in university laboratories.
During the immersive experience, participants find themselves seemingly stranded in the desert with two other humans, only to be kidnapped by aliens, taken aboard a spaceship, and forced to watch as their friends are subjected to cruel, painful experiments—inspired by real experiments conducted on animals—knowing that they’ll be next.
When: Tuesday, October 27 – Thursday, October 29, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Where: Outside the Purdue Engineering Fountain Plaza, 610 Purdue Mall, West Lafayette
Watch the trailer here.
Credit: PETA
Studies show that 90 percent of basic research, most of which involves animals, fails to lead to human treatments. Yet at Purdue University, experimenters repeatedly tightened wires around beagles’ eyes for hours to induce glaucoma-like damage, severely impairing the vision of one dog subjected to the highest pressure.
Other experimenters cut open young female pigs, removed parts of their reproductive systems, and artificially inseminated them before bleeding the pregnant pigs and any surviving fetuses to death. Still others delivered piglets prematurely, killed their mothers, and repeatedly fed the babies concentrated formula through stomach tubes to induce a severe intestinal disease. More than half the piglets died within five days, and the remaining survivors were killed and dissected.
“The aliens in Abduction may be science fiction, but for animals caged in university laboratories, the nightmare scenario of being trapped, tormented, and subjected to painful experiments is all too real,” says peta2 Vice President Rachelle Owen. “peta2 is giving students a visceral look at the horrors of animal experimentation and inspiring them to join our call for a switch to superior, animal‑free research methods.”
Abduction has visited nearly 100 colleges and universities since its debut, earning rave reviews from students, who have described the experience as “a really effective way of getting the message across.” 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.
