Body-Painted ‘Snake’ to Slither in PETA’s Petco Protest

For Immediate Release:
May 4, 2021

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Holding a sign that proclaims, “Shed Cruelty! Stop Selling Animals,” PETA’s body-painted “snake” will cram herself into a Plexiglas “tank” outside Petco on Wednesday.

When:    Wednesday, May 5, 12 noon

Where:    Outside Petco, 5507 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles

Petco is notorious for selling reptiles and other small animals to shoppers who aren’t properly prepared to care for them. According to one study, 75% of “pet” reptiles, including snakes, die within one year—many from stress related to captivity. Petco even sells tanks by Zoo Med Laboratories, which PETA sued for falsely telling customers that snakes—who need to stretch out, bask, burrow, and explore—only need tanks at least “half the length” of their bodies.

“No animal deserves to live and die in a cramped glass box, unable even to extend their bodies fully,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Petco to stop profiting from the misery of snakes and other vulnerable animals.”

A PETA exposé of a massive dealer in the pet trade revealed that snakes were stored in shoebox-size containers or crowded troughs, starved, and deprived of a proper heat source, adequate space, and even water. Many languished, experienced seizures, and died, and hundreds were put into a freezer to die slowly and painfully.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.

For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.