Chilling Virtual Reality Experience From peta2 Promises Alien Encounters at the University of Utah

For Immediate Release:
March 20, 2025

Contact:
Brandi Pharris 202-483-7382

Coming to the University of Utah this week is peta2’s award-winning virtual reality experience, Abduction, which is touring the country to encourage empathy for animals caged in laboratories on university campuses.

In this eerie 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:      Monday,March 24 – Thursday, March 27, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. each day

Where:    Outside of the Marriott Library, 295 S. 1500 E., Salt Lake City

Watch the trailer here.

At the University of Utah, experimenters inserted tubes into dogs’ veins and drained 40 percent of their blood, leaving the dogs in a state of shock for 45 minutes before finally resuscitating them. Experimenters repeated this invasive procedure four more times, although it could cause severe and lasting damage to the dogs’ hearts, organs, and immune systems, even if the animals appeared to recover. Other experimenters immobilized rats, cut open their skulls, injected viruses into their brains, and drugged them before subjecting them to a series of distressing tests. These included repeatedly shocking their feet inside a chamber with electrified floors and dropping them into inescapable water-filled cylinders, where they swim frantically to avoid drowning in the forced swim test. Experimenters killed all the rats when they were done.

“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 PETA’s Associate Director of Innovation and Execution Kenneth Montville. “peta2 is a trailblazer in using immersive VR experiences to open young people’s eyes to this cruelty, help them understand what it feels like, and motivate them 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 prove their supposed commitment to “replacing, reducing, and refining” the use of animals in experiments.

Since its debut, Abduction has traveled from coast to coast, visiting more than 50 colleges and universities, including a previous stop at the University of Utah in 2023 as well as visits to 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.