Chilling Virtual Reality Experience From peta2 Promises Alien Encounters at UCA

For Immediate Release:
March 10, 2025

Contact:
Brandi Pharris 202-483-7382

Coming to the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) 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 10 – Thursday, March 13, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. each day

Where: Outside the Ronnie Williams Student Center, Marion Ross Drive, Conway

Watch the trailer here.

At the University of Central Arkansas, experimenters pierced the tails of mice with a metal wire and used it to suspend them in the air for four weeks. The experimenters then punctured their hearts to collect blood samples before gassing them to death and dissecting them. Other UCA experimenters captured armadillos, inserted needle electrodes under the skin on their necks, ears, and faces, placed tubes into their ear canals, and exposed them to bursts of noise to measure brain activity. Still others removed armadillos’ eyelids, exposed their brains by cutting off their protective head armor, and inserted electrodes—all while the animals were still alive. The experimenters ultimately killed them and dissected their brains.

“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 commitments 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 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.