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Tarantula Torture Cell

Fear Factor viewers are always sending in suggestions for what they'd like to see on the show. Often, it comes down to spiders, spiders, and more spiders. So, in response to your many requests, we now proudly present to you the terrifying Fear Factor Tarantula Torture Cell.

Chances are you've all seen a scary movie or a TV show with a tarantula slowly crawling up a person's arm. But have you ever seen FIFTY tarantulas crawling on a person's face? Fear Factor is about to make that nightmare a reality.

There's good reason why you've never seen this stunt before. Frankly, it's dangerous. Tarantulas have nasty defense mechanisms and they're not afraid to use them. Look closely at a tarantula and you'll find super sharp fangs that are used to attack their prey. Making matters worse, their bodies are covered in sharp hairs that can be tossed like little daggers in a moment of panic.

When we arrived at the shoot location, the animal wranglers placed the 50 tarantulas in the 17-inch square torture box for a pre-show test. Immediately, all hell broke loose. Keep in mind these are very territorial creatures. They immediately got into fighting positions, standing on their hind legs and baring their fangs at each other.

Fortunately, the animal wranglers were standing by with compressed air bottles that could be used to help break up the fighting. Still, we weren't sure exactly what was going to happen once we stuck a contestant's head in that box along with all those crazy tarantulas.

We warned the contestants to remain very still in the box in order to keep from agitating the hairy creatures. They were also given goggles, nose plugs and earplugs to protect them from serious injury. We'd been warned by tarantula experts that breathing tarantula hairs in through the nose would be like inhaling slivers of glass. Just as an added precaution, host Joe Rogan was equipped with compressed air to stand by and shoot at the tarantulas in case things got too insane during the stunt.

The contestants heeded our advice, remaining as still as possible as the gloved wranglers placed the tarantulas onto their heads. The tarantulas had no problem gripping on to their heads. In fact, they even swarmed all over the shaved head of one of our bald contestants.

Contestants with longer hair were likely to have the grossest experiences. As the wranglers explained to us, it's very difficult to pull tarantulas out of long hair once it burrows up inside the strands.

Fear Factor fans were definitely right when they said spiders would make for a great stunt. Be sure to let us know what else you'd like to see on the show and we'll do our best to make it happen.

Note to the viewer who suggested that we put people in a box of bunnies: interesting idea but we think we'll pass on that one.

by Rich Brown