BBC presenter Bruce Parry was forced to suffocate a live goat as part of a new television series where he met an indigenous tribe in Angola. The 56-year-old appeared visibly shaken after the event in the second episode where he met The Mucubal. One of the tribe’s leaders gifted Bruce a goat, and the presenter asked what he should do with it.
Bruce looked horrified when the leader said he should kill it and that it would be rude not to. The presenter explained via a voiceover that animals are essential for the tribe for sustenance, gifts and currency. It is also a demonstration of the man’s generosity and wealth. The leader of the tribe suggested Bruce suffocate the animal so they don’t waste any of its nutritious blood.
(Image: BBC)
They then helped the presenter hold the screaming goat down as he placed his hands around the goat’s mouth and nose to suffocate it. The goat convulsed during the horrific scene before stopping and Bruce was told the goat was dead.
He said: “This is the most gruesome thing I have ever done. I wasn’t given any time to consider it or anything, it’s like they held it and said you have to hold this now…so I did.
“It’s a very odd feeling, feeling the life force of an animal disappear in your own hands… not a feeling I’d necessarily want to have again.”
Bruce recalled to Radio Times ahead of the programme’s release, saying: “It was difficult, suffocating a goat.
(Image: BBC/Frank Films/Ben Cheetham)
“But I could be the most ethically minded person at home in the UK but still by simply getting on a bus, I will have a much larger impact on the planet than any one of these people. Who am I to judge them?”
As part of the show, Tribe, which first aired 20 years ago, the former Royal Marine visits indigenous people in the most remote places in the world.
(Image: Brentwood Gazette)
In the original series Parry visited tribes in the Himalayas, Gabon, Ethiopia, West Papua and Mongolia, exploring the methods and practices of the people living there.
After a decade away from the screen, he has returned to exploring.
He starts in the Amazon with the Waimaha, and Angola’s Mucubal community and Indonesia’s Marapu.
Bruce says his team trades gifts with the people he visits, with him giving a machine to grind sorghum, a staple grain in Africa and Asia, and receiving livestock or other cultural items in return.
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