Though Survivor has a crew of hundreds on-site in Fiji, the players in front of the camera are largely on their own — even against potential predators.
Jeff Probst, who has hosted all 48 seasons of the reality TV hit, was asked during the Wednesday, April 23, episode of his “On Fire” podcast whether the crew would warn cast members if a snake had slithered into camp without them knowing.
“Absolutely … not,” said Probst, 63.
Over the years, castaways have had encounters with snakes, though none has unexpectedly snuck into camp. In a 2002 interview on Live with Regis and Kelly, Probst himself recalled encountering a king cobra during Survivor: Thailand.
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“They look like a normal snake until they sort of rear up and then their hood opens up,” he described. “I watched one — the heat up there is about 115 or so during the day — and I watch this king cobra for just a second as it looked at me and it literally did one of these, it went to strike and it just went ehhhh.”
Probst then brought his hand down, mimicking the snake deciding to back off in the intense heat.
Survivor 47 winner Rachel LaMont, who is cohosting the podcast with Probst and Jay Wolff this season, didn’t have a similar encounter, but described in detail the fearless critters that infiltrated camp during her season.
“There’s mosquitoes, there’s flies, there’s lizards crawling on you all night on your body,” she said.
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Rachel, 35, added that she and her castmates used their buffs as face coverings while they slept. In the most recent episode of Survivor, which also aired April 23, she noticed the current players did not do the same.
“To not cover your face in any capacity — I know a buff is a very thin piece of fabric and it doesn’t do anything, but mentally it does so much,” she said.
Rachel added that she covered her head “every single night with my buff” except for the night she spent in Mergatory, the point in the game where players have finished the tribal portion but have not yet earned their merged tribe buffs.
Protection while castaways sleep has long been an issue on Survivor. In Survivor: Kaoh Rong, which aired in 2016, a worm crawled in cast member Jennifer Lanzetti’s ear while she was sleeping. Jennifer described feeling the worm moving deeper into her ear canal as she was powerless to get it out.
“It’s disgusting hearing these little legs crawl around in your head,” she said on the show.
The worm eventually crawled out on its own, but not before causing Jennifer excruciating pain and causing her ear to bleed.
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