I can hear Marlin Perkins now - As Jim wrestles the python.... LOL
Lol, he was kinda crazy, but marlin was pretty fearless himself too, but I do think a ,ot of the shows were staged with animals kept in compounds. The “a aging footage “ they a,ways seemed to get was just too corn identsl to be taped I. The wild, like a couger chasing an otter around , coyote playing with some “wild” animal like a badger, etc. They jusynran across these things way too often. The animals probsbly grew up together in a wildlife preserve and were used to each other, but it made for good TV to show them “hunting” each other (but never killing the other animal).
Jim efen”got chased” by a brown bear o ce and he had to “run to a nearby tree”, and you could see the bear wasn’t in full charge mode, and Jim kept just ahead of him till he got to the tree and jumped for a branch. Lots of little,things like that made it seem pretty staged.
I thjnk they even got accused of staging scenes that resulted in Animal cruelty. Not sure if anything ever came of,that accusation though