Federal Arrest Spotlights YouTube’s Animal Cruelty Loophole

On Wednesday, September 17, 2025, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota announced the arrest of 32-year-old Bryan Wesley Edison of Carver, MN. Edison has been federally indicted on sixteen counts of animal crushing  under 18 U.S.C. § 48, a statute that criminalizes the purposeful crushing, burning, drowning, suffocating, impaling, or other serious harming of living non-human mammals, birds, reptiles, or amphibians.

Bryan Wesley Edison's Mugshot

Prince's Predator Pets

Edison was not an unknown figure on the internet. He had been known to many people in various online spaces, including having come to the attention of members of The Humane Web Project in 2023. He had previously run several YouTube channels, such as Prince’s Pet Planet, Prince’s Chomp Squad, Prince’s Predator Pets, as well as many others. Within these channels, Edison gathered an audience around videos showcasing live predator-prey interactions.  The formula of his videos typically involved turtles eating frogs, large tegu lizards consuming guinea pigs and other rodents, and snakes preying on small mammals. Sometimes Edison would even include his dog killing and maiming small animals.

A screencap from one of Edison's deleted channels

Edison's dog with a recently killed guinea pig

The videos were often filmed in a POV style, where Edison captured gladiatorial battle confrontations between predators and prey. One of his lizards was often adorned with a Halloween costume to add theatrical flair. The tone of his videos was rarely neutral. Titles of his videos often emphasized the suffering such as “Fat Guinea Pig Meets Snake. SCREAMS, and It’s a Wrap.” or “Spyro Punishes Rats”. The footage frequently depicted prolonged harm and pain of prey animals. Edison added vocal commentary in some videos such as “There is nothing I can do to save you now.” or “Hear the squeals of displeasure.” further highlighting a cruel intention behind the content.

"Spyro", Edison's Tegu Lizard

The “Education” Label

Channel’s like Edison’s who make these styles of videos often attempt to shield themselves behind the claim that the videos are “educational”, paired with stock justifications highlighting that reptiles eat rodents, therefore these videos are completely natural. These explanations are rarely offered in good faith and appear to function as disclaimers to skirt YouTube’s content abuse policies and guidelines. 

In reality, the ethics of live feeding are regularly debated in the reptile and herpetology communities with a growing preference toward frozen feeding for both safety and animal welfare reasons. Legitimate educational content bears very little resemblance to Edison’s videos and similar channels. 

Just Brutal Entertainment?

Furthermore, when taking a look at comments from a handful of these feeding channels, the words often don’t represent what would be expected in response to truly educational content. Instead, what you’ll mostly see on these videos is a community of people who enjoy the particular brutality in which the animals die. They often give suggestions on how they’d like the next animal to be killed, and some even express complaints when the type of animal they want isn’t featured.

Through years of investigative work, The Humane Web Project has identified individuals who have also consumed this type of content. One individual we investigated, who tortured and killed several guinea pigs in 2024, was an avid viewer of cruel feeding channels. While viewing such material alone in itself is not evidence of criminal intent in every case, there is a documented overlap.

A screencap from a video of guinea pigs being grievously injured in a live feeding video. This same user had tortured and killed several guinea pigs prior to posting this.

The Monetary Aspect

Beyond Edison's public videos, he offered more violent and custom footage through a paid membership program, with tiers being as little as $0.99 and as high as $99.99. Higher paying members could interact with Edison personally and provide detailed requests in which Edison would oblige. According to the FBI, Edison had made approximately 350 animal crush videos. Edison often teased his most violent content behind membership paywalls, incentivizing those who wanted to see the goriest footage to pay.

YouTube’s Policies & A Broader Platform Blind Spot

Edison's animal crush empire succeeded for a few years before his arrest. While many of the channels got removed by YouTube, Edison would pop back up with new channels that often remained undisturbed for long periods of time, raising questions about the consistency and adequacy of YouTube's moderation system. Reviewing YouTube’s guidelines, the policy on graphic or violent content includes a section on animal abuse. It states the animal cruelty guidelines are as follows

• Content where humans coerce animals to fight.

• Content where a human maliciously mistreats an animal and causes them to experience distress outside of traditional or standard practices. Examples of traditional or standard practices include hunting or food preparation.

• Content where a human unnecessarily puts an animal in poor conditions outside of traditional or standard practices. Examples of traditional or standard practices include hunting or food preparation.

• Content that glorifies or promotes serious neglect, mistreatment, or harm toward animals.

• Content that shows animal rescue that is staged and puts the animal in harmful scenarios.

• Graphic content that features animals and intends to shock or disgust.

 Even now, The Humane Web Project has identified several channels and pages tied to Edison that remain online, months after his arrest. Many channels like Edison's also remain up as well, despite clearly violating many guidelines above. The persistence of this content raises broader questions. Is labelling something "educational" enough to bypass effective moderation?

A channel description disclaimer from a live feeding channel

A Victory, but Far From Justice

For advocates, Edison's indictment represents a major win and step forward in addressing the issue of violent animal cruelty content online. However, hundreds and possibly even thousands of similar videos remain on YouTube and other platforms today, some receiving millions of views. Edison’s arrest underscores a broader systemic blind spot in content moderation, one that allows violent animal cruelty to proliferate and reach large audiences.

The Humane Web Project will continue investigating how these channels invade detection, why certain enforcement failures persists and what steps platforms should take to prevent this content from growing.