Animal welfare official locks himself in a car to show how hot it gets inside for pets

Welcoming a furry friend into your life isn't just about their adorable eyes, funny quirks and warm cuddles. Being a pet parent comes with a lot of responsibility, yet many fail to take seriously the incredible peril they put their pets in when leaving them inside hot cars or outside during hot weather. According to PETA, 29 heat-related animal deaths have already been reported In the U.S. this year. This number would be considerably higher if not for the timely action of good Samaritans and police officials who have already rescued 176 animals from dangerous conditions in 2022.

The RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), a charity operating in England and Wales that promotes animal welfare, recently demonstrated exactly how hot it can get inside a locked car on a scorching day in a video shared on TikTok. The clip, which has been viewed more than 75.3k times since being uploaded last month, shows an RSPCA official locking himself inside a car and checking the temperature within the vehicle every few minutes to show just how quickly it can get fatally hot inside.

"I'm going to see just how bad it is to be locked in a car in this hot weather. It's currently just over 23°C (73.4°F) in this car and I'll update things every few minutes in this car and see how we're getting on," he says at the beginning of the video. "Five minutes into this experiment, show you the stopwatch there, just over five minutes. We tried to do a three-minute video and the camera was too hot to work briefly. Had to move the camera a little bit to get it to work again. The temperature in five minutes has absolutely flown up to over 35°C (95°F) degrees now from 23.3°C (73.4°F) just five minutes ago."

He gave his next update at the 10-minute mark, revealing that he had started to feel his heart beat faster and that his breathing was getting heavier. "We've just passed the 10-minute mark in the car. It's so so hot in here I can feel my heart beating, breathing quite a bit heavier. And I know I could just get out of the car. So if I didn't know that goodness knows how I'd feel," he said at that point. "The temperature is continuing to absolutely skyrocket in here. It's now 43.6°C degrees (110.48°F). It was 23.3°C. And as I said, we've been in this car for just over 10 minutes."

Later, when the timer passed 15 minutes, the RSPCA official shared that the car had begun to feel like an oven and pointed out that he had turned bright red and was dripping with sweat. "We've just passed the 15-minute mark just feels like an oven in here. I'm bright red, absolutely dripping with sweat. [It] is really, really, really hot in this car. The temperature just keeps going up guys. We are now at 48.8°C degrees (119.84°F)," he said. "It's coming up to 17 minutes any second now. And the temperature a few seconds ago has just soared past 50°C (122°F) degrees and it just passing 20 minutes and yeah the temperature is still rising."

He concluded the demonstration after being in the hot car for a little over 25 minutes. "We are now looking at a temperature in this car of 53.1°C (127.58°F) degrees. Just over 25 minutes, which if you can imagine probably isn't even a shopping trip for some people when we may see a dog being left in a car. In that time the temperature has gone from 23.3°C to 57.1°C degrees inside this car," he said. "It is absolutely boiling. It's so hot. As I said red-faced, sweaty, breathing differently, feel my heart beating. A real eye opener to what it is like in the car in this sort of environment. As I said, [I've] been in here for 26 minutes and I cannot imagine what this would do to a dog. If you see a dog in a hot car in distress make sure you call 999 (the national emergency response service in the UK) and hopefully this video will just help get the message out there that this is so dangerous for dogs. Never leave a dog in a hot car."

Speaking to Bored Panda, an RSPCA representative named Suzanne Norbury said: "When reporting incidents relating to specific dogs being left in hot cars, we always urge people to dial 999 and ask for the police, as they can often attend much more quickly than ourselves. Additionally, police officers also have the power to enter a vehicle to remove an animal from danger. If the situation becomes critical for the dog and the police are too far away or unable to attend, many people's instinct will be to break into the car to free the dog. It's only natural for animal lovers to take action when they see a dog in distress in a hot car. We urge people to tell the police what they intend to do, why, and to take images/footage of the dog and the names and numbers of witnesses to the incident, in case they need to defend their actions later."