The photo is by Indonesian photographer Tanto Yensen . He may be one of those photographers you mentioned in your original comment . Some of the animals are sedated with bug spray , near death , or have their limbs broken to hold the poses . I ' m not saying that ' s how he did it , but here ' s some of his other photos that are staged I added a visual reference to where the fishing line would be . His pictures have been picked up by news outlets all over the web after going viral . I ' m pretty sure he ' ll be making good money off this picture too , since he licensed them to a media agency . <| sep |> In my preferred implementation , if you work there then you democratically own the business which owns the machines .