First, I despise what Animal Planet has become.
Second, I know there's been a lot of staging and mistreatment of animals during the filming of some of the reality shows.

But... Mother Jones is not what I would call a good source for truthful reporting. Most of what I saw was also from what you could term "disgruntled employees" who no longer work for AP, so it's hard ot say that it's automatically truth.

I'd lean towards most of it being true. I see some signs of drugged state in that zebra, just from the small amount of film in the youtube video. Zebra are not ponies and him wrestling it to the ground by it's jaw and screeching while pinning it's head down is NOT a acceptable way to handle a zebra. Come to think of it, it's also not acceptable to do to a pony, but it's less acceptable with a zebra who has wild instincts and will stress more.

Grabbing the poor cornsnake as if it were a spitting cobra was also deplorable. The incident with the baby raccoons thing is a little bit overhyped. Baby raccoons often survive days without a mother when rescued(I've personally seen them coming in when my aunt used to bottle them when the city workers found them). Yes, they are delicate and yes, the company does NOT need to be dragging baby raccoons around in order to accommodate a shooting schedule.