Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was at another site that shows video clips from anyone who wants to show video clips. I was AMAZED at how many clips showed snake keepers feeding live rabbits and large rats to their pets. Whew, it was incredibly brutal with the rabbit kills! Their struggling screams cut right through me! And there were several clips of a burm eating chicks alive! OMG- the baby chicks kept peeping as they were swallowed ALIVE! The largest feeding was a goat! What are your comments on this issue? I wrote message after message advocating frozen thawed in the comment areas provided below the video screen format at the site. I received some negative responses. MADE ME MORE GRATEFUL MY Royal Albino Python feeds on F/T! I have a lot of the pros here to thank for F/T guidance. "Thanks Gang!"

In most cases, there is no good reason to feed live. A very small percentage of snakes won't take to f/t at first. Even fewer never will at all. But, for the most part, f/t is simpler, more humane, and avoids risks to our snakes which happen all-too-often when the live prey decides to fight back. All my snakes are on f/t. I would offer a live pink to a baby if needed, but only after I had tried other "tricks" which almost always work for me. Duffy

I'll give you two answers to this that may seem mutually exclusive at first:

1) I never feed live to my snakes unless I'm having trouble getting them to eat dead and I recommend the same to everyone who will listen. It's safer for the snake, it's easier to deal with, it's usually cheaper, and since I can kill the animal faster and more humanely (frozen thawed, even better) than the snake, so much the better. I have, on occasion, fed live rabbits to a python but I would never post a video of it to rile people up.

2) The people who get riled up by those videos are just wrong. That's what happens a billion times a day on this planet, every time a predator eats prey. One of the unintended consequences of shows like the old Wild Kingdom (which I loved and still do) is that too many people think lions chase down a gazel, bite it on the neck and it's over. No blood, no bleating, no eating its genitals while another lion is still holding it by the throat waiting for it to suffocate. A python eating is pretty tame compared to some of the things that happen in "the real world". Half the people that complain about those videos (I'm not referring to you) probably have a house cat in the back yard chewing the wing off a live bird as they speak, but because they don't have to SEE it, it's not a problem for them... Unless they propose exterminating every predatory species on the planet or converting them all over to veggie burgers, complaining about a few people letting their animals do what animals do is just silly.

This concludes my overdue rant for the day...whew...
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What goes up must come down...unless it exceeds escape velocity.

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Jason

Larry is right with point 2. Time was, most people had a realistic view of nature; they lived on farms or at elast closer to the country. Now, to many folks are entirely urban and think of nature in childish story-book terms. "Nature red in tooth and claw" is real . . . Darwin was right. It ain't pretty, but it works. Rabbits scream when they are being constricted as an innate warning to other rabbits . . . and of course the same people who get irate over the very idea of a bull snake squeezing a rat to death are the same folks who call an exterminator when they have rodents in their basement.