I’ve stumbled across videos on YouTube that show snake owners feeding them a live rate or rabbit or whatever. Some people in the comments say well that’s just nature, others say it’s animal abuse. What do you think?
On reddit I saw a snake owner saying what they normally do is kill the prey beforehand with a CO2 chamber and freeze it, and that there’s no reason to feed live. Like the snakes don’t need it. If that’s true I guess it’s needless suffering then. Weird that these videos are so available on YouTube then.
I will preface this by saying that I feed my snake frozen-thawed
That said, I’ve killed enough pest mice in my lifetime that I no longer feel sympathy for them. They’re cute for sure, but they’re not so cute when they break your oven/range by building a nest in it and shitting everywhere, or by eating all of your food and costing you hundreds of dollars. The only traps that work for city mice are glue traps, and I usually finish them off with a crossbow so they don’t suffer for long.
Regardless I’m personally against live feeding. A live animal can cause harm to a snake. It will also tend to shit and pee everywhere because it’s terrified, rightfully so. I’ve also seen enough mice die from poison traps that I would never EVER give my snake a wild mouse