Like sure snakes look nice but i would be really fucked up if i had to give it a living or dead rat every half a week or so. Only reason im not vegan is cos of that thin layer of separation between what i eat and the animal it came from, so i dont feel awful everytime i eat, do yall not feel any of that?
it's disturbing that you're clinging to the veneer of separation between meat and the animal it came from.
animals eat each other. it does suck for the mice but like... people don't care about mice getting murdered for venturing into buildings and then suddenly because they see them die it's somehow worse?
like, my kinda An-Prim-ish take is that we're animals kept in 1/10,000th our normal range and suffer a high rate of depression and boredom and overeating and shit, but like, we're doing that to ourselves too so how horrible is it to do it to animals too? like mildly terrible, sure, but like there are also huge benefits about being a kept pet ie getting fed whenever you want it, or never being cold. so like, if you could meaningfully explain the choice to an animal there would be shitloads who knowingly take the blue pill.
it’s disturbing that you’re clinging to the veneer of separation between meat and the animal it came from.
im not clinging, i wish i was vegan, and im trying to get there
people don’t care about mice getting murdered for venturing into buildings
yes i do. i know crying about it doesnt do anything but it hoenstly breaks my heart.
im not clinging, i wish i was vegan, and im trying to get there
Do it, it's way easier than it looks
ok, MOM
im gonna fish out your old corpse and give it to walter 4
for real tho i dont want to tell my parents so i wont start until im out of the house for good
for real tho i dont want to tell my parents so i wont start until im out of the house for good
The idea of having to "come out" as vegan is very weird to me, but you know your situation way better than i do
Some people are weirdly aggressive with vegans, some parents are weirdly controlling about their children's lives. I assume these two things sometimes blend together and it can't be a healthy living situation
Idk, call me all fashioned but if my child said "I'm gonna start cooking vegan meals for myself, I'm willing to pay for fancy replacements. Yes, I know about B12, these are my supplements" I would simply not care
I get it. My parents absolutely would not have allowed me to be vegan growing up and would have mocked me for years if I ever seriously suggested it. Anything critical of Christianity, guns, or hunting was not tolerated, and my parents saw veganism as an ideology that was opposed to all three. They even specifically forbade my brother and I from watching Bambi and The Iron Giant because of they were critical of hunting for sport.
But now that I'm independent, I get to be vegan and they get to deal with it.
animals eat each other. it does suck
Totally irrelevent when the topic is live-feeding. No one is saying that snakes should eat celery.
why do you care whether the mouse was killed by the snake vs in a small semi-industrial setting a few hundred miles away and frozen?
Analyzing the ethics of how snakes eat in the wild is absolutely deranged.
We're talking about animals kept in captivity. Nobody can control what animals do in the wild.
I’ve never done it but like, animals eat animals in the wild all the time. Lots of animals literally can’t not eat meat, if it’s their diet than it’s their diet. I wouldn’t want to watch it either but I can’t really shame nature for being nature.
i still cry myself to sleep about it every once in a while, but i cant really get animals to follow or understand human morality
This is the comment thread we are under. I don't know what you are talking about, but this is explicitly about wild animals, and projecting human morality onto them.
Okay, I understand now. I thought you were referring to my comment about using pre-killed prey for pet snakes.
No, I agree with that. Owning an un-domesticated animal is already bad. Feeding them a live rat does not solve that problem.
Edit: oh, I am under-neath the wrong comment. I understand the confusion. Sorry!
Because asphyxiation by strangulation is one of the most violent ways to die, whereas
carbon dioxideany method of euthanasia is humane by comparison.http://www.anapsid.org/prekill2.html
Contrary to what many people believe, a constricting snake does not crush its prey to death; rather, the snake will tighten its coils every time the prey animal exhales, which squeezes the prey's chest tighter and tighter until it can no longer inhale and smothers.
whereas carbon dioxide
nooooooope
Did you mean carbon monoxide or nitrogen or something? The sensation of suffocation is entirely due to CO2 dissolving into your blood.
Suffocating something with CO2 would literally be torture (I'm pretty sure it's been used as a form of torture, by supplying enough O2 the person never passes out)
Yes, nitrogen is better, but CO2 is still better than strangulation, because strangulation still involves the sensation CO2 dissolving into your blood (plus additional terrors).
we’re animals kept in 1/10,000th our normal range and suffer a high rate of depression and boredom and overeating and shit, but like, we’re doing that to ourselves too so how horrible is it to do it to animals too?
I came to this exact take after my dog (who I loved more than any person) died. I love my brother's dogs and best friend's cats, but I personally will probably never own a pet again.
With live rodents, there's always a risk that the rodent might hurt the snake, biting back or scratching it if it won't die properly before the snake starts eating.
I've only known two reptile people, but they both fed their snakes dead rodents they waggled about with a stick to get the snake interested.
Yeah, I have to feed my tarantula a live cricket once a week. Tarantulas are carnivores, it's natural for them. I only have it because I rescued it from the pet store that didn't know how to take care of it. Yes it's disgusting in a way but that's the way it works, carnivores can't eat anything else.
I used to have a pet tarantula named Minerva Buffington.
May she RIP in whatever Valhalla tarantulas go to.
IMO live crickets are fine, but mammals deserve more ethical considerations than insects.
im pretty sure thay arent domesticated, like most pets outside of cats, dogs and farm animals.
they're saying that cat's are only dubiously domesticated now and I find that both very reasonable and also hilarious
they are not domesticated but almost all of them are bred in captivity also so I'm not sure whether they'd be able to reintroduce to a wild habitat
Just get a pet rat and skip the snake. They're a thousand times more intelligent, and a million times more affectionate (because reptiles lack a limbic system). Did I mention that they also laugh when you tickle them?
I think the fucked up thing is keeping a snake in a constricted non-natural habitat, If mice are their natural diet then that's not the bad part
And without taking a side couldn't the same argument be extended to people feeding their cats fish?
live fish or food with fish in it? i've never known someone to feed their cat straight up fish though as a regular diet though. Ill give my cats a little bit of tuna if i make a sandwich but thats not very often.
food with fish in it, but then that brings up whether that's actually worse to do than feeding them live fish(being a part of natural cat diet, and even domesticated cats will go after live food if available)
cats should probably be fed wet food mostly. Male cats get urinary problems easily from not drinking too much water plus dry food. My cats likes dry food more though so i put water in it now. Once you have a $700 vet bill for a cat you realize what a luxury it is.
a) yes it's gross too, but people also eat fish and prawns
b) fish and prawns are gross
shut up, they have big puppy eyes, and they look alive, i dont like eating them
They'll be a lot cuter once they've evolved into crabs, though.
yep still gross. also, fuck you, i didnt have to see at a picture of dozens of newborn mice sold as food.
And without taking a side couldn’t the same argument be extended to people feeding their cats fish?
Who feeds their cats live fish??
ok yes thank you so much for the great explanation, but doesnt it weird you out to feed rats when you also care for a family of rats?
The same goes for buying live animals.
are you talking in this whole paragraph about being animals as pets or as food?
oh ok, thank you, i thought you went throught the vetting process, looking for lonely animals with problems (i have a three legged cat and she is a joy) and then tossing them to the reptiles, lol
Yes. You should listen to the Vegan Vanguard podcast. IMO, animal liberation is something that we will have to seriously talk about once we liberate humanity from capital.
This moderate incrementalism sickens me. Radical, immediate liberation of your diet or you're a counter-revolutionary!
Heaven forbid you have to do anything difficult.
Don't worry, I'll go vegan just as soon as global capitalism is overthrown. Any day now.
I don't see how going vegan now would get in the way of whatever organizing efforts you are doing.
My third grade science teacher had an eastern racer that she would feed live mice to during class (with parent approval). I never found it disturbing because it was properly explained. Sure it's violent, and little mice are cute. But life, and death, are both natural and violent.
The unnatural part is caging a snake to keep as a pet. The snake eating a mouse is the natural part.
🤷🏻♂️ Your own sensitivities to that sort of thing are fine, and honestly expected. But snakes, and most animals, don't share them. So don't expect a snake to care about a mouse. It's delicious sushi to them.
The unnatural part is caging a snake to keep as a pet. The snake eating a mouse is the natural part.
It's also unnatural to:
- Feed the snake a fully domesticated animal (which store bought mice and rats are)
- Drop an animal directly next to the snake (which stresses it out), instead of having it hunt and stalk its prey
- Feed inside a small enclosure in which the prey has zero chance of escape. The majority of predation attempts in the wild end in failure.
If true nature was the goal anyway, then you would be feeding your pets dirty pond water. So why not feed pre-killed, like the experts recommend? http://www.anapsid.org/prekill.html
I dislike the people who choose to do like your science teacher because they're motivated by a desire to see a "cool show", but then they hide behind the defense of nature if someone questions the animal welfare of the prey (for which they are also responsible).
I fully agree actually. I wasn't trying to defend it, and your point is exactly what I meant with those two sentences. I don't think the snake should be kept as a pet at all.
i mean sure i guess but i would be fucked up to see the sort of "life and death" deal at school normalized (yes i know it's already normal). also i dont really give a shit about the snake being bad, but about the mouse getting digested alive and shit. (CW horrible violence) i once saw a video of a komodo dragon biting a pregnant deer open and eating the very developed baby deer whole, and i just dont understand how yall dont see nature as this horrible macabre thing.
Like I said, your own sensitivities are expected. But that's what happens in nature. It's fuckin brutal and hella fuckin metal. I recognize it as macabre, but I also recognize and embrace my own mortality. Life, and death, are both equally important, and two sides of the same coin.
"If you constantly run from death, you'll never really live." - My great Grandpa
I promise you, if it came right down to it, you'd kill a mouse and eat it too. Survival is a hell of a thing, and hunger is a powerful drug. And it's the only drug that snake knows.
I guess part of it might be because I come from a very rural area, and the realities of life and death were very close to the surface. The nearest hospital was an hour away, so help wasn't always coming. And from an early age I was taught to appreciate and respect both sides of the coin.
stop talking about the snake being bad and me recognizing myself with it as if i could change that!!! i feel bad for the mouse!!! i'd be scared to my bones if i knew that animals would come around and kill me any day of the week by suffucating me and liquefying me.
i still cry myself to sleep about it every once in a while, but i cant really get animals to follow or understand human morality
It's not a sad truth and it won't change unless we completely flip the ecosystem on its head which we have no right to do.
Exactly. The "man must conquer nature" psychosis people in the West have needs to end.
Family member used to own pet pythons when I were a kid. You absolutely had to feed it live mice. It was pretty gruesome. Some Snakes can eat dead, frozen and thawed mice, but some individuals will ignore anything that's not live prey.
They don't all like eating those though, sometimes you have to feed them live.
From what I understand just because of knowing reptile keepers, they eventually do get used to frozen but sometimes can get picky again. But also, frozen is more expensive than keeping a colony of rats to feed from and has health risks too so live is generally the safer and healthier for the snake option.
has health risks too
Live rodents are a injury risk to the snake. There is nothing unhealthy about frozen rodents, just like there is nothing unhealthy about frozen food for people. It preserves nutrients.
http://www.anapsid.org/prekill.html
I see. I have no idea what that would be called or if it has any benefits for people who don't breed reptiles though
I mean, the reptiles kept at my house are all on frozen already (they're not mine, my roommates, he's aiming to breed them) but another friend also looking to breed his has a colony of rats going to feed like 14ish ball pythons.
obv these are both just people doing "the cool snake thing" and will go down the level up rabbit hole while there's media and potential profit and the kinda normalization of snake keeping.... and like I guess most snake keepers aren't doing this? idk, the other snake keeper I know has one snake that she completely forgot about once she had a baby. so like, I'm not loving my view of the pipeline and I def think the whole thing is a pyramid scheme that's gonna fall apart and leave people with a shitload of reptiles they're keeping as investments that aren't worth a fraction they paid for them... but who knows when exactly that'll happen? because uhh I know some people who might be interested in knowing that. and one of them owes me money lol
