Mice are icky yucky creatures in the wild, making great messes of your food and spreading diseases, but they are otherwise little and harmless furry things. Does it make you uneasy at all to think of little baby mice being fed alive to snakes that kill them by swallowing and digesting them?
2006-07-14 05:04:20 · 19 answers · asked by reluctant 3 in Pets ➔ Other - Pets
In answer to a poster's query, nope. I'm an unrepentant meat-eater. I've also set out rat poison and mice traps for the little buggers, quite successfully eliminating messes and and little scurrying brown blurs when I walk into the kitchen suddenly.
It does make me a little sad to drop those broken little bodies into the toilet.
2006-07-14 05:49:22 · update #1
Wow, there sure are a lot of good answers. It's going to be very difficult to pick any one of them as "best". Yahoo! Answers really should allow marking multiple answers as being informative and helpful. Oh, well ... anyone who reads this question and answers later after a search can see all the thoughtful replies by you guys. ^^
2006-07-14 05:55:21 · update #2
snakes gotta eat
2006-07-14 05:08:26 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
I do not agree with feeding snakes live mice, rats, or rabbits for many reasons. The main one being that it is cruel to both the predator and prey, as there have been many cases reported of the prey animal fighting back. When faced with a life or death situation, even a small mouse can cause a lot of damage to a snake (i've heard more than one story of a mouse attacking a snake's eyes and blinding it before being eaten). All prey food should be pre-killed.
I do agree that snakes have to eat, but using the circle of life as backup for an argument does not count. Yes, snakes would eat rodents in the wild, but they would also have to hunt them down and find them, and that's where the whole "survival of the fittest" theory comes in. In captivity, even the fatest, strongest mouse could end up in the tank of a hungry snake, which could also, as I said above, spell disaster for the snake. Mice that you can buy pre-killed from a pet store were still killed more humanely than they would be if you put them in with the snake while they are alive.
Also, wild mice are so far removed from their domestic counterparts that they cannot even be compared. Everything in the wild carries diseases, mice are just so infamous because they can breed quickly, and are very adaptable. Pet mice and feeder mice today have been bred in captivity for generations and have developed a much calmer disposition, do not carry the disease that their wild cousins do, and have lost almost all ability to survive in the wild.
2006-07-14 05:16:48 · answer #2 · answered by Right On 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I agree with Aaryn - the circle of life argument is completely off-target when you're talking about a predator and prey confined in an aquarium, where the mouse has absolutely no chance of escape. In a natural situation the mouse would have a good chance of surviving. In fact, most times in the wild a predator misses catching their prey - maybe they only succeed 2 or 3 times out of every 10 tries. I'm perfectly aware that nature is "cruel" by human standards, but you're not dealing with nature when you're feeding a domesticated captive reptile, living in a glass box.
And for those people who answered "it's just like people eating cows, etc.", one act doesn't excuse or justify the other. I decided to become a vegetarian when I asked myself one day whether I would still eat chicken, beef or whatever if I had to go and kill the animal myself - instead of just buying it conveniently plastic-wrapped in the store.
If nothing else, don't those people who feed live baby mice to their reptiles feel ANY sorrow when they see such a helpless little creature in that situation? It troubles me alot to think they don't care.
2006-07-14 08:06:21 · answer #3 · answered by Birdie 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is a normal part of nature and by feeding mice to a snake it is completing the life circle. People who care for their snakes feed a whole mouse or rat to give the snake all the nutrients it needs, really our dogs and cats should be eating helpless sheep, rabbits and chickens to get what their digestive systems really need. If a person is uneasy about feeding live mice they can feed dead, frozen thawed mice or equivalent pieces of cooked chicken but there needs to me many supplements involved if they are fed chicken.~Christine RVT
2006-07-14 05:44:07 · answer #4 · answered by Christine N 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Don't feed love food to snakes because snakes can get hurt, feed them frozen mice and pretend that's alive for the snake
2016-03-27 05:05:39 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Snakes gotta eat too!
Seriously though, if it didn't bother the owner of the snake at least a little bit, I'd be worried about the person. It's one of the necessary evils of taking care of a pet. I know there is beef and chicken in my dogs' food and besides being extremely thankful that I didn't have to kill the cow or chicken myself, is there really a difference between feeding your dog and feeding a snake mice?
2006-07-14 05:12:57 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Are you a vegetarian? All snakes are carnivores, it's how they survive. I'll bet you like big cats(tigers,lions cougars), ever see them rip apart a lamb or a fawn? Ever hear of the Black Plague? Spread by the fleas carried by rats & mice. I'll bet the people of the middle ages would liked to have seen snakes eat all the mice & rats in the world(cute babies included) to prevent a plague that killed millions.
2006-07-14 05:19:12 · answer #7 · answered by preacher55 6 · 1⤊ 1⤋
mice are the lower part of the food chain. I used to raise my own for my snakes and other reptiles but they stink so. Now I just buy them online pre-frozen or go to the pet store and get them. I used to feel bad for them but it faded over time. Wild mice are also very harmfull for reptiles as far a parasites also. They are a very big carrier of worms that transfer to other animals. If your dog or cat eats a wild dead mouse chances are about 98% that it just contracted worms.
2006-07-14 07:30:12 · answer #8 · answered by dogdude1969 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, it's part of the circle of life. I had Chinese water dragons that ate live fish and mice. When I fed them mice, the mice were frozen (and thawed). I bought the frozen mice from a local company that solely provided rats and mice for laboratories. The mice they sold for food were "humanely" killed by gassing. It was an instaneous death. Now, if you really want to see something barbaric, go to a slaughter house and witness what man does to animals in the name of "food."
2006-07-14 05:37:05 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
I personally think they should feed their snakes something else.Well I dont really favor mice but to just drop a live mouse down a snakes throat its still wrong
2006-07-14 05:10:10 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
I usually prefer to feed my snake little neighbor girls. But hey, thats just me. I get to kill two birds with one stone like that. A. I get to feed the snake. B. I get rid of the pestiferous neighbor girls. See? everyone wins!
2006-07-14 05:38:50 · answer #11 · answered by Bullmoose 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋