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RULES (updated 01/22/25)
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I used to keep a lot of spiders and they will only eat live prey, so I'd say no. However if pre-killing was an option, I'd use it.
Also: Don't use mammals as spider food. It's a total mess and not very nice to clean up. I tried it once but stuck to crickets after that.
Are there spiders that eat mammals??
The larger tarantulas can eat small rodents or birds.
There's no way this is going to end well.
Here's an ugly truth.
If a person is going to take on the responsibility of caring for an animal, they are supposed to give it all the care it needs. No limits to that.
Snakes as pets are a horrible idea. They can't be domesticated, the best you can hope for is a snake that's not aggro. This isn't to say they aren't just as wonderful as domesticated animals, they are. But there's really no such thing as a pet snake, only a captive snake.
That's not a value judgement. I'm not saying that it's bad or wrong to keep reptiles, IDGAF as long as they're being kept healthily in all respects.
Which means that nothing involved in keeping a snake is "natural" at all, because the snake would never strike up a deal with a human to exchange food for company. Again, natural doesn't equal good or better, I'm using the term in the limited definition here.
Trying to pretend that feeding a snake live animals is better for the snakes is, frankly, bullshit. They're in an enclosed space, so the truth is that the risks outweigh any rewards in terms of the snake's well being. Even if live food provides them with some degree of mental health benefit, small mammals fight if they're alive and awake. Snakes get injured this way, regularly.
Since there's other ways to stimulate them into eating dead mammals without that risk, it's a pretty shitty caregiver that opts for live feeding.
Has nothing to do with the idea of animal abuse because before you even get to the question of that, the practice falls short of its stated goal: giving the snake the best overall care while captive.
As far as why they're available on YouTube, the platform allows a wide range of stuff that's not necessarily in line with YouTube's stated criteria. The company doesn't give a fuck about animal welfare, it cares about selling ad space. It doesn't care about anything else. That's because it's a company being run by yet another dickhead ceo that, by choice or by necessity of fiduciary duty, does not give a fuck about anything other than stock values. That's always the answer to anything "why does YouTube X?"
For real, if YouTube's owners thought that videos of decapitation and rape wouldn't lose them ad sales, they would not care.
Do you eat meat from the grocery store or a restaurant? Are you 100% certain of its sourcing? I would argue factory farms are far crueler long torture than a snake eating a mouse which happens quickly. Not saying any one is humane, but I don’t think it’s the worst animal abuse to focus on.
I think with animal welfare, it matters less how the animal dies, and more the quality of life before death. Of course, death by torture or something would be bizarre and inexcusable. Some animals, even specific individual animals, need live prey if they are to be kept in captivity. It'd be more productive to advocate for better living conditions than "comfortable" deaths.
they normally do is kill the prey beforehand with a CO2 chamber and freeze it
...That's really not any better. Using CO2 to suffocate an animal is every bit as cruel as allowing a snake to constrict it's prey.
Yeah CO2 is the only chemical put lungs detect right?
You would feel the suffocation as it happened and the panic.
Now Helium that's a way to go
My understanding is that there's a mechanism in most mammals for detecting a build up of CO2 in the blood. Normally you'd exhale CO2, but breathing it in increases concentration, which leads to feelings of panic and suffocation. With any inert gas--helium, hydrogen, nitrogen, argon, xenon, etc.--you aren't getting CO2 levels building up, so you don't even realize that you're suffocating. I think that can even be the case with carbon monoxide, although that has other problems as well. Regardless, CO2 suffocation is definitely not a human way of killing an animal. Or a person.
That's the mechanism that causes a panic cycle in hyperventilating too right?
You're panicking so you hyperventilate increasing CO2 levels causing more panic.
On the upside when you pass out you go back to breathing normally and don't die.
So my mother used to say to my brother when he would do it
If you have a snake that you can feed dead to, then do so. Many snakes, however, will not eat dead prey. Luckily, I have a rescued ball python that doesn't mind a bit. We buy 2 dozen frozen rats at a time. It lasts almost a year, and our particular snake is fine with it. Others I have known, are NOT.
It's not nature, since there is a snake owner feeding the snake with live animals. This is not how it naturally happens. I'm not against pets, even pet snakes, but this is just arguing in bad faith.
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
I'd say if you really really cared about animals, you wouldnt keep one in the first place. Ofc it's far less cruel to keep an animal in a vivarium or a house and treat it well, than to give it as a prey to another animal. But you would not have the dilemna if it was free in the first place.
I also don't think the "it's natural" argument is logically speaking a correct counter argument for the cruelty problem. Death, disease and suffering are natural, but it can still be cruel for us to let them happen. Ofc there is a whole gradient of "cruelty" here, from not intervening to prevent suffering on an animal to inflicting it on purpose for no reason. But I think what matters is not that it's natural, it's that is a choice of us to do or not to do.
I worked as an assistant at a zoo when I was younger, and we gave the snakes dead mice, but heated up. If given cold or room temperature, the snakes wouldn't eat them
The idea that you would take a living creature and treat it like a possession is disgusting and inhumane
Pet ownership should be completely banned, I realized that's an unpopular decision and people love dogs - that's fine but I still hold this opinion
Most of the abuse that animals suffer is a result of the systems that funnel pets to owners, and in any way participating in that makes one guilty of said abuse
The amount of times I have talked with vegans who own and advocate for pet ownership…
People have completely arbitrary values, and they are subject to change on a whim if the person just wants something
People don't seem to get that values aren't something to continually shift situationally