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Ethics of snake food...
It is not my intent to start a bitter discussion, I just wanted to share my views on feeding mammals to reptiles, and why I stopped keeping snakes.
I kept snakes for over ten years, from when I was 5 until I was 16. I had numerous different species in my collection. One day I was feeding a FT rat to my ball python, and I looked at the rat, and I had a sudden onset of extreme empathy for the animal.
I thought to myself, this rat can feel emotions. It can become emotionally attached to other rats or to a human. It feels fear, happiness. My snake does not. Am I doing the right thing? Should I be contributing to the untimely death of a higher animal to feed a lower animal? I found that I could no longer condone this practice. I decided to give up snake keeping once and for all.
In my early twenties, I thought I'd give it another shot with a coastal carpet python, but I found that I still felt the same way, so I gave the snake to a fellow hobbyist and threw in the towel.
Does anybody else have ethical issues with reptile keeping?
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