euthanasia - once & for all

[augerdvm]

Have read many threads in ssnakess recently about freezing yor herps to euthanize.

Here is the link for the American Veterinary Medical Assoc (AVMA) and their stand on various HUMANE techniques for euthanasia.

FREEZING IS INHUMANE !!!!!!!!

Hope this sheds some light

Daren Auger DVM

link:

http://www.avma.org/resources/euthanasia.pdf

[BoidKeeper]

Thanks for sharing. I think every herper should read it.
Cheers,
Trevor

[timminsreptiles]

pretty interesting......Lucas

[coldblooded]

it's a no, no....

[snakehunter]

HMM not working for me (link) But I whole heartedly aggree thata freezer is NOT a humane way to go, I wish some one had told me this earlier when I didnt know what to do with my leftover pinks. NOW I know and there is NO WAY I would go back to my old way.

[Manitoban Herps]

At my 2 brothers and dad's work, (they work at a hog barn) they have 2 methods:

1.) Is to use a gun that shoots a bolt, doesn't always work on the first try so it's not the greatest.

2.) Dry ice, very good method for all animals.

[Brent Strande]

Formation of ice crystals on the skin and in tissues of an animal may cause pain or distress.

Is there any proof to back this claim or is it merely a hypothesis?

[JeffT]

pretty interesting read.

[coldblooded]

Actually, freezing pinkies (just pinkies) is better than using co2 because the pinkies are naturally quite resistant to asphyxiation...

Mike

[Brent Strande]

That I don't believe... they are a warm-blooded creature. Pinkies should NOT be frozen to death.

[Will]

Great link, and interesting read.

The method that seems to be prefered(at least on this board anyways), CO2, isn't explained very well. The article doesn't say anything about exposure times really. Unconsciousness occurs quickly, but "the exposure times for euthanization are prolonged".

Just for clarity, how long would you expose a Cornsnake for...? A BCI...? A Beardie...? A Burm...? They would likely all vary according to body size, metabolism, respiratory rates, etc.

Perhaps the good Doctor can clear this up...?

Cheers.

[coldblooded]

I read the pinkie freezing thing the other day and now I cannot find it... It did say that freezing worked well for pinkies, and only pinkies... but I found this just now and does make more sense...

taken from here:

http://vet.ucr.edu/Primer/Biomethodology/Euthanasia.htm

"Carbon Dioxide

Carbon dioxide inhalation can be suitable for all species, provided acceptable equipment is used. Practically, its use is limited to rodents and other mammals weighing less than about 500 grams. Compressed CO2 from cylinders is the only acceptable source. Dry ice is no longer permitted as a CO2 source.

...continued exposure to CO2 for 10-30 minutes after breathing has stopped (newborn of most species are more resistant than adults to CO2 and will require exposure times 2-3 times as long to assure death.) "

[Cookie]

First of all common sense tells me freezing anything to death is wrong! Pay the few bucks to have them put down professionaly. You atleast owe the little creature that much don't you think?....After all you took the responsibility to care for it, if it's a monitary issue then maybe you should not have any herps.

Second of all! Most of the puting down of the creatures was simply because "they got out" and the cat got it etc etc etc. That was'nt your herps fault! I have had herps for over 20 years and i have NEVER had an escape! before investing in a herp try having the escape proof enclosure built, bought, or ready! Here's another example i have over 4000 rubbermaids with mice in them i have care sheets for each bin i know when they ate how much they ate how many times there bins been clean a week given fresh water daily offspring counts dates of birth etc etc and i have yet!, to have an escape with over 20.000 mice in stock and about that figure in fuzzy hopper and pinky. when we kill our mice we use co2 and we don't kill pinky mice! think about the freezer deal sound sadistic to me seeing when you get hypothermia and live to tell the story it's always a painful one. co2 is known as the silent killer in homes among people well it works faster and there is no trauma. co2 setups are exspensive but like i said you wacked out 200.00 on a reptile or 6.00 on a anole they deserve the same respect ......like seriously we are talking 20.00 for a vet to do it!.... i would go that route as a few times i thought the reptile needed to be put down and been told the reptile can be saved ( reptiles brought to us in distress) all i can say is please give your herps that much as to have it done right

[mice_unlimited]

I 100% agree Cookie

[M_surinamensis]

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...nasia+freezing

My thoughts can be found here in detail. It's a good read (not just my part either). I'll post a couple of the less responsive bits but to get an idea of what I was responding to and why, it's worth the few minutes it might take to read the thread.

When euthanizing an animal... any animal... I choose the method which is most convenient for me. I never go out of my way to be curel of course, nor do I enojoy watching an animal suffer... so the most convenient method will always be legal and in some manner humane. However this does mean that when euthanizing rodents for use as feeders, I won't go to the effort of setting up a CO2 chamber... When euthanizing a fish or herp, I'm not going to pay a vet a few hundred bucks to put it down with a lethal injection and if the time ever comes when I have to euthanize a terrestrial invert, I will likely just step on it.

That being said however... Freezing is not a humane way of euthanizing *some* animals. Humans, in our conceit, tend to classify and categorize everything using our own terms, our own experiences and our own biology. It's why anthropomorphism is so rampant- the majority are truly unable to value something without forcing it into human terms. Freezing is supposedly a painless way for a human being to die... I have never tried it, so this is not firsthand experience but the brain apparantly shuts down physical sensation after a point and a sort of comatose sleep occurs prior to death. There is evidence which strongly suggests this is NOT the case in many other animals (including other mammals) and that consciousness will remain until death sets in... slowly, as the flesh progressively freezes and dies.

I truly love reptiles, amphibians, fish, inverts and even some other mammals- but I do not value them as highly as I value humans. If forced with a choice between the lives of long term pets that I have kept for decades and come to regard as being an intrinsic part of my life or an anonymous stranger, the human wins every time... I say this to explain that I do put a lesser importance on the potential for suffering. I also firmly believe that many animals do not HAVE the same potential for suffering that has been shown to exist in mammals and birds. A reptile has no concept of self awareness, no ability to conceptualize abstracts such as the future... Much of the suffering from a human standpoint comes from worried anticipation, we worry about shutting off the brain, the "self" rather than physical damage. While a reptile certainly has instincts for self preservation and CAN feel pain, evidence strongly suggests (The evidence i choose to believe anyway) that pain is merely used as an indicator of physical damage, which can sometimes trigger an instinctive response if there is a present and obvious cause but otherwise... Well, we're all aware that a herp will sit on a hot rock while it's flesh cauterizes and the burns even go so far as to penetrate the body cavity, which certainly seems to mean something about what the brain of a herp does or does not do with certain sensory information.

So... I have put animals in the freezer in the past as a way to euthanize them... I likely will again in the future if it's the most convenient of avaliable options even though it is never my first choice when presented with a range of choices. Frankly I preffer to break the neck or dislocate the spinal cord when given the option but there are some species where I simply do not know enough about the way the skeleton is structured to make this safe or easy. I know how to snap a rat's neck and the animal is dead before it has a chance to understand what's happening... I can't say the same about most lizards... Certainly enough force could easily be applied to a gecko to make it something of a moot point... Can the same be said for an adult tegu or monitor? Would pulling or twisting be more effective for a snake? Does angling the grip help or should it be a straight movement? If I screw it up and merely paralyze it, is it okay for me to put it into the freezer?

Another...

This is drifting back towards my argument made on page one so I think I'll chime in a bit once more...

As I said, I have frozen reptiles in the past and likely will again in the future should occassion arise when I feel it's appropriate. I do so because it's the quickest method for many which I am certain will cause death- as I said, I have no idea how to best go about disloacting the spinal column from the brain for most species and wouldn't care to attempt it in that the idea of euthanization is to end suffering or cull and it's not something I find myself doing frequently enough to find it worth practicing.

I also noted that evidence strongly suggests that consciousness remains during the freezing process up to a point for herps but that brings up a really big question... What exactly is consciousness? As Darin noted it can be very difficult to determine if a reptile is even ALIVE given certain standards at certain points (c'mon now, for all of you who have dealt with large numbers in a resale/import situation, how many of you have had to poke something to see if it was alive? I know I have and I'd like to think I've got a better grasp than most) but further it leads to questions about how we define pain.

This is going to be a lot of conjecture on my part, it's an opinion and a really poorly formed hypothesis and all my evidence is pretty circumstantial, if you want to debate it, please feel free but bear in mind that I'm not going to be married to the following statements and might just stop arguing because it no longer interests me to continue...

I submit that pain is merely sensory information, what any given organism DOES with pain is more important than the condition of pain existing. For organisms which can be said to be sentient (if not always very bright) and have self awareness, there is an emotion associated with the physical sensation, that is SELF which is being damaged, it's frightening, it raises doubt about the future it's a major issue... For organisms which are not self aware, it's pure sensory imput with no more meaning than visual stimulus or scent. It *might* trigger a behavioral response if a cause is immediate and the survival instincts have developed one. Meaning if a response to the sensory information was appropriate and animals which developed it ended up forming a larger part of the breeding population, in example, something bites a reptile, escape is a successful response, animals which escaped survived, the instinctive response grew stronger and more dominant within the population. For situations outside such immediate sensory information or where no instinctive response could be developed, the pain is meaningless. As an example... most reptiles equate heat with light intensity to some degree (some don't of course) and will thermoregulate based on light intensity rather than temperature, such as a bearded dragon basking under a flourescent light, even though an area with heat tape under it in the dark is warmer... Given a removal of the associated conditions (light) a diurnal species will burn itself to the point of death on a hotrock or malfunctioning chunk of flexxwatt and not express ANY noticeable response to the sensory information (when the gut is cauterizing, I think it's safe to assume it causes pain). There is nothing in the behavioral pattern which can identify the proper response to end the sensory information so the animal cooks.

I'd place freezing to death in a similar category, it may cause pain, but given a basic premise of non-self awareness (another debate if it's a point of contention) and no instinctive response towards the pain information, it's meaningless pain because it doesn't cause any distress. Yes, this means I'm arguing that it's okay to cause pain IF it can be reasonabaly believed that the pain is not understood. I think I explained what I meant fairly well, but if there's someone who wants clarification, I'll certainly try to explain it better if it'll cut down on the hate mail.