I’ve stumbled across videos on YouTube that show snake owners feeding them a live rate or rabbit or whatever. Some people in the comments say well that’s just nature, others say it’s animal abuse. What do you think?
On reddit I saw a snake owner saying what they normally do is kill the prey beforehand with a CO2 chamber and freeze it, and that there’s no reason to feed live. Like the snakes don’t need it. If that’s true I guess it’s needless suffering then. Weird that these videos are so available on YouTube then.
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.