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.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    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.

    • Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone
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      3 days ago

      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

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        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.

        • Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone
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          3 days ago

          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