How do you cope with the reality that people are feeding rats to their reptiles?

I just can't take it.. I'm a very imaginative person and my OCD causes me to think about the most horrible things on a regular basis and obsess about them. Ever since I started owning rats this cruel reality has really been on the forefront of my mind and I can't seem to make peace with it.

I've had arguments with snake owners about this which only enhances my anger to unhealthy levels. Even after I tell them the risks live feeders pose to their snakes, they still vehemently try to defend what they do. It's as if they're willing to put their pet at risk just for the sick pleasure of seeing these little ratties die... I just don't get it. I'll never get it. And just thinking about how many rat breeders that just want their babies to go to a good home that have to worry about these people using them for food just depresses me.

So with that in mind, how do you guys cope with this..? I know animal abuse happens to every type of pet imaginable but legal cruelty is something altogether different for me.

You're not alone. I don't cope with it one little bit. I'm extremely sensitive to the situations and suffering of animals. It's a nightmare for me. When I think about it, I feel panicky, my stomach knots up and I just want to cry. I feel so distressed when I hear something horrible that I can't eat and want to scream sometimes. I struggle with it all the time. It's a horrible thing to have to live with. It makes me hug my babies all that much tighter and love them even more. I say a little prayer for all the animals.

Claireybell2477 said:

You're not alone. I don't cope with it one little bit. I'm extremely sensitive to the situations and suffering of animals. It's a nightmare for me. When I think about it, I feel panicky, my stomach knots up and I just want to cry. I feel so distressed when I hear something horrible that I can't eat and want to scream sometimes. I struggle with it all the time. It's a horrible thing to have to live with. It makes me hug my babies all that much tighter and love them even more. I say a little prayer for all the animals.

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I've always felt that this issue stems from something deeper than the need to feed snakes. I've noticed that a great deal of people have prejudices against rats because of misconceptions and/or stereotypes that they're "dumb, dirty, diseased and/or vermin" - so people don't think much of ruthlessly killing them. It's really upsetting.

But all that aside.. I still don't understand why so many of these social, loving and intelligent creatures have to be sacrificed for a cold blooded vanity pet that could never love it's owner and shouldn't even be kept as a pet to begin with. It seems like the ultimate oxymoron

It just baffles and upsets me to no end. I guess there isn't really anything I can do to cope with it besides taking solace in the fact that I've given my girls a fantastic life.. but even then, it's a horrible situation and I don't think I'll ever be able to not be upset about it.

I totally agree but I'm going to refrain from commenting further because I know my words will upset the reptile lovers in our membership. Because...I just can't choose nice words about it. lol

jorats said:

I totally agree but I'm going to refrain from commenting further because I know my words will upset the reptile lovers in our membership. Because...I just can't choose nice words about it. lol

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My opinion about keeping reptiles as pets is kind of... varied, although I still consider them wild animals, and as such I consider it cruel to keep them confined instead of being allowed to roam free in the wild - but people seem to like them and I can't even say I have a particular problem with feeding them humanely killed, frozen feeder mice/rats. As rat lovers we all know how fast these little guys breed and in terms of supply and demand there sadly aren't enough homes for these babies and unless the pet chains stop overbreeding them, which they won't.. there'll always be excess population and as a result a ton of babies that will get put down because nobody wanted to take them home. It's a sad reality.

But personally I would never own a reptile because I don't really see the point in taking care of a cold blooded vanity pet that can't offer any love or companionship to it's owner.. but to each his own. The problem I have is feeding them live rodents. It's just pointless and horrifically cruel - not to mention dangerous for the reptile. With all those things in mind, it baffles me that it's not considered animal abuse by law.

Anyway sorry for the tl;dr, just thinking out loud.

I am a reptile lover -- BUT I have always chosen the ones that do not require a diet of rats and/or mice.

Yes - they have to eat too but none of them will ever get a rat from ME!!!:scolding:
I prefer the vegetarians myself.

The problem is there is no humane way to kill them unless done by a vet and that gas is not good for reptiles. CO2 is NOT a humane way to kill them unlike what the reptile peeps think and say about it. Home base feeder breeders will simply put them in the freezer alive which is extremely inhumane as well. So...ya, that's why I don't have anything nice to say about it.

jorats said:

The problem is there is no humane way to kill them unless done by a vet and that gas is not good for reptiles. CO2 is NOT a humane way to kill them unlike what the reptile peeps think and say about it. Home base feeder breeders will simply put them in the freezer alive which is extremely inhumane as well. So...ya, that's why I don't have anything nice to say about it.

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This is exactly how I feel as well.

jorats said:

CO2 Home base feeder breeders will simply put them in the freezer alive which is extremely inhumane as well. So...ya, that's why I don't have anything nice to say about it.

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That's discusting & CRUEL!!! I just can't even fathom how a person could do that to an animal!
Ratties are so sweet. I think if these people that do these cruel things would actually get to know a rat, see their sweet personalities & see how they crave affection from us, that maybe it might change their minds.

My biology teacher keeps snake in the classroom and feeds only live. She does so in front of the classes, althoughshe's stopped in the class periods where i am, and lets kids do it. For the smaller snakes she bangs the pinkies against a desk to 'shock' them into being not as lively and to not hurt her snake. I've tried to talk to her about feeding frozen, but she laughs it off and claims that it's 'unnatural' and a snake would never eat a frozen anything because they aren't 'scavengers' and require food that is alive and moving. So much wrong with that argument, and you'd think a BIOLOGY teacher would know more about her own pets. smh

I recognize that snakes need to eat as well, and some people enjoy keeping them. But I do not think feeding them live is ok, nor is it safe for either animal. The worst part to me about feeding live mice/rats is not even that the animal is being killed, but that the people do it often seem to get this sick pleasure from it.. Like the fact that your snake can kill a baby rat does not make you tough.

That being said, I'm far more disturbed by how we raise and kill our own food animals.

Aida said:

My biology teacher keeps snake in the classroom and feeds only live. She does so in front of the classes, althoughshe's stopped in the class periods where i am, and lets kids do it. For the smaller snakes she bangs the pinkies against a desk to 'shock' them into being not as lively and to not hurt her snake. I've tried to talk to her about feeding frozen, but she laughs it off and claims that it's 'unnatural' and a snake would never eat a frozen anything because they aren't 'scavengers' and require food that is alive and moving. So much wrong with that argument, and you'd think a BIOLOGY teacher would know more about her own pets. smh

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Not sure what your options are but can you start a petition, complain to the school administration, involve the police or SPCA .... If she can not be stopped legally, the school should be stopping her .... actually imo she should lose her job.

Teaching students to be cruel to animals is way beyond wrong.

If nothing else, why not a online petition?

Aida said:

My biology teacher keeps snake in the classroom and feeds only live. She does so in front of the classes, althoughshe's stopped in the class periods where i am, and lets kids do it. For the smaller snakes she bangs the pinkies against a desk to 'shock' them into being not as lively and to not hurt her snake. I've tried to talk to her about feeding frozen, but she laughs it off and claims that it's 'unnatural' and a snake would never eat a frozen anything because they aren't 'scavengers' and require food that is alive and moving. So much wrong with that argument, and you'd think a BIOLOGY teacher would know more about her own pets. smh

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So its unnatural to feed frozen but not to keep it confined to a tank being gawked at by children? Or to smack the poor rat before its fed? If you're needing to 'stun' the rat then thats not natural either! Her argument is completely void of intelligence.
I would contact either the school board, the SPCA as to the treatment of the rat or whoever you can. The store I work at has refused to sell reptiles as we sell 'companion animals' and therefore certain 'pets' don't fall into that category which is reptiles in general.
I realize snakes need to eat too and yes they were designed to eat rats and mice but they were also designed to have to hunt OUTSIDE for their prey which would be an injured or slow animal that might otherwise meet a slow painful death.
Humans want to play God way too often!
I'm inundated with pregnant feeder mice right now. I have 5 females that are due this week! All by the same male! The other female has 16, 3 week old babes. As cute as they are I also have to find homes for them all!!!! All because of careless people who only saw a dollar amount in these girls. But once they realized the cost of raising them they decided single purchasing was actually easier. The poor Momma with 16 had a wee runty boy who is 1/3 the body weight of his siblings and as soon as the other Momma gives birth I want to see if she'll surrogate this boy. He has lots of energy but hasn't gained much weight since birth like his siblings.
I'm ranting but its just evidence to why snakes especially should be outlawed as a 'pet'. I know there are members with reptiles and I don't have quarrel with certain reptiles as they can become attached to humans as I have hand raised a beardie and he came to me to chill in the crook of my neck daily.
Snakes require so many unnatural things in captivity. They should just be left to their natural environments.
I would be happy to give up ever having pets again if it meant animals were left to their natural environments and humans stopped mistreating them.

Both a snake lover and a rat owner....in fact...I ended up with ratties because I had an old rescued boa that refused to eat one week and then was euthanized the following week due to increasing arthritis.

I have live-fed snakes and I've owned rats. I no longer have snakes due to a change in my circumstances and unforeseen events, but needless to say I've walked in both worlds.
Do I *like* feeding live? No. Not at all. Especially not when a lot of my girls were picked out of the same feeder bin that the snakes' meals were bought from later that week. BUT I also will not let an animal starve to death, much less a baby, for doing something it needs to do.

Some snakes *WILL* starve to death if not live fed. Perhaps it was I got big into ball pythons (which are notorious for it), but I have long understood that everyone has to eat.
There is an unfortunate tendency in the rat rescue community to have dealt with 'the worst of the worst' of reptile keepers and so paint everyone with the same brush.
Some people live feed because otherwise their baby snakes (and adult snakes) would starve and because they've tried all the tricks and yet the animal will not convert to frozen food. It is not right to place the life of a rat above that of a snake. Snakes need to eat.

Are there people who do it for some sort of thrill? Absolutely. But they're not the majority.
Most (responsible) reptile keepers feed frozen when they have the option to, due to safety, convenience and price.

As much as it is wrong to just see rats/mice as vermin, disposable, disgusting etc...it is also wrong to justify your outrage by portraying snakes as cold-blooded useless animals or to make comments on the quality of them being pets due to not being able to give you the same satisfaction as a social mammal might. Some people want different things from their pets.

Grey_Whiskers said:

Both a snake lover and a rat owner....in fact...I ended up with ratties because I had an old rescued boa that refused to eat one week and then was euthanized the following week due to increasing arthritis.

I have live-fed snakes and I've owned rats. I no longer have snakes due to a change in my circumstances and unforeseen events, but needless to say I've walked in both worlds.
Do I *like* feeding live? No. Not at all. Especially not when a lot of my girls were picked out of the same feeder bin that the snakes' meals were bought from later that week. BUT I also will not let an animal starve to death, much less a baby, for doing something it needs to do.

Some snakes *WILL* starve to death if not live fed. Perhaps it was I got big into ball pythons (which are notorious for it), but I have long understood that everyone has to eat.
There is an unfortunate tendency in the rat rescue community to have dealt with 'the worst of the worst' of reptile keepers and so paint everyone with the same brush.
Some people live feed because otherwise their baby snakes (and adult snakes) would starve and because they've tried all the tricks and yet the animal will not convert to frozen food. It is not right to place the life of a rat above that of a snake. Snakes need to eat.

Are there people who do it for some sort of thrill? Absolutely. But they're not the majority.
Most (responsible) reptile keepers feed frozen when they have the option to, due to safety, convenience and price.

As much as it is wrong to just see rats/mice as vermin, disposable, disgusting etc...it is also wrong to justify your outrage by portraying snakes as cold-blooded useless animals or to make comments on the quality of them being pets due to not being able to give you the same satisfaction as a social mammal might. Some people want different things from their pets.

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Hey whiskers, thanks for speaking out about that!

I agree with you that snakes are a great pet for some. Personally, it's not the snakes or the snake owners I have a problem, but with the business that has been invented around it. Misinformed people purchase snakes and then release them into the wild which is terrible for the ecosystems, they buy snakes and then want to get rid of them because their children cry when pinkies have to be fed to them, they purchase their snake food(probably the worst) from a community that horribly abuses thousands of animals. I don't have a problem per say with a snake eating a rat, even in someone's home where the rat has no chance. I do however have a problem with people banging rats against tables, or with people purchasing their pet food from backyard breeders that keep hundreds of small animals in shoe boxes to sell at 50 cents each.

Even if they feed live, I have no problem with a snake owner that is informed about his/her pet, provides it with correct care, and most importantly feeds it from a responsible source that doesn't abuse and neglect it's 'merchandise'. Sadly, I don't know of any petshops or breeders, at least in my area, that don't kill, harm, abuse, overbreed, or neglect their rodents.

As per our long standing rule,http://www.ratshackforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29218 I'm asking that we no longer discuss the feeding practices of the snakes please and thank you.

jorats said:

The problem is there is no humane way to kill them unless done by a vet and that gas is not good for reptiles. CO2 is NOT a humane way to kill them unlike what the reptile peeps think and say about it. Home base feeder breeders will simply put them in the freezer alive which is extremely inhumane as well. So...ya, that's why I don't have anything nice to say about it.

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I had no idea pre-killed feeder rats were killed inhumanely.. That definitely makes my opinion on the matter a lot less lenient.

Aida said:

My biology teacher keeps snake in the classroom and feeds only live. She does so in front of the classes, althoughshe's stopped in the class periods where i am, and lets kids do it. For the smaller snakes she bangs the pinkies against a desk to 'shock' them into being not as lively and to not hurt her snake. I've tried to talk to her about feeding frozen, but she laughs it off and claims that it's 'unnatural' and a snake would never eat a frozen anything because they aren't 'scavengers' and require food that is alive and moving. So much wrong with that argument, and you'd think a BIOLOGY teacher would know more about her own pets. smh

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That's absolutely horrid. You should definitely try to report her to the administration or SPCA, because that's definitely not okay.

People will breed rats as long as there is money in it. The same applies to captive bred reptiles and wild caught reptiles.
It should be about the animals imo, not the selfishness of people.

Reptiles are wild animals and do not belong in captivity no matter how much someone enjoys having them as pets.
Everything about snakes etc in captivity involves animal cruelty.
People who really care about them enjoy them in the wild, and do not imprison them

Saying that certain animals have to eat as justification for animal cruelty is a joke, because there is no justification for animal cruelty, not ever.
(Wild snakes at the GTA rehab center are feed prekilled animals, if wild snakes can do this then so can those living in captivity,
but since there is no way to humanely kill a small animal and for it's corpse to be safe to be eaten, it is still animal cruelty)
There are no easy answers but one life is not more important then tens or hundreds of other lives
Reptiles are not domesticated and they belong in the wild, in places where they are indigenous and can live as they are meant to

As for rats (etc), who are domesticated animals, many of us cope with the reality by fighting against it every day, by rescuing rats,
by trying to educate people, by trying to get laws passed, reporting animal cruelty, etc
We do not create a demand for more animals to be bred and we do our best to help those already here

It really isn't enough and many of use have seen horrible things ..... but each life we can make a difference to makes the pain a little easier to bare.
I cope by cuddling the rescued ratties I live with and letting their joy enter my life.

Being involved in rat rescue has raised the awareness of some of us and we have stopped supporting animal cruelty by changing our habits.
We no longer support the torture and murder of animals. We no longer consume animals or animal products (and are healthier as a result).
Since you can live a long healthy life without harming someone else, why wouldn't you?

This is how I cope ..... or try to ....

SQ---

Predators are not cruel. If you consider the taking of lives in order to further one's own life selfish or cruel---then so be it. I don't (but you're also vegan if I remember correctly and I am not, so right there...we could bicker all night) as it is the law of every living being on this earth---everything takes the life force of another. The manner in which it happens can be cruel.
Like it or not I have seen/heard of many a baby ball python starve to death and it is horribly disgusting IMO to have an animal die because of ultimately what is some sort of human sentiment about morality being imposed on them. Equally disgusting as you feel live feeding to be.

Predators eat prey. End of story.
The amount of elitism and specieism that accompanies this sort of discussion is revolting and evidence of just as much human selfishness and self-importance.
We feel entitled to get to decide who is more important, who we feel we can justify keeping prisoners for our enjoyment, what criteria is right or important or relieves our sense of guilt so we can go on keeping 'pets'...

Killing an animal/taking a life is not cruel. The manner in which it is done can be. The reasons for that death can be. Death is not a punishment or a cruelty..it is just death.
Arguably though...this is a discussion with no resolution given that inherently all these factors are subjective morality and culture differences.

At the end of it SQ, to answer your question----I will not cause undue harm or death...but the well-being, health, safety and survival of myself and those whom are entrusted to me come first above all.