This thread brought up a great discussion.

I think it is an unfortunate thing about how society is today that many people feel the need to "sanitize" the world for their kids. As someone mentioned, some kids don't realize that the chicken, beef, pork, etc they eat used to be a living animal. To me, it seems there is something wrong with hiding that from kids, but many parents these days seem to do it.

On the other hand, little kids can form very strong attachments to their pets, and while they may know that the pet snake eats other animals, they may not want to see or know that one of the animals it ate used to be one of the other pets. My 5th grader knew the rats we borrowed for her science project were bred to be snake food, and might end up snake food when we gave them back to the breeder. She was ok with that. But she was quite definite and clear that she did not want to which ones or how many were kept to be breeders or ended up as food. And I was ok with that.