This would certainly be considered unconscionable cruelty if it were conducted on any mammalian species.
I'm not entirely sure I appreciate the 'ends justify the means' mentality in this experiment. I'm all for science, but starving, beating, delivering electrical shocks to, depriving of water, isolating, drowning, and various other cruel behavioral and metabolic experiments are pretty hard for any ethical person to justify.
This experiment involved torture. It may be a torture that some snakes would be subjected to in the wild, but that is really not the point, is it?
When a ball python fasts for half the year, this is natural--when it is deprived of food for half the year at a time when it would choose to eat, by the deliberate actions of a person...this is animal cruelty.
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