Just want to raise a question here - there are philosophical implications aplenty here.
As animal lovers (most of us here are), we attach greater moral treatment to what we consider "sentient beings," or at least most of us do. We perceive that dogs and cats and other higher order mammals can experience pain, pleasure, fear, and other basic emotion-based sensations. It seems that moral treatment is applied relative to what degree an animal experiences these cognitive qualities. An example would be that we see the act of beating a dog or cat as cruel, but don't think twice about smashing a roach the runs across the floor.
What is ironic here is that when you compare the animals being fed (snakes in this case) to the feeder animals (rats, kittens, whatever), the predator (snakes) may actually come in at a lower ranking as far as to what degree they experience the aforementioned cognitive qualities.
All that being said, I'll accept my own hypocritical stance that I would never feed a kitten to snake, but don't think twice about rodents. That's my own thing. People eat cats in Asia, Cows are sacred in India, and I think right or wrong comes down to what each individual culture thinks about certain animals.
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