Of course, in the wild they also deal with parasites, predators, and disease in the wild, but we try to avoid adding that into our captive snakes, lol!
I've used and still use particle substrate(Aspen) with one of my snakes, though as soon as this last batch has run it's course we are switching to newspaper. It's just easier. Our other two snakes are on it, and if they 'go' we just replace that newspaper and put in a clean one. No mess, no fuss, no worrying about it getting bad and replacing it, cause you just replace it anyway. And I don't like feeding on substrate like that either. I feel that if the animal's life is in my hands--which, as a pet, it is-- I want to give it the safest life possible, so if anything DOES go wrong, I don't have to worry about other possibilities like ingesting substrate adding to the equation! So I feed our Maru outside her tank. Sure she'd be most likely fine eating on substrate, but you know, there is always that chance. I don't want the one freak accident to be my snake if all it takes for me to avoid it is to put it on paper. Plus, I'm sure it's unpleasant for the snake, LOL! How do you like crud in your food?
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