Feeding Question

[MrLang]

The point I was making with the ferret is that animals will starve themselves to death. To say animals won't is an ignorant statement.

Ferrets aren't really particularly similar to their natural counterparts. They've been bred to be... well... slow. I still wouldn't disagree with what you said here except that my statement is ignorant. I'm quite well informed and started my response by saying I was aware of what you are talking about. Slop and kibble are not the same as offering a ferret a live vs dead snake

Please show me your sources that Wild ball pythons scavenge already dead prey.

I'm at work and I'm not going to start linking internet junk, but do some research on what an opportunistic feeder or hunter is. It's a biology term and I have read in enough places that ball pythons are opportunistic to believe it. Someone feel free to correct me with their own facts if I'm wrong.

I think if a snake takes f/t regularly at one point and goes off feed for whatever reason(breeding/winter/whatever), you have a good chance that it will eat f/t again. However, what about a snake who has never encountered f/t? What if they refuse time and time again. Will you keep trying f/t and only f/t.

You quoted me in this response. I addressed this very clearly. Let me know if there are still questions after you read what I wrote and you quoted.

Let me know how that snake fairs physically if it keeps refusing food based on food type while it will clearly take live.

You guys chatted? Just because you can trigger the snake's instinct better with a live animal, doesn't mean it's hungry. If you're tricking a snake into eating, you're essentially force feeding.

Who knows how long a snake can refuse a meal just because it only eats live and you want to feed it f/t.

Indeed. That is the question I believe I have asked multiple times. I'm asking for someone with direct experience to describe it to me.

You've been lucky so far that your own personal snakes have been so easy to switch.

I know, like I said I am willing to accept that I'm coming from a limited set of knowledge and experience. I'm only using facts to support myself, though, and labeling the rest as speculation.

Not feeding your pet because it refuses food based on food type is poor keeping and almost cruel. You're physically offering food. But thats not feeding. The snake is not eating.Yes snakes can last a long time without feeding. Days, weeks, months, up to year. However, that doesn't mean it shouldn't eat if it will willingly eat something else immediately.

I never advocated starving an animal. Would you advocate obesity? These are a species that choose with great regularity to refuse all meal types for periods of up to 6 months or more. As long as you offer food, it's not cruelty, it's feeding. Like I said in the response you quoted, if I had multiple refusals I would probably try live. That doesn't mean 'the snake WON'T eat F/T' and it also doesn't mean I've given up on switching it.

In my opinion, as pet owners, it is our duty to do what's best for the animal regardless of personal preference.

Couldn't agree more. The two are not mutually exclusive, though.

And I don't think starving a snake to take f/t out of desperation and starvation is one of them.

I hope you didn't take desperation and starvation out of anything I wrote, for your own sake.



In the wild, these animals take (someone correct me if I'm wrong) 3 - 5 or more years to reach adult size. We stimulate their feeding response in an extremely controlled environment to force fast growth (something that has negative side-effects on a many species) and get them to adult size in a year and a half.

My mom worked for 10 years doing neuro-pharmacology to try to understand and develop drugs to deal with obesity. When you give a rat a lever to feed itself tasty treats, guess what it does? It becomes unhealthy. Give it kibble that, while it is not nearly as exciting to the rat, will sustain it. Guess what it does? Throttles its feeding. In the wild, mice and rats are maybe not as common as you might think, especially when you're a snake out in the big world looking for them. They've evolved to have a strong feeding response when the OPPORTUNITY presents itself to them. Plopping the largest possible prey item in close quarters with the snake on a set schedule isn't necessarily what caused these animals to hang around after the dinosaurs went extinct?

When my kid refuses his vegetables, I'm not going to fly out to McDonald's to get them a Happy Meal simply because they more willingly accept it.