Quote Originally Posted by tbowman View Post
I don't think the snakes care either way if the rodent is live or dead. There are a couple of reasons it may seem that they prefer live. One being that the rodent may not be prepared properly therefore the snake does not recognize it as a food item. The other, being that Bp's are very timid snakes and I believe the human presence involved when feeding F/T will cause some snakes not to go for it. This would explain why many times people have success just leaving a f/t rodent in the cage. Look at almost any other species of commonly kept snake that aren't as timid as Bp's and there aren't often problems feeding f/t. If snakes truly preferred live, then there would be no market for frozen rodents.

Not advocating one way or the other, I just think it's a bit silly to say that all snakes prefer live food. There are a few things that tell a snake that something is edible,

Scent
Movement
Heat signature (in the case of most pythons)

Being ambush hunters I don't think that most snakes really hesitate when a food item comes near them. If it's warm, moving, and smells like food, they are driven by instinct to eat it. There is a reason they are called opportunistic hunters.

Gain some experience feeding some other species of python and you'll find that a lot of them will have the rodent wrapped up before they discern whether or not it is live or dead.

Of course I could be completely wrong about all of this.
I was specifically referring to bps. Everything I've read about picky eaters (never experienced, i feed live) states that if f/t is not working even if you have the temps right and try different presentations, live usually works much better. Unlike some of the experienced people on here, I haven't bred 100s-1000s of snakes so this isn't based on experience as much as research. From my point of view a snake does 1 thing and 1 thing only, survive. Which means it basically just eats, sleeps/hides, and mates. So to me, those are important aspects in the mindset of your animal, and it is the most natural part of owning a snake. So if I can, I let them eat live, mate, and give them plenty of great hides. Maybe I'm just crazy. To each his own