This might come off as a rant, but I was wanting some opinions on this kind of thing as well. Mostly this seems to apply to lizard species, since snakes seem to (generally) be a lot more straightforward about feeding. My cousin, who recently stepped into the reptile keeping world with her very first bearded dragon, sent me a video yesterday of a bearded dragon eating a live adult mouse and asking me if that kind of thing was safe. Things like this agitate me to no end, since the owners of these animals like to defend their choices by saying things like "they do it in the wild all the time".

Lizards also get eaten by other animals in the wild, should I let my dog have at my dragon for that authentic natural feel?

It's the same whenever I hear of people defending giving crickets to iguanas. Yes, I am aware that wild specimens have been known to eat these foods. However, to my current knowledge there is no benefit to feeding insects to iguanas nor giving mammalian protein to beardies while there can be all sorts of risks to doing so. We've never even given our girl pinkies, even though they're supposedly not bad for them in moderation. "In moderation" has never sounded like safe practice to me...

The fact that the mouse was alive was just the cherry on top for me. The mouse got in a bite to the beardies face at the beginning of the video before it readjusted to grab it headfirst, and at no point was there any sign of the owner doing anything but recording. Ugh. Just... ugh. I don't have a problem with feeding live to my snakes, by the by, but that's because they won't eat anything else. Literally nothing, it's a live rodent or it's nothing. People don't even give captive monitor lizards live rodents, why are there so many videos of beardies eating live mice?

I know there was a post a while back about mimicking natural diets, but in the cases where the food item can actually be harmful, is that really something we as keepers should try to do? To me, this isn't like feeding a chick to a ball python. This isn't even giving another snake to a king for the purpose of a healthier diet, this is just getting some cheap entertainment at the possible expense of your animal to do so with a weak excuse of "because they do it in the wild means it's fine that they do it in my living room".


*To clarify, my cousin was pretty sure this along with letting your pet dragon eat spiders or other bugs in your home was bad practice and wouldn't have ever tried this even if I told her it was perfectly fine. There's a reason she has a beardie and not a python.