All generalizations aside, I assume we all want what's best for our pets, & not to debate whether or not they'll eat road-kill if they have to for survival?
And we shouldn't be getting rodents that are spoiled from suppliers, or knowingly feeding those that spoil because of later mishandling...bleah!
I've seen a few odd things in my years of keeping many kinds of snakes, & as long as we're all veering a little off topic, I'll be brief. It's just "food for thought"-
I took in a young Crotalus mitchelli (speckled rattlesnake) that came out of someone's woodpile one January. Months went on & it refused all food. Finally I ended
up tube-feeding it (Gerber's chicken baby food) once a month, several times, to keep him out of a downward spiral. I offered a f/t fuzzy before I left for work one
morning, and when I came home that night I was greeted with the awful aroma of dead rotting fuzzy. I got my hemostats to remove the stink but before I could,
my phone rang. I got off the phone just in time to see that young rattlesnake gulping down that putrid mouse! W-T-? As I got over my shock, I gave it more
thought as to why that happened, & my guess is that normally his prey would have been envenomated, which starts the breakdown (aka 'digestion') process.
Snakes have an acute sense of smell, so I believe that only when that mouse (which could well have been his very first meal too) began to "ripen" did it give off the
right odors to trigger his instincts to feed. Thereafter, he recognized mice (live or f/t) as food without waiting for them to spoil.He grew big & healthy too.
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