I can't believe what I overheard at a show... Talk about power feeding..

[frankykeno]

I'd imagine a snake's body is well equipped to deal with the changes that happen when it eats. It'd be pretty silly if an animal was harmed from eating when it was hungry, you know?

But that's not the point that eating "harms" a snake. The point is to understand the complexities of what happens to a snake when it does feed so we as captive keepers make smart feeding decisions. Of course eating doesn't "harm" a snake, but it does require massive organ changes, massive draws on energy for that animal. Understanding that process makes the advise that the highly experienced people share here about allowing these snakes reasonable downtimes between feeding even more sensible.

I simply don't understand I guess the need to stuff as much food as you can, as often as possible into an animal that was designed by nature to be an opportunistic, ambush predator. Sure in nature there are times when rodents are very plentiful and they get to eat pretty frequently but over the course of the year that isn't likely to be the norm. For a system designed and evolved to digest in this extreme manner, I just cannot see the sense of overly compressing the feeding cycle hoping to achieve some sort of accelerated growth pattern.

I guess the flip side question I'd propose then is - what are the benefits of feeding more often? If feeding less often (i.e once per week for snakes past hatchling stage) isn't what you do, why do you choose to feed more frequently?