anti-feeders
The US really needs to outlaw selling baby rodents as "feeders" for snakes, and they need to make it illegal for zoos to practice feeding live animals to reptiles. Other places have done this, apparently the US is just on crack. There are places which sell frozen rodents (I'm assuming freezing is quick and relatively painless)and so everyone should use those.
I was at a zoo this weekend, in the reptile house. In one of the cages, Jaron spotted a baby rat sitting there with its eyes closed. We assumed, since it was so still with its eyes closed, that it was a frozen baby rat that had been left there for the reptile to eat. Well, then we saw it move. It nosed around the area where it was sitting, and I realized that its eyes were closed, not in death, but because it was so young. It was perfectly alive and sentient, unaware that an exotic fist-sized toad sat about a foot behind it, just waiting until it was hungry enough to eat.
Okay, this may sound weird, but I actually started crying and had to leave the reptile house for a minute. I just couldn't STAND it!! The baby rat was big enough to have fir and a fully-formed face, and it reminded me so much of my own precious ratties! I was so angry at the zoo I couldn't see straight for a couple of minutes.
Anyway...I guess having rats for pets has really made me sensitive to things like this. Especially with what we know about rats. In a list of the most intelligent common household pets in America, rats come in third after dogs and pigs (AHEAD of cats, mind you). In tests, rats have been proven to be quite sentient. So in essence, if you feed a baby rat to a snake, it's no different that feeding a puppy or a kitten to a snake. I bet if people realized that there would be more of an outcry against it.
I'm just so mad about it right now. I feel weird getting upset about something like this when there are so many bigger problems in the world (mass starvation, death from AIDS, terrible social injustices, and so on) but I can't help it. I'm mad.
dascully
I was at a zoo this weekend, in the reptile house. In one of the cages, Jaron spotted a baby rat sitting there with its eyes closed. We assumed, since it was so still with its eyes closed, that it was a frozen baby rat that had been left there for the reptile to eat. Well, then we saw it move. It nosed around the area where it was sitting, and I realized that its eyes were closed, not in death, but because it was so young. It was perfectly alive and sentient, unaware that an exotic fist-sized toad sat about a foot behind it, just waiting until it was hungry enough to eat.
Okay, this may sound weird, but I actually started crying and had to leave the reptile house for a minute. I just couldn't STAND it!! The baby rat was big enough to have fir and a fully-formed face, and it reminded me so much of my own precious ratties! I was so angry at the zoo I couldn't see straight for a couple of minutes.
Anyway...I guess having rats for pets has really made me sensitive to things like this. Especially with what we know about rats. In a list of the most intelligent common household pets in America, rats come in third after dogs and pigs (AHEAD of cats, mind you). In tests, rats have been proven to be quite sentient. So in essence, if you feed a baby rat to a snake, it's no different that feeding a puppy or a kitten to a snake. I bet if people realized that there would be more of an outcry against it.
I'm just so mad about it right now. I feel weird getting upset about something like this when there are so many bigger problems in the world (mass starvation, death from AIDS, terrible social injustices, and so on) but I can't help it. I'm mad.
dascully