No, as the article in Telemark’s post stated. One keeper said, “We don’t even feed our snakes live mice.”
So no zoos feed snakes live rodents? Not even zoos in the middle east or South America. I highly doubt that. I saw it on the Life of Pi, goat fed to a tiger and then the tiger sailed on a lifeboat!
20 years ago or so, we visited the International Wolf Center, in Ely, MN; as part of the center, they have a large outdoor enclosure, where a small pack of wolves lives.
The primary way that they feed the wolf pack is by bringing in a deer carcass every Saturday evening; the deer are typically roadkilled animals, donated by the Minnesota State Patrol, which finds them on the side of the road. One can attend the Saturday evening “dinner” – the center has a big theater, with windows that look out over the wolves’ enclosure; the staff places the deer carcass near the windows, and the wolves come out and start to pull apart and eat it.
When we were there, the staff described that eating a large meal like that, and then not eating another big meal for days, was pretty typical for wild wolves; they also noted that the center’s wolves commonly hunted for small animals (chipmunks, mice, etc.) that found their way into the enclosure, which kind of served as between-meal snacks.
I didn’t say no zoos feed live mice to snakes. Some snakes won’t accept dead prey. But the majority of zoos don’t want their predators injured by their prey, so they’ll stick with humanely euthanized frozen mice.
Obviously saucywench’s language is unacceptable. A suspension has been issued.
RickJay
Moderator
At the zoo in St Martin (destroyed by Irma, never rebuilt) the raccoons were a big deal.
Understand that cervicocephalic luxation is considered humane by the authorities who govern such things. I’ve done this on mice to be fed to snakes, but I think many observers would question the “humanely euthanized” part.
We went to the Vilas Zoo in Madison once and a badger had clearly just killed a wild duck that had stupidly flown into the pen. Does that count?
There’s this video (warning: a predator catches a squirrel and eats it, don’t watch if squeamish) where a father and son watch a leopard at the zoo catch a squirrel. The dad is freaking out, the kid is just staring - then at the end he turns around, grins, and says “Squirrel!”
Google doesn’t help me here. I assumed zoos do what Youtuber Shawn Woods does with house mice and use carbon dioxide to asphyxiate them. I don’t know if zoos practice this or how they dispatch their rodents, but I’m willing to stand corrected.
All research facilities I’ve had experience with as well as one zoo use cervical luxation. It’s cheap, easy, effective.
When I was in charge of the live animals at a small college, we did feed live mice to the snakes. But that was a looooooong time ago.
Here’s one where the victim seems to have made it but sort of similar.
OK, I was going to ask “what does ‘cervical luxation’ mean?” but I think I got the idea from your link. Thanks.
I watched some hamsters killed with carbon dioxide, once. That was not humane.
Indeed. A modest uptick of CO2 concentration in your lungs is the thing that makes you desperate to breathe after you’ve been holding your breath for a while. A high concentration HURTS. Anyone in doubt can see for themselves by sealing their lips on a half-emptied 2-liter soda bottle and inhaling deeply; there’s a moderately high concentration of CO2 in the bottle at that point, and as soon as you inhale you’ll be desperate for fresh air. Still not convinced? Put some dry ice in a plastic bag, squeeze out the air, and let the CO2 gas build up. Inhale gently from the bag; you probably won’t be able to draw a full breath before you start coughing and choking because you’ll be in agony.
So if my Chiropractor offers this service, I should decline?
Cervical luxation and decapitation are both quick and relatively humane. If you can anesthetize the animal first, all the better.
(I worked in a lab where i had to kill a lot of mice. I etherized them and then decapitated them with a little rodent guillotine. It wasn’t pleasant, but i never felt i was torturing the animals. The poor hamsters were tortured, and just watching it was horrible.)
Want to talk “not humane”? Due to COVID, there was/is the need to depopulate large poultry or swine buildings. Someone came up with VSD ((Ventilation Shut Down) where basically ventilation is turned off, body heat +/- additional heat then leads to the animals dying of hyperthermia.
From here:
Ventilation Shutdown (VSD/VSD+) is exactly what it says : The pig or chicken barn is closed, all air inlets and ventilation sealed, and fans turned off. Heaters, steam, and/or gas are turned on. Body heat from the animals, combined with any added heat, raises the temperature in the house until the pigs or chickens die from hyperthermia (overheating) or suffocation from built-up gases. This typically takes hours, according to all published research.
All forms of Ventilation Shutdown were designed to be used only in severe life-threatening infectious or zoonotic disease outbreaks. It was never intended as a cost-saving method of depopulation. Livestock producers are using the AVMA Depopulation Guidelines and veterinary approval as justification for using VSD+ in situations that do not involve infections or zoonosis. The AVMA Depopulation Guidelines list several other preferred depopulation methods and the AASV lists 10 specific depopulation techniques for pigs.