Email PETA sent:
Thank you for contacting PETA about keeping snakes as pets.
We discourage people from choosing snakes as animal companions. As exotic animals, they require an environment that humans simply cannot provide. They are best adapted to life in the wild and are ill-equipped to spend their often-lengthy lives in confinement.
Keeping captive snakes is not only cruel to the snakes themselves but also to the animals who become their prey. In the wild, animals at least have the chance to escape a hunting snake, and if they are caught, their ordeal is soon over. But animals condemned to be eaten alive by captive snakes have to wait, sometimes for days, sharing a cage with a terrifying predator, until the snake finally becomes hungry enough to end the “prey” animal’s misery. Animals who are fed to snakes suffer horror and fear and have no chance of escape.
Not all captive snakes are fed live prey, however; snakes in zoos are usually given dead mice. Confronted with a snake who shows no interest in dead prey, zoo employees will often try to give dead mice the appearance of life by dangling them at the end of forceps.
PETA strongly encourages anyone who is presently keeping a snake to contact a herpetologist about the possibility of releasing that snake at a suitable time and place. These animals are very poorly suited to domestication. To learn more about ways to protect both wild and domesticated animals, please visit Companion Animals | PETA.org.
Lastly, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently recommended a ban against the import of nine snake species commonly sold as pets, so PETA is not alone in its concern for snakes. For the health and well-being of both people and reptiles, we support imposing a ban without further delay.
Thanks again for writing to PETA.
Sincerely,
Kate Hendrickson
Membership Correspondent
PETA Foundation | Oakland, CA
KateH@petaf.org
this was an email to a reptile owner in my area, this is the most insane dribble iv ever heard, when she wiped this out of her :censor: i bet shed never seen a snake owner. PETA spends so much money on shocktreatment style advertising where they find the complete bottom of the barrel worst animal environments imaginable, and pawn it off as "this is how it all is," that they euthanized more animals that the majority of animal shelters in america COMBINED. also, of the well over 200 reptile owners i know/have met/talk to regularly on here, not one would leave a live prey item in with their pet for days.... id have to get a snake out around a terrified rat if i did, as i tend to get my snake out most every day, my snakes probably live better than her children(if she even has any) also, im sure they support the ban, i bet theyd support a ban on any animal being kept or used in any way. and as for releasing my snakes into the wild? are you insane? every snake i own is at least 3 generations cb, they wouldnt last 30 min in the wild, my sunglow wouldnt last that long. if i have children, if they become PETA supporters, i think ill bash their head against a rock and try again, it should be justifiable homicide. this is why PETA is the biggest bunch of hardcore useless people in the world, rant over
Thank you for contacting PETA about keeping snakes as pets.
We discourage people from choosing snakes as animal companions. As exotic animals, they require an environment that humans simply cannot provide. They are best adapted to life in the wild and are ill-equipped to spend their often-lengthy lives in confinement.
Keeping captive snakes is not only cruel to the snakes themselves but also to the animals who become their prey. In the wild, animals at least have the chance to escape a hunting snake, and if they are caught, their ordeal is soon over. But animals condemned to be eaten alive by captive snakes have to wait, sometimes for days, sharing a cage with a terrifying predator, until the snake finally becomes hungry enough to end the “prey” animal’s misery. Animals who are fed to snakes suffer horror and fear and have no chance of escape.
Not all captive snakes are fed live prey, however; snakes in zoos are usually given dead mice. Confronted with a snake who shows no interest in dead prey, zoo employees will often try to give dead mice the appearance of life by dangling them at the end of forceps.
PETA strongly encourages anyone who is presently keeping a snake to contact a herpetologist about the possibility of releasing that snake at a suitable time and place. These animals are very poorly suited to domestication. To learn more about ways to protect both wild and domesticated animals, please visit Companion Animals | PETA.org.
Lastly, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently recommended a ban against the import of nine snake species commonly sold as pets, so PETA is not alone in its concern for snakes. For the health and well-being of both people and reptiles, we support imposing a ban without further delay.
Thanks again for writing to PETA.
Sincerely,
Kate Hendrickson
Membership Correspondent
PETA Foundation | Oakland, CA
KateH@petaf.org
this was an email to a reptile owner in my area, this is the most insane dribble iv ever heard, when she wiped this out of her :censor: i bet shed never seen a snake owner. PETA spends so much money on shocktreatment style advertising where they find the complete bottom of the barrel worst animal environments imaginable, and pawn it off as "this is how it all is," that they euthanized more animals that the majority of animal shelters in america COMBINED. also, of the well over 200 reptile owners i know/have met/talk to regularly on here, not one would leave a live prey item in with their pet for days.... id have to get a snake out around a terrified rat if i did, as i tend to get my snake out most every day, my snakes probably live better than her children(if she even has any) also, im sure they support the ban, i bet theyd support a ban on any animal being kept or used in any way. and as for releasing my snakes into the wild? are you insane? every snake i own is at least 3 generations cb, they wouldnt last 30 min in the wild, my sunglow wouldnt last that long. if i have children, if they become PETA supporters, i think ill bash their head against a rock and try again, it should be justifiable homicide. this is why PETA is the biggest bunch of hardcore useless people in the world, rant over