Speaking of the perfidy of zoos, this was spotted at orange news by reader ladyatheist, who put the link in the comments. It’s a nice story, although I don’t think it implicates altruism. Still, I like the fact that they let the “hero” mouse go. (If it was an albino, though, it’s still probably a goner.)
Mighty mouse attacks snake to save pal
A mouse has been given its freedom after it tackled a poisonous snake in a bid to save a fellow rodent at a zoo in China.
The two mice were served up as a live dinner for the snake at Hangzhou Zoo in Zhejiang province, eastern China.
Keeper Wen Shao said: “We always give the snakes live food and we put the two mice into the snake enclosure, but instead of trying to hide like they usually do one of the mice attacked the snake when it saw it trying to eat the other mouse.
“I have never seen anything like that before, usually the mice keep as far away from the snake as possible but this one caused a lot of damage.
“It was biting the snake on the head as the snake was trying to eat the first mouse.”
He added that the mouse had deserved its freedom after putting up such a brave fight.
“In any case it didn’t do the snake any good either, it was expensive and the mouse did a lot of damage by biting it on the head,” he added.
Sadly the mouse did not succeed in its bid to free its pal. It died and was later eaten even if mighty mouse was no longer around to witness it.
I’d prefer, of course, that the mice be euthanized humanely before being fed to snakes, but perhaps some snakes won’t eat dead mice.
Some snakes won’t eat dead mice, and sometimes it even varies from individual to individual. Ball Pythons are notoriously picky individuals with some only striking at or eating prey that is moving. Sometimes you can wiggle a dead mouse enough to fool a picky eater, but sometimes not, and there are sometimes dangers to either yourself or the snake when you try to manipulate its food that way.
ETA: Of course, there are clearly dangers to feeding snakes live mice, too, as in the example. Sometimes they fight back.
Also, disclaimer, I’m not an expert. I’ve just had a pet Ball Python and read a lot about them.
I have a ball python that refuses to eat a mouse it did not kill, too. How much would I prefer being able to buy frozen food for it, rather than having to make a weekly trip to the pet store for its two mice. I always try to “play Darwin” (as my kids and I called it) and pick the most bedraggled, least thriving mice of the stock, and we always treat the mice humanely…until we drop them in with the snake. But I have to say, I have never seen the mice experience anything that looks like panic, or even fear. They often pad right up to the snakes “face” and sniff at it, or even scurry along the top of the python’s back. I think that the actual moment of “realization” (used very loosely here) that something dangerous and scary is going on is not until the strike, and they die within a minute or two after that. I think that the fear that animals that get made into dog and cat food experience way more stress than the mice I feed my python do. But you can’t imagine the ignorant comments I sometimes get, even from pet store workers, when buying the “feeder” mice. I have taken to saying, “Sure, I wish everything ate apples and celery, but that is not how the world evolved, and my animal is a confirmed carnivore, and will only eat live mice. What exactly do you think your Fancy Feast is made of?”
Let me add to that that wiggling a dead mouse in front of a venomous snake is much riskier than wiggling one in front of a ball python!
I’m lucky that my ball is not terribly picky.
I believe all snakes eat dead prey, but only the ones they kill. Any proof that wild terrestrial snakes are scavengers or eat prey while it is still alive?
I know for a fact that garder snakes will eat live prey because as a kid I caught one and it was stressed enough to puke up a frog that was still alive. I can only image what must have been going through the frogs mind.
Lots of snakes (maybe a majority?) swallow their prey alive. Mammal and reptile-eating species kill their prey because it can fight back or escape, but those that eat eggs, invertebrates, fishes or amphibians don’t need to bother. There are of course many exceptions. Many snakes will scavenge dead prey in the wild, as long as it’s fresh enough to smell correct. Try a Google image search for ‘snake eating roadkill’!
Readers may have seen this story of an alligator that got eaten by a burmese python in Florida http://tinyurl.com/3977jon
Apparently the python ‘exploded’ in the attempt to swallow the ‘gator, possibly because the ‘gator was kicking with its legs. Both animals died. As a child I was occasionally told my ‘eyes were bigger than my stomach’ if I couldn’t finish some food I had taken – I’d say the snake in this story suffered from the mother of all ‘eyes bigger than its stomach moments!
Snakes have been seen (and photographed) eating roadkill off the blacktop…presumably many would also eat any other dead prey animal if they came across one.
Where’s a hero shrew when you need one?
My dad told me that when he was a boy his friend bet him that his snake would eat his hamster. The hamster bit the snake in half.
You have to admire feisty prey. I hope I do/will make feisty prey to those who prey on me.
Awoman to that! (As opposed to “amen.”)
As someone who has worked with hamsters professionally I am not at all surprised that the snake lost the fight.
“As someone who has worked with hamsters professionally”
I’d love to know what that entails. I have a vision of a vaudeville act – please don’t disappoint me 😉
Guinea pigs, rabbits and pigeons, in the same animal house,
(Well, I got paid.)
Sorry to disappoint you.
In my professional career with rodents, mornings started with dragging a wheel-mounted rack of the Guinea Pigs from the colony room into the corridor then transfer the contents of one of the colony cages into the clean cage stowed at the top of the rack, then set about cleaning the Guinea Pig shit from the vacated cage (in the process, palpate the females to check if they’re pregnant ; if so, transfer to a birthing cage in the pregnancy room and date the cage) ; lather, rinse and repeat for each of the IIRC 6 cages in the rack. Take the final cage from the rack into the drains room for deep cleaning. Repeat for a second rack of pigs each working day. Then do the same for 1/5 of the sows in the birthing section of the colony room, but using deep-cleaned cages for the recently-littered sows and note any new births, or sows that look like they’ve aborted or are overdue.
“Lather, rinse, repeat” for any of the pigs which were being professional Petri dishes for TB samples (inoculating a pig was at that time the quickest and most reliable way of confirming or denying a suspicion of TB in a patient ; it passed my ethical tests) ; simultaneously filter out any dead pigs, or ones whose time had come for the starring role in a dissection (7 days after inoculation, examine the bones of the “Pigtri dish” for tubercules) by one of the medical staff.
After doing the breeding colony and test animals, clean up and do the rabbits (non-sacrificial ; they were pre-inoculated with different enteric bacteria for diagnosis of different types of diahorrea. I forget what the pigeons were for ; something similar, but with plenty of people passing through the city fresh back from “for’n parts”, it could have been almost anything. Says the man with an arm full of fresh rabies pre-vaccine, yellow fever refresher and meningitis.
Afternoons we’d spend deep-cleaning the various cages that were cycling through the system. Then distributing food and water to the animals, cleaning up the animal house, and then it was knocking-off time.
Sorry to disappoint you ; most of working with animals is shit-shovelling. The interesting bits are quite short parts of the life of a Guinea Pig.
I’ve forgotten a stage. Did we have to filter off some of the sows from the colonies, or segregate them, so that we didn’t inadvertently end up sacrificing a pregnant sow? Or did we have a separate rack of breeders with the rest being single-sex cages? I honestly can’t remember now.
But anyway, for about 20 animals a week being sacrificed for TB tests (the hospital was the regional TB centre and had a hinterland of a million or so, plus itinerants from the oilfield. One suspect case identified on a rig could generate over 100 necessary tests ; I’ve been tested twice because of that myself) we needed a breeding colony of around 700-800 animals. The other species were just a convenience because we had to run the animal house for the TB Pigs.
I don’t know if the current clinical practice is to continue with the pigs, or to try to culture in Petri dishes ; at the time there were continuing efforts to develop a reliable in vitro TB test, but apparently it’s one of the more recalcitrant bugs.
Going into the animal house on a Monday morning in hot weather was not a pleasant experience. Over the weekend, we only put one porter on duty for feeding and watering 4 hours/day, so it would get a bit ripe over the weekend.
Not too disappointed really. I am sure all of that is a lot more useful than my whimsical vision would have been. I hope you got paid adequately.
I can’t remember the source, it has been some years, but I think it was in a documentary I saw on TV. The scene was a research center that studied snake venoms and kept a large variety of venomous snakes at the facility. During a regular feeding a live guinea pig was dropped into a cage with a large snake (cobra?).
The pig cowered in a corner then, as the snake moved towards it, it jumped high and landed on top of the snake just behind its head and commenced to do a credible imitation of one of those monsters from the movie I Am Legend, which resulted in a dead snake.
At some time later, can’t remember if it was the same feeding or a later one, they tried to feed the guinea pig to another large venomous snake. Bad idea. That poor snake faired no better than the first one. At that point they decided to retire the seriously bad ass guinea pig, with all due respect.
LOL I wondered the same!
Drug-filled Mice Airdropped Over Guam to Kill Snakes
“There are very few snakes that will consume something that they haven’t killed themselves,” added Dan Vice, assistant state director of USDA Wildlife Services in Hawaii, Guam, and the Pacific Islands.
But brown tree snakes will scavenge as well as hunt, he said, and that’s the “chink in the brown tree snake’s armor.”
Aww. Well, at least it didn’t get to see it. 🙂
They assume that the second mouse was trying to rescue the first, but I think it’s more likely it was trying to save itself by scaring the snake into not coming near it.
The snake was pre-occupied with the first mouse and so the second one had a clear line to attack.
I had a flat mate that had a large boa contrictor. She bred mice in the garage to feed them live as she said it wouldn’t eat them dead.
I knew a Carpet Python that, after one bad experience, would have nothing to do with rats (alive or dead) ever again. Some days you eat the bear.
*constrictor
Damn, I even got my name wrong.
Zoos have long realized that live food is healthy for predator animals. After the zoo is closed, live chickens for the big cats stimulates them, exercises them, and encourages instinctive behaviors. Likewise, if possible, dolphins and orcas would love to catch their own fish dinners. Of course, our sensitivities don’t allow us to do what is natural and best for predators. Natural behaviors immediately become sadistic behaviors as soon as humans enter the picture. Fresh meat for carnivores must entail the slaughter of beef cows or horses. Either humans kill the prey or carnivores do it themselves. Which is more natural, which is more cruel, or does it matter?
Snake keepers I have known monitor the situation when they put a rat or mouse in with a snake. It is not uncommon for the prey to attack the snake, and the snake keepers do not want that to happen. I’ve never seen any one feed two mice at a time.
While we might like to think that we are being a bit more ethical by euthanising food for pets or zoo specimens, it is not how nature operates and there are millions of critters getting violently killed by other critters which we do not normally see. Not least by domestic cats which can “play” with an injured animal for a while before either devouring it or just going off and leaving it.
That’s why we are being kinder to the animal. Nature is cruel. We try not to be.
And they can be very playful. I once had a cat that played “mice hockey” — one winter evening I found it batting a mouse around on the icy driveway! The cat seemed to be enjoying the sport; the mouse, not so much.
sub
I once had a grass snake, and it refused to eat anything except live goldfish served up in a shallow tray of water.
Well, I know I wouldn’t like to eat dead mice.
Wouldn’t it be preferable if animals weren’t kept in captivity for human entertainment? naja… here a video of a hamster seemingly not scared of the snake it’s sharing captivity with:
youtube.com/watch?v=-IG4kceZBWA
Rambling Ratz is uncomfortable with this conversation, please stop!
My husband had a ball python that was killed by the mouse he put in the aquarium! He said he came back a little while later and the mouse was cowering in the corner and the snake was dead. He was upset but the mouse won his freedom!
Rodents retaliating, vermin vindicated – Rambling Ratz is feeling a bit happier, though confusingly now sorry for the snake, sigh … life is complicated.