how people view chameleon feeding vs snake feeding

Has anyone ever wondered why people freak out when you feed a snake a live rat, while they think its soooo cute when you feed your cham live anything really?

not that I'm on one side of this I keep both boas and chams I'm just wondering what you think.

also here is a video I pulled out of the forums kinda why I started this thread
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkTYae9RMFQ

Because rats are furry and mammals. People can more easily relate to a rat, less so with a bug. Plus rats are pretty darn intelligent.

My point of view, when a cham eats you don't hear crickets, roaches, worms...etc squeal. When you feed a snake, that's all the mice/rats do. Plus, you get the eye popping.

I don't have any issues with feeding a snake, I use to own a red tail boa a couple of years ago.

Millerj0469 said:

Has anyone ever wondered why people freak out when you feed a snake a live rat, while they think its soooo cute when you feed your cham live anything really?

not that I'm on one side of this I keep both boas and chams I'm just wondering what you think.

also here is a video I pulled out of the forums kinda why I started this thread
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkTYae9RMFQ

Click to expand...

I like watching clair eat but i dont think its cute, more like cool. shes cute when she walks around all her plants and follows it to eat, but also look at the animals difrrences.


chameleon- googly eyes, mitten hands, curly long tails and sometimes fat bodies, long cool tounge


Snake- flicking tounge, no limbs, no eye movement, attacks suddenly



harder one to thatute, although i like all animals i can see why non reptile people would like a cham better.

I coud never have a snake. I couldn't keep something that I would have to feed something else that I would also keep as a pet, ie mice, etc. Just couldn't do it. As I used to tell my cat when she eyed up the hamster - 'you don't eat family'! Lol!

Well, because rodents are mammalian vertebrates while insects are not, they aren't even vertebrates, and people don't tend to feel any sort of attachment to inverts. They aren't cute, or furry, or trainable pets. People keep inverts as pets too, but they aren't as involved as a pet mouse or rat is, which can be trained to do tricks and travel around with you. More than anything, most people find insects creepy.

I think most non reptile keepers know how snakes eat, whereas they may not know how chams eat. My friends came to visit Amy and Tommy last year when they were looking into reptiles and the whole family though it was amazing how they eat! They decided to go with a bearded dragon though as their son wanted something that he could interact more with. I think on the whole, people are amazed and fascinated at how chameleons catch their prey!

I guess I just see it in a different way. The way I see it if the animal eats the other animal in the wild it should eat the same thing in captivity.

I have to say I am actually getting quite attached to my feeders as well - even as they are only bugs. Maybe it comes from the constant care for them. Even my kids like playing with the silkworms, mealworms and roaches. They try to hold back the cutest ones from getting fed.

It's interesting that this is brought up because last night I brought up maybe giving my chameleon a pinky mouse every once in a great while to shake things up. But I don't think that I could do it. The other thing I thought of was feeder goldfish I could feed the fishes but not so much a mouse. Kind of odd.

Really? I couldn't care less about my feeder insects, as individuals. I care about their nutritional value to my chameleons and geckos, so they are fed well and are well taken care of, but I don't care about them as individuals. They are like chicken nuggets that I have to feed, they are just food for my pets. To me, none of them are cute, if anything, they're creepy.